Good day fellow hoteliers and welcome to episode 266 of The Hotel Marketing Podcast by TravelBoom. Today we have a big show where we’ll be covering the top trends to watch in 2025.
TravelBoom Newsaroos
Today’s news shaping tomorrow’s hotel marketing trends.
- Google Expands Travel Feeds in Search:
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-expands-travel-feeds-in-search-ads/530571/ - Google Expands Pmax Assets:
https://searchengineland.com/google-ads-page-specific-assets-performance-max-447690 - SEMRush Acquires Search Engine Land:
https://searchengineland.com/semrush-acquires-search-engine-land-447555
TravelBoom’s Room for Improvement: Fixing Hotel Failures
TravelBoom’s Room For Improvement uncovers the tough questions guests and hoteliers face every day and shares insights into how staff can connect and improve guest relations.
reddit.com/r/hotels/comments/1fuzzll/what_to_do_booked_5_star_property_because_of_its
The Main Topic: Four Trends To Launch Your Marketing Foward in 2025
The information and strategies hoteliers need to succeed in today’s competitive market.
Today we are taking experts from a recent article on TravelBoomMarketing.com at https://www.travelboommarketing.com/blog/12-hotel-marketing-trends-to-watch-in-2025-elevate-your-strategy.
4 ways to implement AI tools in your hotel marketing:
First and foremost, before you go out and buy new tools, make sure you’re utilizing existing tools with AI Capabilities – Many existing platforms, like Adobe Photoshop and Google Workspace, have AI features. Explore these tools and invest strategically in those that can optimize operations, enabling them to compete in the evolving market.
Once you have reviewed what you actually already have some AI tools every hotelier should consider:
- Integrate chatbots: these are not as confusing or complex as many hoteliers think.
- Targeted Advertising: ensure your marketing team (internal or agency) is working as smart as they possibly can and using the right tools to maximize ROAS.
- Sentiment Analysis: We spent some time reviewing how you can uncover insights into how your property is perceived in a recent webinar, which you can watch for free.
- Stay up to Date: Today’s breaking technologies will be commonplace tomorrow. Be sure to maintain a plan to research and test new platforms.
Wrapping up, it is important to maintain human oversight. AI should augment, not replace, human talent. Using AI for routine tasks allows more focus on refining creative direction. Human creativity remains essential, even as AI technology evolves.
3 ways to use influencer marketing:
Take the time in 2024 to think about and plan your influencer marketing strategies for next year. Most hoteliers have not yet adopted an influencer strategy and this opens the door to huge first-mover advantages.
- Develop your influencer plan in advance of outreach and clearly define what your expectations are for any given compensation level. This is a business relationship and must have clearly defined deliverables.
- Create an influencer kit, like a press kit, to help orient the influencer to your property.
- Be selective in choosing your influencers. These people are going to be representing your brand and it is your responsibility to ensure you are partnering with ones that will elevate your brand throughout their ENTIRE social sphere (not just the post they create for you).
Influencer marketing can be an affordable way to reach otherwise unreachable guests. Budget for comp stays, swag, and potential payments in your 2025 budget. Just like everything else, analytics are key and your influencer program must have measurable KPIs and returns.
4 ways to use hotel loyalty programs to drive repeat business:
65% of leisure travelers are influenced by loyalty programs, https://www.travelboommarketing.com/blog/loyalty-programs-for-hotels, and it will behoove you to research and invest heavily in a program for your property in 2025.
- Remember that for independent hoteliers instant gratification and perks are the most compelling aspect of a loyalty program.
- The guaranteed best deal is the 2nd most important element of a program. Your rate strategy for rack rates, OTAs, and sales should all be factored in to ensure your member rate is the best available.
- Personalization is one of the most powerful tools that loyalty programs make available to your property. Lean in to communicating with your members in the most personal ways possible.
- Providing proper staff training is also key. Guests, particularly those on a loyalty program, want to be recognized, and giving guests the VIP treatment will lead to higher repeat visits as well as good old fashioned word of mouth advertising.
2 ways to connect with guests through storytelling:
Tell stories that resonate with potential visitors by sharing UGC. Guests can relate more to real messages and envision themselves in your destination with user-generated content.
Plus, if you can do a good job soliciting and leveraging this content, they’re basically doing the work for you.
Hotel marketers can proactively encourage guests to share their experiences on any platform. You can ask directly on your socials, or leverage tools like Flip.to or Crowdriff to incentivize sharing with rewards and contests.
Once you’ve collected this valuable content, make sure you’re putting it to good use. Sharing real guest experiences builds trust with your audience and connects a maybe to a definite.
A few ways you can do this is to add recent testimonials to your website or repurpose UGC on your own socials. Another option might be to embed Instagram feeds directly into your website to showcase recent stays.
Either way you’re reducing the amount of time it takes you or your staff to create content, you’re strengthening your connection with your guests and you’re enticing potential visitors to book a stay. Win win win.
60 Seconds to Success: Mobile-Friendly Website Optimization
60 Seconds to Success shares a tip or trick to make a hotel’s marketing or operations more effective. Can the cast beat the clock and share a tip before the buzzer?
Today’s tip for hoteliers is to focus on creating a website that goes beyond desktop optimization. It’s helpful for hoteliers to think of their website as their “digital lobby”, which means first impressions are extremely important. Having a user-friendly responsive design ensures that visitors can easily navigate, read content, and view images, regardless of their device. This improves overall satisfaction and encourages longer visits, ultimately leading to a higher-converting site. Our research shows that on average, over 80% of website traffic comes from mobile devices. If your site isn’t set up for success for the primary device that visitors are using, you could be missing out on a large number of potential guests. There are a number of other benefits to having an effective mobile website too, such as increased engagement across social media channels through easily clickable call to actions and better performance in SEO as major search engines like Google prioritize mobile-friendly websites in their ranking processes.
Submit your questions and topic ideas on Twitter to @_travelboom or info@travelboommarketing.com.