How to Create An Effective Hotel Marketing Plan

Build your hotel business with a well-crafted marketing plan

If you’re serious about building up your hotel business, this guide will give you the help you need to execute an effective hotel marketing plan. Many hoteliers try to manage the online marketing of their hotel on a casual basis, choosing whichever promotions happen to appeal to them at that moment. While you may find success with this laid-back approach for a limited amount of time, over the years you will notice that this scattergun marketing strategy is not yielding the same high returns that hoteliers with coordinated marketing strategies are enjoying. If you’ve refrained from creating a marketing plan for your hotel because you fear it will be too difficult to establish and execute, you can relax. Learning how to create an effective hotel marketing plan is surprisingly easy; just follow this step by step guide and you’ll have a coordinated hotel marketing strategy before you know it!

1. Analyze your hotel marketing audience
   The first step in any hotel marketing plan is figuring out exactly where your hotel is now, where you want to be, and how you are going to get there. Once you can fully define your specific hotel marketing goal, achieving it becomes much more feasible. Who exactly is your target audience? Define your customer as completely as possible so you can create a buyer persona. Include all the information you can access: their demographics, their taste in travel, income range, history of stays at your hotel, etc.
2. Assess your assets and your competitors
   Next, consider your hotel and your competitors. What is your USP (unique selling proposition)? What sets your hotel apart from others, what can you offer guests that other hotels cannot? What areas are your competitors finding success with? Once you have established what your hotel has to offer, what your guests are looking for, and where your competition excels or falls short, you will be able to form a clear picture of the areas that present the greatest marketing opportunity for your hotel.
3. Establish your marketing objectives
   What are you trying to accomplish with your marketing over the next year? We’re not looking for a vague answer like “become more successful,” we’re looking for specific, measureable goals. Is your goal to increase your hotel’s booking rate by 10% over the coming year? Maybe you are trying to extend the average length of guest stays by two more days in the next twelve months. Once you form clear, easily defined goals for your hotel, establishing your online hotel marketing strategies becomes much easier.
4. Analyze your existing hotel marketing tools
   How much of a marketing infrastructure do you have to build on? Do you already have the necessary basic conditions to support your online marketing efforts? For instance, do you already have a responsive hotel website in place? Do you have an up to date email marketing list of repeat customers? Take stock of the online marketing tools already at your disposal so you can assess what you will need to obtain.
5. Develop and execute your strategic hotel marketing plan
   Once you know what your hotel marketing goals are, it is time to plan out the marketing route you will follow for the coming year. You should incorporate the full range of hotel marketing strategies to get the word out to current and prospective guests:

• Hotel Responsive Website Design
• Hotel Blog
• Hotel Mobile App
• Hotel Email Marketing Newsletters
• Social Marketing Strategies for Hotels

6. Measure the results of your hotel marketing strategies and adjust as needed
   One of the most useful facets of interactive hotel marketing strategies is that you can easily track the ROI for each campaign. By analyzing the travel big data produced by your hotel marketing efforts, you can identify which strategies are working well and which need some tweaking to become more effective. With a little work and diligent tracking of the results, you can easily create an effective hotel marketing plan that will enable you to reach your marketing goals.

If you would like some assistance creating and maintaining an effective hotel marketing plan, the dedicated marketers at Travel Tech Strategies are here to help. We are experienced at creating comprehensive hotel marketing plans that incorporate the full range of hotel marketing strategies including hotel responsive website design, mobile hotel app design, social marketing strategies for hotels, and much more.

Contact Travel Tech Strategies today at 954-779-2801 for help creating and implementing an effective hotel marketing plan to build your business!