Smart Resort Marketing Tips To Increase Bookings

How will I get more bookings and boost my resort’s revenue?

This is the question that troubles every hotelier’s and resort owner’s mind when they are looking to accelerate their business and to keep it running in a smooth and profitable manner. The question is an easy one but finding a seamless solution to it can be challenging.

The challenging part lies in the fact that the hospitality industry is dangerously and abashedly competitive. An overwhelming amount of hotels and resorts enter into the resort business each and every day. Adding to that are the increasing popularity of homey and affordable stays like Home Away and Airbnb, which makes it even more challenging to stand out given and attract more bookings.  While resort owners are more often than used to these kinds of challenges, they are always tasked with meeting their targets and exceeding the metrics that is mostly dependable on bookings.

So what can a struggling resort marketer do? How does the resort marketeer attract customers and get them excited so they can’t wait to book their stay in that resort? Do not get anxious or concerned; as here comes 7 no fail promotional tips that will lead to success and an over pouring surge in bookings:

1.      Become Easy to Find Online!

Let’s face it, internet has taken over our lives. The days of going over to a travel agent’s office and looking at the printed brochures are long gone. Today’s globetrotters can do their comparative research and analysis without even leaving their beds, by surfing through their laptop and phone screens. So if your resort is a not easy to find item online, then there is no doubt behind the fact that your bookings are few and far between even during the peak seasons. You need to be omnipresent in the internet, in all the relevant online search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo), so that your resort’s website can be easily found in the very first instance of search results

Most of the travellers (nearly 75%) start their research by using relevant keywords in search engines, so you need to stay at the top of your SEO game. Add popular and commonly used keywords to your site, so that it your resort name comes at the top of the search results and make sure that your website loads super fast.

Do not just rely on social optimization alone. The search engine results page for resort related searches is heavily monetized and mostly taken by ads, such as the screenshot below.

This means that people will sees the ads first. You will need to bid aggressively to be at the very top of the search results and also in other Networks like Facebook, Instagram and in travel websites like Kayak and Tripadvisor.

While it may be not be necessary and possible to have a strong presence in all of the search engines and travel websites imaginable, you should dig deep into your website analytics, and find out the sites where people typically do their bookings from  like MakeMy Trip, Tripoto, Ibibo. You can make an impression by having an engaging presence on these platforms.

2.      Make sure that you are targeting The Right Audience

What is the resort image that you want to portray through marketing? Who are your target audience? There needs to be a distinctive strategy applied for marketing a little lodge type resort off route 9 compared to secluded, lavish., couple’s resort like Fiji’s Vatulele Island resort overlooking the blue waters of the South Pacific shores. Your specific target audience will vary in budget, requirements and in travelling style. Here is where Income Targeting tools come in handy.

There are ways of breaking down your target audience when it comes to marketing your resort. Many resorts caters to a wide range of customers from varying income levels, since they offer rooms both extravagant types (like presidential suites) and also affordable rooms at discounted prices. These two audience types of varying sensibilities need to be targeted separately.

You will need to group your audiences into two or three, or even four separate campaigns as required and make sure to send the right message to each type with the right prospect in mind. With the help of tools like Facebook’s targeting options, this job has become much easier than it was before. Before doing this, you have to spend a considerable amount of time defining your audiences, so that you craft the suitable message to send to suitable group at the right time.

3.      Create Fresh Content for answering Customer Questions

Content Marketing is one of the best and most effective ways to increase bookings. First step requires digging deep and researching to find out all the different questions and problems that your target audience has and composing a detailed content strategy that can answer all of those. This will aid to increase your resort’s visibility online as more and more people come to know and build trust in your brand that can increase the chances of converting them into customers. You can do so by registering to Quora and finding the list of questions related to your resort type and location. You will find a bunch of queries related to your resort’s location like “things to do around or best places to visit around, or best food items in the X or Y city”. Create content related to these topics, publish them on your resort’s website and you are done.

4.      Spend More on Marketing during the Peak Booking Seasons

If you are running a range of beach rentals near the Cape or a ski resort in the Alps, then your peaking booking seasons are going to be entirely different. Being a resort marketer, you are very much aware of your resort’s peak booking season, and even if you want, you might not be able to increase the total marketing costs especially for the peak season.  Henceforth, it makes more sense to spend more of your annual budget during the busiest season.

For these times, aspects like ad scheduling come into scene. When do people usually start booking their trips? Perhaps you run a resort that is mostly booked by business travellers. These individuals mostly book during the business hours as compared to the folks travelling for leisure and relaxation who are most likely to do their booking during the weekends or weeknights. By researching and gathering data, you can set a schedule so that your ads are displayed at a higher budget during the peak hours at months of the peak booking seasons.

5.      Build partnerships with Local Businesses

Chances are that your resort is not located in a no man’s land or in the middle of desert. It will definitely have local attractions and businesses as its neighbours. That can be a well known joint of eateries, shops, restaurants or health centres and yoga studios. It will be extremely beneficial for you to get to know your neighbours. Building partnerships with local business owners can be a great way to co-promote each other, especially when you marketing a boutique, one of a kind resort rather than a chain.

For example, you could partner up with local brewery popular in the area, and run a series of contests where the winner gets a free beer testing, a brewery tour and a discounted stay at your resort. Building these partnerships with your neighbours will lead to affordable, easy and effective marketing that will definitely give a hike to the booking rates.

6.      Go for Simple, Clean but also a Breathtaking Look for your Website

There are many resorts that loose a whopping amount of potential customers because of their lacklustre website design. This is an instant turnoff for online bookers. If your website is not clean and pleasing to the eyes, then why would your physical location be? Your website is the first thing people know, and first impression they get of your resort, so you need to make it look breathtaking but at the same usable. This means that it should look simple and straightforward to users surfing on any type of device, so that they can find the required information and also be able to complete the booking without any hassle.

The navigation system should clean and smooth. Ensure that the hotel photographs are all high res and professional, displayed in perfect ratios and formats for mobiles, tablets and desktops. The language should be engaging and crisp, and the booking process easy and seamless. Videos showing virtual tour work wells, since they tend to show the beauty and space of your resort in a much more engaging and thorough manner.

7.      Go for an Above and Beyond Customer Service

Customer service and marketing go hand in hand, especially in the hospitality industry. If you provide an above and beyond, stellar experience to your customers, they are a lot more likely to pay it forward through outstanding online, reviews, referrals, and return visits thus leading to more business for you.

Bottomline is there are a variety of resort marketing tactics and tools, but choosing and implementing the right ones will only to outstanding results. The above-mentioned methods are all tried and tested tactics that have led resorts to their respective paths of phenomenal success. Do not think twice, and follow this guide to put your resort back on the track of a frenzied booking spree.