With the right tools, you can make your hotel stand out in a crowded marketplace. We’ve rounded up some of the best marketing tools for hotels, regardless of size or budget. These tools will help you with everything from creating content to generating leads.
Check out our list of top marketing tools for hotels below.
Table of Contents
Best Marketing Tools For Hotels
Hotel marketing tools for research and inspiration
1. PINTEREST
There are just so many social media marketing platforms to manage in the hospitality industry. Pinterest was impressive when it burst onto the scene in 2012 but, over time, pinning just fell further and further down most marketers’ list of priorities.
That said, I think we need to stop sleeping on Pinterest! Stop thinking of it as yet another social media platform, but as a valuable resource for hotel content ideas and inspiration.
Head to Pinterest right now, type in “[your destination] + ideas” and see what content comes up.
What are the most popular pins? What other search terms are suggested along the top of your screen? This exercise should get your creative juices flowing.
Pinterest also puts out a robust annual trend report and 2020’s is seriously packed with info that’s actually very relevant to hoteliers. I noticed an uptick in interest in sustainability, staycations, nature travel, cooking classes and even internationally-inspired interior design.
2. BUZZSUMO
In the hotel business, hyper-relevant content is key to direct bookings. Buzzsumo is one of the best ways to get a feel for what topics are trending related to your destination.
It’s also pretty straightforward to use.
Head to Buzzsumo now and try inputting a phrase or keyword. Hit the Search button and the tool will show you the most popular content related to that term, listed by social shares.
You can also try inputting a domain — your competitor’s website, perhaps — to see which pages from their website have been shared on social media the most. This is a pretty useful trick to finding out what’s working for them.
Another useful feature is Buzzsumo’s “Evergreen Score.”
Content that is “evergreen” is super relevant, year round. It’s not time-sensitive, like a guide to a one-time music festival or winter travel tips.
After searching a keyword on Buzzsumo, filter the columns by the Evergreen Score to see what content has the longest shelf life. Content with a high Evergreen Score would be smart to create for your own website. Just make sure you’re expanding on what’s already out there, adding more detail and more value for your guests!
3. ANSWER THE PUBLIC
If you start typing a query into Google’s search bar, you’ll see some suggestions populate below. A similar list of suggestions also appears at the bottom of most search result pages.
Google’s autocomplete feature is very useful for generating content ideas, but the process of finding lots of suggestions in bulk can be a bit manual.
Answer The Public is basically Google’s autocomplete results… amplified by a few thousand.
All you need to do is type in your topic (for example, “key west”) and all the related search data is visualized for you in seconds. You’ll find all the different variations of that keyword, displayed in the form of interactive diagrams.
The results are grouped by questions (ex. what hotels in key west are on the beach) and comparisons (ex. key west or key largo).
Answer The Public is a great way to learn how your customers discover your destination.
What questions are they asking? What specific points of interest are they looking for? Are they comparing your destination to another? We can use this intel to build a strategic content marketing plan for your hotel.
READ NEXT: 101 Content Ideas For Your Next Hotel Blog or Social Post
Best free productivity and time management tools for hoteliers
4. TOMATO TIMER
As a small business owner and freelancer, I cannot shout about the Pomodoro® Technique enough. I use the Tomato Timer every day.
But wait, back up, what is the Pomodoro® Technique and how do you use the Tomato Timer?
The technique itself is simply a time management method where work is broken down into 25-minute intervals, each followed by a short break.
Instead of eyeing the clock, I use the Tomato Timer to alert me whenever the 25 minutes are up. I set it and forget it, focusing fully on the task at hand until the little buzzer sounds off.
Personally, if I feel like my work is really flowing, I’ll reset the timer and do another 25-minute sprint before taking a quick break. To each their own!
Whether you work from home, in a cubicle, open-plan office, hot desk, cafe or coworking space, staying focused can be a challenge. We have a lot of stimuli between social media app notifications, other hotel departments dropping in with requests, emails, water cooler conversations, etc.
Next time you want to really focus on a task, give the Tomato Timer a try!
