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Search Engine Marketing Basics for Hospitality

Whether you search online for sushi or a penthouse suite in Las Vegas, you’ll see them: a line-up of small ads populating the shaded areas above or to the right of your search results. They don’t look like much, but if done well, these minimalist ads can entice consumers to your website and hopefully, to make a purchase. For the hospitality marketer, this tool—called search engine marketing (SEM)—should be an essential part of your digital marketing toolkit.Read More

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SoLoMo: Still Going Strong

SoLoMo is a marketing tactic for leveraging the power of social networks to deliver local information to consumers via their mobile devices. But the scope of SoLoMo’s evolving impact on the hospitality industry is still being defined.

Practical applications of SoLoMo are not exactly abundant at the moment, though this is changing rapidly. One innovator typically leveraged by hotels in this domain is foursquare, the free app that lets users “check in” to a location with their mobile device to fulfill some social function or to locate (or be located by) friends. An additional local—and marketing—benefit is that foursquare offers recommendations, discounts, and coupons from local participating retailers. Some examples:

One of the first hotel companies to practice SoLoMo was Four Seasons Hotels in California, which used a location-based social-network application (the now defunct gowalla) to give guests special recommendations for “best of” places and experiences to try during their visits—and to earn hotel credits (for example, in the spa or for dining) in the process. Guests “checked in” to the app using their mobile devices when they arrived at any Four Seasons in California. They then received access to curated recommendations for things to do and see to enhance their stay—much like a virtual concierge. If they “checked in” to three of the recommended spots, they could show a “pin” at the hotel’s front desk, which could be redeemed for the hotel credits.

Today, the industry in general continues to find its way with SoLoMo, thanks in large part to fast-evolving mobile technologies. Still, we have found some intriguing examples. Here are some SoLoMo strategies put to use by sbe Hotel Group’s marketing department. Lauren Roxborough, sbe’s Marketing Director, Hotels, provides the details:

  • iPad Messages: SLS South Beach’s new in-room iPad app has a “Messages” feature where we can communicate exclusive offers to hotel guests. One of our current offers is for guests to receive a complimentary dessert at either Katsuya or Bazaar (both on-property restaurants) if they download the sbe app to their mobile device and present the offer via the app to their server. Here we are not only incentivizing guests to dine at our restaurants, but we are also using the in-room iPads to drive app downloads.

  • Shake a Drink: We have also added a “Shake a Drink” feature to the in-room iPads, where guests can “pick their poison” or select an alcohol, shake the iPad, and receive a recipe for a cocktail they can make from items in their minibar. They also receive another recipe based on the selected alcohol with a specialty cocktail they can order at one of the on-property venues – this drives interaction with the app, increases minibar sales, and drives traffic to our food and beverage venues. This is also a great way for us to highlight our alcohol partners.

  • Hyde Beach Escape Sweepstakes – Integrated Social Campaign: We launched this Facebook sweepstakes through our sbe Hotel Group Newsletter where a winner can receive a two-night stay in a Lenny Kravitz-designed Villa at SLS South Beach that comes with a poolside daybed for two, pitcher of sangria and fresh fruit platter daily, and a 7-series BMW and SLS chauffeur at your disposal. This social campaign increased Facebook likes to our Hyde Beach page, increased loyalty to the Hyde and SLS brands, and cross promoted between the hotel and club.

  • Mercato di Vetro Sunday Supper: Produced a promotional video for Mercato di Vetro’s “Sunday Supper” to generate buzz. This video resulted in 3,415 views in its first week and drove traffic to the restaurant for the promotion. The video now has more than 14,000 views.
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Following the Consumer Path in Decision Making

Why would a hospitality company want to invest so much into creating a strong presence through video, Facebook, Twitter, TripAdvisor, and other social media? Frankly, it’s part of the dreaming and planning process that consumers might consider with regard to a property. Moreover, it controls for consistency with your brand promise, your target market for the property, and even your hotel’s objectives.

The fact of the matter is, today’s consumers take alternate paths over time to making a booking and even sharing their experience while at your property.

