Attracting modern-day travelers who have access to influential information at their fingertips is quite a challenging task. There is more to a cutting-edge sales strategy and marketing campaign than it meets the eye. All efforts to drive more business should stem from the standpoint of showing that you care for your guests. I want to share some simple, yet innovative (proven) tips to spruce up your sales and marketing strategies and turn heads towards your property.

Website: Offer More Than They Seek

The idea of your website is to help visitors understand what you offer and help them book the property with ease. However, visitors do a lot more than stay at your property, right?

So, what else do they do? As a part of your website user experience, create a small chat window/web form to understand the reason for travel, and suggest minimalistic to-do-lists and holiday calendars. These little things may not generate extra revenue but may just go to show that you care.

Social Media: More than Posting Five Times a Day

We all use social media, most of us use two or three of them. If you are a person who checks Facebook often, and you check your favorite people and brands and you pop out of the app. At another point in the day, you check your Instagram. Wouldn’t it be a poor experience if the brands and businesses you follow on Facebook deliver the same posts on Instagram as well? As a hotelier, you got to avoid doing this with your own property content. Each social medium has its own audience. Here are some simple tips you can implement right now at no extra cost:

• You need not be present on all social channels
• Create custom visual content for Instagram and Snapchat
• Create detailed content for Facebook
• Use Twitter as an engagement tool (airlines use Twitter to announce flight delays)
• Share property pics and conduct polls on Facebook and Twitter, ask the audience to pick their favorite

Listing on Distribution Channels and Metasearch Engines

There are so many OTAs, where to list? The best idea is to pick them all. However, as you go along, verify which channels bring you more business, and eliminate the others. Remember you are catering to an audience with a very wide age group. More than just the price, it is the attractive package, seasonal deals displayed on OTAs that can drive better occupancy rate. Being a hotelier, it is important to understand what your guest is looking for and deliver it to all online distribution channels. Hence marketing to the right segment becomes crucial to maximize the ROI.

Originally Published On : Entrepreneur India ,  January 13 2018