5. ZAPIER
All of our hotel marketing campaigns require multiple tools and resources to execute. Wouldn’t it be nice if they all “talked” to each other? 🤝
Imagine you’re collaborating with several team members on a new project. What if your email attachments were automatically saved in a pre-designated project file folder on Dropbox or Google Drive?
My friends, this is a big one. Zapier is a *holy grail* productivity tool for hotel marketers! Best of all, the Basic version of Zapier is completely free.
Zapier works by connecting thousands of different web-based apps and creating automatic workflows (called “Zaps”) between them.
Some of the most popular apps that work with Zapier include: Microsoft Outlook and Office tools, Gmail, Google Drive, Dropbox, Mailchimp, HubSpot CRM, WordPress, Squarespace, Typeform, Google Analytics, and literally thousands more.
The possible combinations are endless!
Marketing tools that help hoteliers plan and organize content
6. GOOGLE CALENDAR
The tools you choose to keep in your hotel marketing toolbox don’t need to be expensive or complicated. Google Calendar is free and easy to use — why reinvent the wheel if you don’t need to?
Depending on your needs, you might already use Google Calendar to keep track of personal appointments or meetings. But did you know it also works well as a content planning tool?
To do this, I recommend starting fresh with a new calendar, perhaps leaving only the “Holidays in [Your Country]” feature turned on. If you’re like me and love to color-code, go ahead and create separate calendars for each of your content topics.
These separate calendars are your hotel content pillars. Content pillars are the key topics that appeal most to your target guest — your content should rotate between these topics for variety. Learn more about how hotels can use content pillars here.
Now you can start adding “events” to your Google Calendar. Create an event entry, set the duration to “All Day” and drop it onto the calendar. Drag and drop different posts as you see fit. Remember: variety is good, so if you plan to share a lot of F&B content, try to mix in some local recommendations or meeting-planning tips as well.
And that’s really it! Now you have a simple visual laying out your content plan for the month.
7. EVERNOTE
Using Evernote to create a content calendar is a little more advanced than Google Calendar, but still effective. They’ve actually created a full guide to using Evernote for social planning here, which I recommend checking out.
The number one reason I like Evernote as a content planning tool is that it’s cloud-based.
Everything you type into Evernote on your desktop syncs with their mobile app, making it one of the easiest content planning tools to use on-the-go.
I also suggest following Evernote’s advice and keeping a media asset library in the tool. That way you can easily drag-and-drop larger media files from your desktop, and grab them in the mobile app to post.
No more emailing or texting yourself random hotel images! Hooray!
As with Google Calendar, Evernote doesn’t actually publish your content. But for a hotel on a budget, it’s an effective solution for organizing your content plan.
8. ASANA
Want to take your hotel’s content planning up yet another notch? Allow me to introduce Asana.
Asana is a web-based project management system, designed to help teams collaborate on a wide range of projects. It can be used to plan campaigns, compile research, take notes, make to-do lists, create outlines, and so much more.
If you have multiple team members contributing to your content calendar, Asana could be the perfect collaboration marketing tool for your hotel.
Best of all, their basic plan is totally free! If you want to add multiple team members, Asana’s next tiered pricing plan starts at just $11 USD a month.
Asana provides tons of helpful resources to get you started. Check out Asana’s guide to setting up your content calendar or simply grab a copy of their free editorial calendar template.
5 star hotel marketing strategy
1) VALUE EMOTION
The hospitality/hotel industry is an emotional one – it seeks to provide comfort, enjoyment, delight, happiness. It’s critical that your resort marketing strategy and promotion remains aware of this and works to provide a positive emotional reaction at the foundation of all marketing efforts. Today’s consumer is more exposed to digital advertising messages than at any point in our history, and too many of them are one-dimensional promotions.
Luxury hotels and resorts have an opportunity to surprise and delight, and if you want to get the best ROI then you need to aim not just towards the lowest CPC but also towards the highest impact emotional reaction you can achieve. This can often be achieved through social partnerships, environmental initiatives or philanthropic efforts. But even in the simplest of ways, your choice of images needs to not only capture the design of your hotel but also capture the way it makes your guests feel.