Think for a moment about the pre-stay. You could have a leisure customer checking the national or state tourist organization site to find out what’s available and what the destination has to offer. They could be contacting the convention and visitors bureau to find out what information there might be about that particular location. And they could be using a website like Passkey to find out information about what leisure activities are associated with some event.

Pre-stay can also involve interactions with an online travel agency, your brand site, or even sites like Groupon where individuals may be putting together a package to offer before they even think about staying at your property.

Continuing along that time continuum, you can think also about the stay. With over a billion bloggers and Facebook users, 500,000 Twitter accounts, and 100,000 Instagram users out there, you can bet that a good percentage of your consumers are saying something while staying at your property. Did they snap a pretty picture of the lobby, the lounge, the view from their room? Did they have an especially helpful interaction with a concierge while staying at the property? Did they find interesting things to do or places to eat using your property’s interactive mobile application?

And finally, there’s the post-stay. That opportunity for the customer to savor the experience, download or upload pictures from the property, or post a TripAdvisor review.

And it’s not just the leisure consumer. There are business consumers, there are individuals who are traveling by themselves, with groups, or as part of a large event as well. There are even transition consumers such as your business travelers who also stay at your property for leisure purposes.

There are many paths, many consumers, many objectives.

The entire decision making process is evolving with media and often can involve multiple forms of imagery, emotion, and cognition before arriving at a complicated decision. The time has come to forget about the traditional one dimensional view of the consumer.

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The Mothership of Your Brand

The brand site is the mothership of new media. It is a website that should convey your brand at every turn. It is a repository of information and a transaction engine for new media. It is the place where your brand is projected and potentially protected. It is a source of information. It is a device to improve or enhance service while the experience is being enjoyed on the property. It’s a transactor. Ultimately, it can even be a relationship builder for the hotel.

Your brand site needs to be consistent. It needs to be consistent for the user regardless of the device that’s used (a PC, a tablet, a mobile phone). It also needs to be able to interact easily with internal systems like the centralized reservation system or the property management system as well as externally with online travel agency (OTA) sites, with search engines, with social media sites, and for that matter, with mobile devices with regard to particular applications.

And finally it needs to be efficient. Efficient for the user, and efficient for the hotel in terms of its ability to transact execute, provide information.

As brand sites in the hospitality market continue to evolve, it’s important that you see what’s out there and how other brands—including your competition—are leveraging their sites to serve a multitude of important functions. Are they meeting the all of the above criteria? Are you?

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Is New Media Even Relevant to the Hospitality Industry?

New media in hospitality marketing is not evolutionary; it’s revolutionary. And its growth hasn’t been linear; it’s been exponential.

In the year 2000, less than 5% of hotel room revenue was booked online in the United States. By 2015, that number will balloon to over 35%, more if you include bookings by business travellers using mobile devices or their own PCs and even event attendees using software provided by the event organizers or the venues themselves.

In addition, Google became a publicly traded company in 2004 and today it represents more than 90% of search activities by users. Then in 2010, Facebook actually overtook Google in the number of weekly U.S. visitors. And finally, I’ll bet you have a mobile device in your pocket or on your desk right now, and a tablet in your possession or at least on your wish list.

New media (social, mobile, and search) is everywhere. It’s in the pockets, purses, desks, and living rooms of your potential consumers, helping them make decisions about their next purchase.

By leveraging these new connections to the target market, you are offering potential consumers the opportunity to engage with your brand in a more complete way than was previously available.  You are allowing customers to essentially “try” your product or property before even buying. For example: hotel web sites have evolved from kind of of the Web 1.0 version of online brochures to much more interactive sites where visitors can take virtual tours to explore property, they can play games, they can engage in virtual activities such as taking the participant’s view as they go down a water slide, or even watch short movies. Because there are so many new ways to connect with customers, creativity and uniqueness can be strong tools to set you apart from your competition.

New media is indeed relevant to the hospitality marketing industry. It is how you are going to project, promote, and protect your brand. And it is how you are going to capture more than your fair share of the desired target market.