Attracting potential guests starts with defining a hotel content strategy consultancy–grade plan that is unique to your property, target demographic, location and services.
Set clear goals for your content
What do you want to achieve with the content you post on the hotel's website, blogs and social networks? The visibility of your hotel? Increasing the number of visitors to your website? More direct bookings? More returning guests? A competitive edge?
Answering this question affects every other aspect of your strategy. You need to focus on your specific goals for every piece of content you create.
Get to know your target guests
You need an offer that meets a specific aspect of your guests’ needs or a niche market, otherwise you will create inappropriate content. For example, is your hotel for young people, families, honeymooner or retirees? It's important for you to think about the desires, interests, purchasing power, and preferences of your target guests. The better you know your potential guests, the better you will know what type of content to create.
Choose the right channels for your content
The right channel is defined by your potential guests and you need to know where they are spending time to create the right content for those channels. Once you know that, you know where to focus your time and energy leading to better results and a more efficient use of valuable time.
Publish Fresh, Relevant Content Regularly
The frequency of content publishing depends on your ability to generate good quality content and the channel through which you want to distribute it. As a guideline, you need to create content for blog posts once a week and for social media at least once a day.
Consistency is key in SEO content marketing for hotels, as fresh content signals to Google that your site is active and authoritative.
Leverage Your Team
Your staff are your best storytellers. From chef interviews to behind-the-scenes “day in the life” features, employee-generated content fosters authenticity and engagement.
Nobody knows the hotel better than its staff. Getting employees who have great passion and knowledge of their department to write, or to suggest ideas for, content is very effective and provides an authentic tone. To further attract and entertain your target audience, you could present one of the room service team or the gardener on social media posts; conduct an interview with your manager; post some of your chef’s recipes or provide a ‘day in the life of…' article.
Harness Reviews & Guest Feedback
Guest reviews are powerful content.
Reviews are a type of content and most people read both positive and negative reviews and comments from previous guests when choosing a hotel. Good scores and reviews on TripAdvisor and Google My Business and social media platforms are critical to your business. You have to accept criticism, as well as praise, and respond to them appropriately to maintain your credibility, as your target audience will read them. It is always best to deal with particularly bad or persistent reviewers offline, by offering to liaise with them directly.
Measure and manage your efforts regularly
To know what is actually working for you requires a systematic measurement tool such as Google Analytics. Once you can measure the outputs you can manage the process.
Not only should you have a system for measuring clicks, users, sessions, shares and other vital metrics, also consider hiring an expert to monitor your success, measure your data, and make strategic recommendations for you.
