Ideas for attracting more customers to your hotel website

Thinking of effective ideas to attract more customers to your hotels that can adapt to your online marketing strategy, budget and goals is not always easy. This is especially true when your ultimate goal is to generate more direct bookings from your website.

If you already have a booking engine prepared for customer entry and your intention is to reduce your dependence on OTAs and Tour Operators, you might just complete your digital strategy with these content-based ideas to boost online bookings.

1. Generate content of interest for your potential customers.

Before explaining why this is one of the best ideas to keep in mind, you must understand what your customers’ behaviour is like; in other words, their buying cycle as consumers.

In marketing for the tourism sector, we talk about this cycle known as the ‘traveller’s journey’, as having four essential phases or micro-moments, as Google would say. And travel users have different needs in each of these phases:

• Dreaming (I-want-to-get-away moment). In this phase, travel consumers seek inspiration. They still don’t really know what their destination will be, but are researching which ones could be the options that best adapt to their needs.
• Planning (Time-to-make-a-plan moments). As the name indicates, users begin planning their holidays in this phase. They check flights, hotels and activities in accordance with their preferences and availability dates.
• Booking (Let’s-book-it-moments). This is the definitive moment that corresponds to the buying phase. It’s the phase where users decide whether or not to make a direct booking and it is directly influenced by the prior moments.
• Experiencing (Can’t-wait-to-explore moments). From the very moment they set off and arrive at their destination until they return to their place of origin, users are experiencing their holidays. It’s a relevant experience for the moment when the cycle begins all over again.

And exactly how is this connected to content creation?

The truth is that during these phases, users have certain needs as far as their information consumption. In other words, they need to have specific and relevant content in different formats and in different channels to help them solve each task in each of the phases.

From fashion destinations to the ideal destinations for romantic or family getaways. From transport and transfers, airport proximity, bus times or rent-a-car opportunities… Even the oh-so important cultural, gastronomy and landscape offering at the destination. Complementary activities, relaxation options…

As you can see, there is a great variety of information these travel users need. What do you think would happen if you offered a large part of the content from your different channels?

Generating valuable content can help attract traffic in all phases if you know your potential customers’ preferences.

Content is fundamental when attracting potential customers in the first phases of the buying cycle. Generating content of interest involves initiating communication with them that can help you establish the necessary trust so they choose your brand and not someone else when booking.  In other words, creating a bond that will attract them to your hotel website.

2. Take advantage of the possibilities offered by Facebook.

Facebook is a great tool that can also help you meet your potential customers’ needs in different phases of the buying cycle:

2.1. Use Facebook as a customer service platform.

As you may already know, customer service via social networks like Facebook is essential nowadays. The fact is, a good majority of your audience is spending time and consuming content on these platforms. In fact, Facebook continues to be consumers’ favourite when consulting information.

Therefore, managing comments on this social network is essential to fostering recommendations for your brand and encouraging customer loyalty. Just think how users can have concerns in any of the phases of their buying cycle, they may ask for recommendations, ask for help on specific topics…

So, if you respond to these concerns, it will be more likely they book again or guarantee bookings already completed as well as promote your users’ satisfaction.

2.2. Get the most out of Facebook Ads audiences

With Facebook ads, you can segment audiences or targets in a very specific way based on your goals. One way to segment is through personalized audiences based on your email or mobile phone database.

In other words, you can base any specific ads on Facebook on the status of your user’s buying cycle as concerns selecting contacts and who will be targeted with your Ads. Facebook will only show the ads to the people on the list who are users of the social network meaning the conversion rate will be higher.

Plus, this platform allows you to segment ‘Lookalike Audiences where Facebook users will be selected with the characteristics and preferences of similar consumers who may become new customers for your website.

2.3. Attract potential customers with recommendations.

Tools integrated with Facebook can help your hotel improve its reputation and attract more customers directly to the website.  How? With strategies like referral marketing, which takes into account recommendations by users of this social network after a booking.

In other words, with the adequate tool, users who book will be able to share this moment on Facebook. In exchange, they may receive an email voucher to redeem at the hotel upon arrival. Remember that during these dreaming and planning phases, travel consumers can be susceptible to this content.

3. Reformulate draw participation via your social media accounts.

And since we’re talking about social media, it’s worth noting that one of the reasons users follow your brand’s different profiles in social media is due to how easy it is to participate in different special promotions and draws.

These competitions have become one of the major attractions with regard to tourism brand and hotel chain profiles which are used strategically to boost the volume of followers in these networks.

Nevertheless, some of these followers lose interest when the promotion ends and stop following the page which doesn’t necessarily turn into an increase in direct bookings. So, what can you do about it?  What can you do to get customers?

Remember that follows and fans on your social media profiles are there because of the benefits involved.  What if they could see benefits in other means of communication with greater conversion such as email marketing?

To get more contacts legitimately and pursuant to the new GDPR regulation, you can reformulate participation in draws via your social media accounts and redirect these users to a landing page  with a participation form specifying the conditions of participation and the benefit involved for these travel consumers.

In other words, you can conduct contests via your social media accounts that redirect users to a specific landing page on your website where you explain the requirements for participating in your draws in order to increase the number of direct bookings. This way, you can get the contact email address for potential customers with which you can work on through email marketing.