Hotel Reservations Down? Attack The Internet & Social Media!
In a down economy, virtually every business I know of is hurting.
One sector that is especially feeling the punch is the hotel, vacation arena. I know this because one of my clients is a hotel, The Islander Inn in Ocean Isle Beach, NC.
With hotel bookings down this year anywhere between 20%-80%, it is critical to attack the internet, and that is exactly what we are doing for them.
What works? What does not work? Well, let me show you a couple of things we have done that is working so far.
User Generated Content:
Clearly in the coming years, you will see consumer decisions influenced by what others have said, via reviews, or user generated comments. All the local search engines have some form of "review" element which has been proven to effect the ranking algorithm, both in local results, and general search results (For a “How to guide” on local search, here is a free whitepaper). Thus, it is important to encourage guests of your hotel to leave a comment. (Hopefully positive) Below is a screenshot of the results for the phrase "hotels ocean isle beach, nc" As you can see, they could pump up their reviews a bit. Perhaps down the road I will give tips on how to get people to review your site.
Online Videos:
If you do not have a video for your hotel, you clearly will be missing out on branding, and perhaps viral marketing at it’s best. We created a simple video for the Islander Inn, which will continue to assist in credibility of this hotel. Online video is one of the fastest forms of media on the internet today, so if you do not have one, I suggest you get one. Just a few suggestions with videos, make sure you title them properly, and give them a keyword rich description. Also, always display the name of your property, and web address in the video, especially on the last slide.
Social Media Networks:
This really could be huge for hotels. I have already seen traffic from the networks we have created for The Islander Inn. Remember, these networks are where people, friends, vacationers, event planners, travel groups all hang out! (Well, lots anyway)
Take a look at The Islander Inns’ Facebook page, and their Squidoo page. In these you can virtually create a whole new website, and fun stuff like pictures, upload your videos, create polls. These sites are frequented all the time, and receive tremendous traffic, you just have to be patient. In addition, sites like Squidoo offer link equity, so if properly chosen anchor text is used, this site can be an incredible source for backlinks.
Photo-Sharing:
In my opinion, you are sorely missing out if you do not have outlets to share your hotels pictures. Remember the internet can convey an emotional experience, (Can trigger an online reservation!) People looking to go on a vacation need to touch, feel, smell, SEE what you have. This is what we have done for Islander Inn. We set up a flickr account, so if you want to view pictures of Ocean Isle Beach finest hotel, you can see all of their most recent pictures of their hotel.
There are similar sites we used such as Fotki, and World Is Round, which focuses on travel pictures. The thing I love about these sites, is that not only does your account page get indexed into the search engines, but you can essentially steer the direction they index you. You can tag your photos, write descriptions, assign categories such as travel, US, etc.. The result is that these images get included in image searches with all search engines; People could ’stream’ pictures of your hotels property if it is properly tagged, and perhaps even visit your site as a result of seeing your hotels pictures within one of these photo-sharing sites. Below are links to the sites we set up for the Islander.
Flickr – The Islander Inn, Ocean Isle Beach, NC, Flickr page.
Fotki – The Islander Inn, Ocean Isle Beach, NC, Fotki page.
World Is Round- The Islander Inn, Ocean Isle Beach, NC, WIR page.
Everything I recommended above works. This client is certainly seeing exponential growth in a downturn economy, and enjoying additional branding that will pay off down the road.
Your reservations down? My advice to you then is be aggressive, get busy on the internet with your hotel.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
