9 marketing tips to optimize hotel room sales

In this era of global internet coverage, customers search online for products and services they want to buy.

As a hotel owner, you want your hotel to generate high revenue and profits.

In this age of Industry 4.0, you might ask yourself:

► How can customers find out about your hotel?

► Once customers know about your hotel, how can you get them to book your services?

According to statistics from the Vietnam Tourism Association, in the last 5 years, the demand for information on tourism, hotels, and restaurants has increased 32 times, specifically:

♦ A 42% increase in the number of people searching for tourist destinations, tours, etc.
♦ A 48% increase in the number of people searching for hotel bookings and beautiful hotels.
♦ During peak tourist season, this number increases dramatically.

So what marketing secrets help customers find and book your hotel? Let's explore this with the experts at Viet Orient Hospitality in the article below.

Website optimization

A website is a direct booking channel that generates high profits and revenue for your hotel. Therefore, website optimization is extremely important.

Image source: Crazyegg

Therefore, your hotel website should:

♦ Be visually appealing and easy to use; it must be user-friendly.

♦ Be optimized for search engines to help your hotel website rank highly in search results, easily attracting customers.

♦ Create an attractive image and pricing to attract visitors to your website.

♦ Have multilingual and multi-currency features.

♦ Offer and guarantee good prices.

♦ Currently, bookings from mobile devices are increasing by 10%, so it's crucial that your hotel website is mobile-friendly.

Integrate bookings into the website.

Integrating booking features into your website will allow visitors to preview images and locations of rooms and hotels in real time.

Customers can receive booking confirmation and payment information directly from the Booking Engine software. This enhances the customer experience with your hotel.

Additionally, ensure your hotel website supports easy online payments. It should be easy to set up room rates, promotional prices, daily promotions, and specific time slots to encourage bookings.

Integrate bookings with Facebook.

Facebook is one of the major brand recognition channels for hotels. Customers not only access the hotel's Facebook page to learn about the hotel, rooms, or find reviews, but they also want to be able to book directly.

If your hotel can integrate online booking on its Facebook page, this will also be a revenue-generating booking channel. Additionally, you should encourage positive customer reviews on this platform to attract even more potential customers.

Increase your presence on search engine results pages and online booking sites

Image source: Hoteljob

These search engine pages allow travelers to easily compare hotel room prices across OTA sites, making it easier to choose a hotel at a suitable price.

Therefore, to achieve this, you should increase your presence on these search engine pages.

Online Review Management

Image source: Hotelnewresource

Many travelers read hotel reviews, and a large percentage consider it a crucial factor before booking a hotel. Furthermore, these online reviews influence travelers' booking decisions. Moreover, a single point increase in a hotel's average user rating can lead to a higher occupancy rate.

Offer promotional programs for online bookings

Offer promotions for online bookings to encourage customers to visit your website. Show them that they will receive more benefits by booking directly on your hotel website with features such as: voucher codes, early booking, last minute offers, long stay offers, daily rate offers, etc.

Offer promotional packages to loyal customers

Loyalty programs are a great way to show your customers that you are trustworthy and that you care about them. You should offer attractive hotel booking deals for this target group.

Show customers that they can earn points that can be easily redeemed at your hotel, and also use the hotel's restaurants of their choice. This is not only a great online booking strategy, but it will also help your business build long-term relationships with your customers.

Be careful when canceling reservations.

Your hotel is always striving to increase profits and revenue. However, at the last minute, your customers decide to cancel their reservations, preventing your hotel from maximizing its occupancy and revenue. So, what should your hotel do to reduce cancellations on online channels?

The answer is: hotels should establish cancellation policies with clear rules and terms to minimize the number of guests who book but then don't show up.

In addition, the online booking process is also one of the reasons why customers abandon hotel bookings. Customers always prefer things that are safe, simple, and fast. This is especially true for hotel booking and payment processes. The simpler your hotel's online booking and payment procedures are, the more convenient and efficient it becomes, leading to increased online bookings.

Convert guests who book through OTAs into direct customers

According to Grant Thornton's recently published 2018 survey of the Vietnamese hotel industry, the trend of bookings through OTA channels increased slightly by 21.4%, indicating that customers still prefer booking through these channels.

Therefore, it's necessary to leverage this source of customers to convert them into direct customers with the following specific steps:

♦ Provide convenient services during the customer's stay.

♦ Show customers the benefits of booking online for future stays. Offer special deals: discounts on F&B bills, spa bills, or airport pick-up services to encourage customers to book through this online channel.

♦ In addition, don't forget to send customer care emails, notifying them of promotions when booking online.

So, as a business owner, have you done all of the above well? Contact Viet Orient Hospitality, and we will help you standardize your marketing system so that your hotel becomes known to more customers.

VIET ORIENT HOTEL SETUP AND MANAGEMENT CONSULTING COMPANY
Nguyen Van Quang - CEO
T: +84 (0) 931580188         E: ceo@vietorient.vn