Nowadays, everyone is on social media – including hospitality businesses like hotels! Various social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram are widely used by hotels to promote and offer their services to potential customers, making this marketing effort is being referred to as “social media marketing”.
Leveraging social media as a marketing tool has become widely popular among hotels, especially since the latest pandemic finally ends when people begin to travel again and the competition to attract potential guests is back on track!
Our article today will talk about how social media marketing impacts the current and future success of hotels, in which we will start with understanding what is it and how it works; its significance for hotels, and even future social media marketing trends that hotels should keep updated with!
About Social Media Marketing for Hotels
The Definition
Social media marketing definition.
Social media marketing (sometimes abbreviated as SMM) is a form of digital marketing that utilizes social media platforms, allowing users to build social networks and share information. Many businesses in this modern era use social media to build their company brand and upsell their services to drive sales rates, including hospitality businesses!
The Way It Works
How social media marketing works.
So, how exactly do hotels make social media marketing work for their business? There are several steps to follow here:
• Do Market Research
Hotels can use social media to conduct market research in order to understand customer demands and purchasing trends, as well as to analyze the market situation and competitors’ efforts — all of which help hotels collect relevant data and solve marketing challenges.
• Discovery
The real-time nature of social media can be harnessed by hotels to discover and identify new target markets, connect with them, generate leads, drive sales, and of course, provide proper customer service.
• Develop a Strategy
With all the necessary data collected, hotels can seize this opportunity to create a well-defined social media marketing strategy. Speaking of which, there are numerous online tools available that can assist hotel social media marketers in planning and managing their strategies!
• Review
Another distinctive characteristic of social media platforms is that many of them provide users with instant reviews or reports on marketing campaigns. This feature is particularly helpful for hotel marketers in enhancing their social media marketing strategies!
The Significance of Social Media Marketing for Hotels
The significance of social media marketing for hotels.
Is social media marketing significant for hotels? The answer is a resounding yes! Over the past years, social media has become an essential part of hotels’ marketing strategies. This can be observed through some data gathered by Revenue Hub during 2021, which highlights the impact that social media marketing has had on hotels and the hospitality industry:
- About 71% of travel agencies that have committed to a social media marketing strategy receive better interactions with customers.
- Hospitality businesses that use location tags in their social media posts gain 79% more engagement.
- Social media advertisements encourage 85% of travelers to book their trips on mobile apps.
- 97% of millennials share their vacation photos on social media platforms, which often influences others to visit the same or different destination and publish their experiences too.
Since the pandemic has come to an end, it is expected that social media marketing will have a bigger impact on hotels and the entire hospitality industry in the future. More people are spending time on their phones searching for post-pandemic travel inspirations and recommendations, as such, having a social media presence is customary for hotels nowadays.
Up next, we have written down a few reasons why hotels should use social media for their current and future marketing activities:
Social Media Can Reach a Wider Audience
Social media can reach a wider audience.
There are various tools within social media that have the ability to reach a wider audience. An example is the targeted ads feature on platforms like Facebook and Instagram, which allows hotels to identify potential customers based on demographic information!
Social Media Can Increase Brand Awareness
Social media can increase brand awareness.
Using social media platforms, hotels can create and share relevant content for their brands, such as promotions, industry news, and even trivia that build brand awareness among potential customers.
Social Media Can Generate Leads
Social media can generate leads.
As a tool of utmost importance for social media marketing, social media platforms function to generate leads that can increase hotel sales by engaging with prospective customers through digital content and other marketing strategies!
Social Media Can Improve Customer Service
Social media can improve customer service.
Social media is named that way for a reason: it is an interactive platform for users to connect and socialize with each other. This makes social media an opportunity for hotels to enhance their customer service by responding promptly to inquiries, offering real-time support, and building relationships with their customers!
7 Future Social Media Marketing Trends that Hotels Shouldn’t Miss
The realm of marketing is always changing — you can never guess when one thing is trending and another is dissipating. Hence, it’s important to stay in the loop with marketing trends, especially for those working as social media marketers in the hospitality industry. Here, we have provided future social media marketing trends that hotels should take into account, and some of them have also been popular lately!
1. User-generated Content
User-generated content.
Quality content is one of the keys to building a successful social media presence. What hotels with existing social media should create is not merely excellent content, but user-generated content (UGC) instead! UGC can be anything: videos, pictures, or even reviews. UGC encourages hotel guests to share their experiences on social media. In return, this strategy will give the hotel a long-lasting positive image and attract more customers!
2. Storytelling
Storytelling.
It feels great to hear a story that perfectly relates to what we experience, right? Hotels can also make themselves “relatable” to customers through storytelling! This social media content strategy uses narratives to connect with readers (in this case, hotel guests), which leads to an emotional connection. Storytelling is currently a popular strategy, and it’s expected to rise in the future.
3. Multilingual Marketing
Multilingual marketing.
We already know just how vast and diverse the hospitality industry is, as seen from how hotel guests hail from different countries all over the world. This is where hotels can try multilingual marketing in their social media marketing strategy! By offering content in multiple languages that target international travelers, this would make them feel welcome, and of course, attract more universal guests.
4. Hyperlocal Marketing
Hyperlocal marketing.
Contrary to the target of multilingual marketing, hyperlocal marketing has a smaller scope, aiming at potential guests in specific neighborhoods or areas with close proximity to the hotel. The focused target group should make it easier for hotels to create a customized marketing strategy to generate revenue from these guests!
5. Nostalgia Marketing
Nostalgia marketing.
Taking a walk down the path of happy memory lane often brings smiles to people, and there is a specific social media marketing approach for this known as nostalgia marketing. Evoking nostalgic aspects in guests creates emotional connections with them, and when combined with storytelling, it results in a powerful social media marketing strategy!
6. Social Media Messaging
Social media messaging.
Most social media has a wide variety of features, and hotels can harness one of them to improve their social media marketing performance using the messaging feature. Harnessing social media messaging would help hotels to communicate with guests and provide instant support, thus promoting the image of reliable hotels that results in greater customer trust and loyalty.
7. Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing.
Winning customers’ attention on social media is tough competition for hotels, especially since many customers remain skeptical of hotel brands that indulge in too much self-promotion. However, influencer marketing can help hotels overcome this challenge! Collaborating with popular and relevant social media influencers to promote the hotel will likely increase revenue, as influencers are often perceived as experts, and their opinions or recommendations tend to be highly regarded by their followers.
Wrapping Up
Social media has proven to be a powerful marketing tool for hospitality businesses, especially hotels. A strong social media presence, combined with well-planned social media marketing strategies help hotels to achieve their current goals, as well as secure a possibility of successful business objectives.
As marketing itself is dynamic, hotels should be able to keep updated with the latest changes, events, or trends happening in marketing for hotels, typically in social media marketing. There are various ways to stay in the loop with hotel social media marketing, but for beginners, there is one that stands out as exciting!
Introducing: sales & marketing internship program in the hospitality industry, where you’ll have the opportunity to learn not only about social media marketing for hotels but also various other forms of marketing within the hospitality sector. Moreover, you can easily find it at RMC Asia!
Aside from sales & marketing internships, RMC Asia provides a wide variety of hospitality internship and management training programs in numerous hotel departments. Our programs offer participants hands-on working experiences in the global environment of prestigious hotels and resorts, which take place across Asia’s stunning destinations.
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