Hotel digital marketing and hotel revenue management play significant roles in boosting a hotel property’s profits. The former is all about building brand awareness and boosting online visibility to drive long-term demand. The latter, on the other hand, is focused to match that demand with the right pricing strategies given the limited supply (of hotel rooms) in order to maximise revenues and profits.
In this article, we provide insights on how hotel digital marketers and hotel revenue managers can work hand in hand to boost a hotel's performance.
Hotel Revenue Management, Defined
Hotel revenue management is focused on matching that demand with the right price given the finite supply to maximize revenues and profits.
Hotel revenue management refers to the pricing strategies used to sell one’s hotel property’s inventory to the right guests at the right time and through the right channel. It involves the use of analytics and performance data consisting of past and current bookings, season forecasts, and other data. With such information, revenue managers can predict the customers’ behavior, needs, and demands, and help hotels make appropriate decisions with regard to pricing and distribution tactics.
Hotel Digital Marketing, Defined
Hotel digital marketing refers to the various marketing techniques used to help hotels promote their business online, increase website traffic and rankings, and make a positive impression on potential customers.
Digital marketing covers different aspects that help increase traffic to your official hotel website, thus increasing direct bookings. These include paid search, metasearch, email marketing, social media campaigns, book direct campaigns, blogs and content marketing, and SEO.
How Revenue Managers and Digital Marketers Can Work Hand In Hand
It’s true that digital marketers and revenue managers can develop effective online strategies on their own using their unique expertise and machinery. For instance, revenue managers keep an eye on industry trends while hotel marketers use digital marketing trends to build brand awareness.
Unfortunately, there’s a fair share of hotel marketers falling short of their objectives because their website and social media messaging aren’t focused on the things that truly matter. Likewise, revenue managers often need to rethink the various channels a hotel can use for guest communication and online discoverability, including social media and the hotel’s own website.
This is where the collaboration between the two comes into play. When a hotel’s digital marketing team and revenue management team work closely with each other, it will take a hotel’s overall performance even further.
1. Leverage the right social media channels
Social media isn’t just a hub of channels used to interact with people — it has also become a purveyor of preferences, experiences, locations, and ideas that are significant to travellers.
From a distribution channel standpoint, social media has been used to read reviews or rely on recommendations from friends and influencers on where to stay. It’s been used to gain insights for booking one’s next trip, a platform for sharing experiences during the actual trip, and a place for reading and writing reviews.
Social media channels provide opportunities for growing revenue and market share:
Twitter- tweet valuable content does drive travellers to your hotel. Pinterest - highlight eye-catching shots of the hotel tied into promotional rate periodsTripAdvisor - activating special offers and monitoring your competitors’ willingness to do the same Facebook and Instagram - evaluating followers to find your true promoters2. Align Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
In a time where collaboration is on the rise, demand generation and management roles deem to align analytics or KPIs. Most of the time, revenue managers use Occupancy, ADR and RevPAR as their metrics. These metrics are where digital marketers use impressions, conversion rate, a customer’s lifetime value and cost per acquisition.
However, when properties prefer a much more strategic approach, metrics like TRevPAR (total revenue per available room), NetRevPAR and guest value are the ones prioritised, as these maximise profit and total revenue.
3. Machine learning and automation
For years, machine learning has been a well-known method in the revenue management and digital marketing field, especially in the travel industry. Machine learning and automation are where revenue management systems rely on, as it aids in a property’s forecasting and pricing decisions.
Moreover, machine learning is highly dynamic when it comes to searching key words. Digital marketing entails a vast amount of data, so experienced hoteliers today rely on machine-learning systems to consolidate and analyse these data.
With this, their executives can now dedicate their skills and time in formulating commercial strategies, putting their thoughts into action, and optimising their hotel performance.
4. Hiring a digital marketing agency with hotel marketing expertise
Not all digital marketing agencies are created equal. If you’re hiring a digital marketing agency, you might as well hand them to the experts in hotel marketing. Some digital marketers specialise in hotel marketing campaigns, which have helped their clients secure direct bookings on their official website and reduce OTA commission.
Author Bio: Carmina Natividad is a passionate travel blogger who dreams of managing her very own hotel. This free-spirited damsel loves to share her insights about travel, lifestyle, personal finance, and business. To know more about hotels and hotel management, you may visit Rate Wise.
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