What can hoteliers take away?
Observing the strategies above and the events that precipitated their implementation can give hoteliers a great deal to take away. Even just a glance over all of the events is enough to see how hotels need to diversify their digital marketing strategy and truly become multi-channel.
Furthermore, hoteliers’ digital marketing strategy needs to include differentiation of their product. But the examples above had a great deal of negotiating power, which eased their multi-channel marketing and product differentiation.
It’s important to work out how independent hotels and boutique brands can achieve both of these goals, without incurring prohibitive costs. Some effective steps that hoteliers can take to differentiate their hotel, all the while improving their multi-channel digital marketing strategy are:
Invest in specialized channels: Make sure that your hotel is present in the distribution channels most relevant to your market segment. For instance, if you have a boutique hotel, try to get listed on tablethotels.com.
Showcase your hotel online: Make sure you have an up-to-date website that reflects your hotel’s unique features and characteristics, so as to give customers a perception of what your hotel is all about. This is something OTAs won’t be able to do as they are set out for comparison-shopping.
Customize the experience: Provide additional options for customers booking. Create partnerships with local attractions, tours, restaurants,… and offer them as add-ons after the customer has booked with you.
Differentiate on booking packages: Innovate with room types as product offers. Leverage your own booking engine to offer promotions and special offers that you should not offer on the OTAs (e. g. an iPod room where you have a fully charged iPod with music in the room or a package with a day at a nearby spa).
Reward loyalty: Reward returning guests that book directly through your website. This can be easily achieved by offering e.g. 10% discount code for any returning customer, still much less than the commission you pay to OTAs.
Market directly to customers: Gather your guests’ information and ask them to opt-in for promotions and special offers so that you can reach out directly. .
Leverage social media: Have a presence in the most popular social platforms. It isn’t just a way to increase your online presence; it is also the addition of new communication channels. With social media you have a platform where you can communicate with customers on a more informal level and take advantage of your small size in order to transmit a friendlier feel to your guests.