Hospitality Marketing Priorities

Customer satisfaction has always been a priority for the hospitality and dining industries.  As the impact on your business by social media engagement Tweets, Likes and G+ along with TripAdvisor and Yelp reviews continues to grow, the demand for time and social expertise is even more important.  How you promote your business effectively is no longer just a question which directory listings or how much is your ad budget.

How you optimize your review responses, tag photos, generate social dialogue and how fast you respond will affect your business.  Marketing methods are evolving and this is demanding a different set of rules and clearly a different set of marketing skills.  These skills go beyond the usual copy writing, trend analysis or advertising techniques.  Your marketing must take a Community Manager approach and build your own brand networks, followers and online fans.

More than half of all travel and hospitality sales are directly affected by your search rankings and your online reputation and social chatter is a dominant factor in forming the right reputation. Having a good ranking or star rating is a good start, but in the months ahead online shoppers and generation Y buyers will demand more information and easy access to online comments from past guests.

We recommend you set a clear marketing path with the right priorities.  Whether your hotel or restaurant is a small independent or a large franchise service, you need daily direct communications with potential guests online.  To allocate the right amount of time you need to know your marketing priorities and you need to measure your progress in a variety of ways.  A true measure is not just the number of Likes or tweets, nor is it the volume of room sales from a deeply discounted OTA website.

You marketing priorities are: (1) a current website whether you are an independent or brand service or not (2) consistent page one search rankings for relevant terms other than your name (3) a current and active social presence on Facebook, Titter, Google Plus, Pinterest and Wikipedia (4) a compatible mobile website not just your Internet site (5) A way to capture your guest's email address and opt-in for specials.  Let us know if we can help?  Consider integrating a package booking element for your website.  Add air reservations, car rental, limo services, dining reservations or other services to deliver a total solution for the online shoppers and enable a secondary revenue source.