If your luxury hotel marketing strategy manages to send a clear message to potential guests that they will experience these positive emotions, to the extent that they can feel this emotion when they view your digital marketing messages, you can be sure that you will achieve your revenue goals.
2) SHOWCASE THE EXPERIENTIAL ASPECTS OF YOUR HOTEL
In 2019, 60% of consumers were influenced by consumer generated content when planning travel, whereas the influence of professional brand images was only 19%. Experiences are often critical drivers behind the decision-making of vacationers, so don’t just mention that you offer bungee jumping or horse riding. Instead, leverage the tools available to you to bring these adventures to life and show real and relatable people actually doing these things. Your audience will relate to other people more than they will to actors who are faking it.
As a great example of resort development marketing strategy that leverages real life experiences, take a look at Cabot Links. Known for being a world class golf resort, Cabot uses earned content related to featured activities on different pages of their website. For instance, their “Food & Drink” page includes a gallery of guests’ dining experiences, helping the resort to highlight the fact that Cabot Links has more to offer than just golfing.
Curating your Instagram feed and incorporating it seamlessly into your web pages is another effective way to achieve this, especially for a boutique property or if you have a resort real estate marketing strategy. Take a closer look at how we drove exceptional revenue growth at Ka’ana Resort using experiential digital marketing messaging.
3) FIND WAYS TO TRULY DIFFERENTIATE YOURSELF FROM YOUR COMPETITORS
As a luxury hotel, you need to offer something unique and distinctly different to separate you from the competition. Similarly, your luxury hotel marketing strategy needs to be equally unique. As with everything else in the hospitality industry, high quality customer care needs to be at the core of everything you do. Going the extra mile for your guests can be the difference between converting that enquiry into a booking, or converting that guest into a loyal repeat customer. Take a closer look at how we leveraged high quality creative concepts like Solar Cottages and Carbon Neutral Villas to help Itz’ana Resort & Residences deliver record breaking revenue.
It’s all about making sure you’re doing things a little differently. Operationally, this could be providing customers with a complimentary treat at check-in or turndown. From the resort property marketing office, this could be creating a list of local recommendations to send to your guests prior to arrival, or creating a beautiful lookbook of all local eateries, bars and adventures to help your potential guests fall in love with your destination and learn to trust you as their guide. In the past, we’ve turned these local recommendations into an illustrated map that’s instagrammable, or even an online interactive map that can convey a lot of information in a fun, visual way.Take a look at our Marketing Services
4) INVEST IN PERSONALIZATION
One of the best ways to stand out from rivals is to deliver tailored, individual marketing messages. Using different visuals for different segments and experiences that travelers seek is one great way to personalize your marketing to each customer segment. This is especially important for resorts and luxury hotels that serve significantly different client segments – e.g. international visitors, honeymoon couples, families, etc.
81% of travel respondents consider it very important for brands to provide personalized experiences to their customers. You can use your customer segments to further personalize email marketing, customer loyalty programs, and print materials. A good rule of thumb is to always create high quality visuals that reflect the audience you want to target.
Remarketing ads can target viewers based on a variety of factors. For instance, you could create an ad that features the specific room type they previously viewed on your website, serving as a specific reminder to them.
5) ADVERTISE ON METASEARCH ENGINES
Metasearch Engines such as TripAdvisor, Google Hotel Ads and Trivago have been experiencing massive growth in these past few years. Getting featured on these metasearch engines can boost your visibility and also improve your brand value.
Take Google Hotel Ads for example, which we’ve seen firsthand has proven to be a savior for hotels struggling to reduce dependency on OTAs.
These ads could be your most effective tool if you’re looking to avoid the rising commission fees of the OTAs and to increase direct bookings from their hotel website. Critically, because these ads bring direct traffic to your website, they not only improve your hotel’s visibility but also help to build brand loyalty with your guests, helping to cultivate long-term relationships.
So, if you’re not yet listed on any metasearch engines, now’s the time to incorporate this strategy into your luxury hotel or resort marketing plan.
Conclusion
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