Hotel Marketing Blog
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Posted on Aug 6th 2018 by Bryan Marsh
No matter how much the rest of the digital marketing landscape evolves, Google's domination over search remains constant. As of last month, the company accounted for a whopping 90.20% of all mobile searches and 72.21% of those made on desktop. Google's un...
Posted on Jul 27th 2018 by Bryan Marsh
Online shoppers are notoriously impatient, in fact, even a delay as small as one second can cause a sharp decline in page views, conversions and consumer satisfaction rates. And since Google includes site speed among one of the many factors its uses to de...
Posted on Jul 20th 2018 by Bryan Marsh
Every marketer out there has heard about the importance of publishing "quality" content by now. But the definition of quality is open to definition and varies wildly by brand and audience type. For instance, for a while now digital marketers have extolled...
Posted on Jul 10th 2018 by Bryan Marsh
No matter what stage of the holiday planning journey they're at, when guests land on your hotel's website, you want them to complete an action. Sign up for your property's email newsletter, make an enquiry, share your content or make a booking. When it co...
Posted on Jun 22nd 2018 by Bryan Marsh
What is your hotel's digital reputation? Online reputation management (ORM) is all about proactively influencing the information people find about your business online by using strategies to hide unflattering content further down the SERPs by ranking more...
Posted on Jun 14th 2018 by Bryan Marsh
No hotelier really needs to be reminded of the essential role reviews play in the holiday shopping process. But just in case you do, the latest stats show that a massive 95% of guests browse the opinions of other travellers before booking a trip, with Tri...
Posted on Jun 8th 2018 by Bryan Marsh
Most hotel marketers are aware by now that producing high quality content on a regular basis plays an integral role in getting noticed by the right people online. But without the right research to inform and shape that content, creating blog posts can fee...
Posted on May 28th 2018 by Bryan Marsh
Social media is constantly evolving, and it's crucial that your hotel's marketing campaigns keep up or else risk falling flat. No matter what kind of technology you have in place, if the content you create isn't resonating with your guests you're not goin...
Posted on May 19th 2018 by Bryan Marsh
What motivates travellers and inspires them to book? In the crucial early stages of travel planning it's not amenities, room sizes and air conditioning, but the prospect of exciting and enriching experiences; a break from the norm, an escape. During this...
Posted on May 14th 2018 by Bryan Marsh
Facebook custom audiences allow you to target groups of people who have visited your hotel's website and performed (or not performed) certain actions while browsing it. It's a great tool for reaching out to people who are interested in your property, but...
Posted on May 8th 2018 by Bryan Marsh
From news to YouTube tutorials, Snaps to Instagram Stories, Vine and endless cat clips, video is the most popular form of content on the internet. In fact, it's expected to account for as much as 82% of all internet traffic by 2021. For marketers, video...
Posted on Apr 30th 2018 by Bryan Marsh
As holiday browsing and booking increasingly takes place across multiple channels, offering travel shoppers a seamless experience across all devices has become absolutely essential. In the move towards mobile-friendliness, implementing responsive design t...
Posted on Apr 19th 2018 by Bryan Marsh
The seemingly unshakeable grip of the online travel agencies has long been a point of contention for hoteliers trying to maximise profits from online bookings. But how do they do it? Beside the obvious factor of low rates, one of the key reasons for the s...
Posted on Apr 16th 2018 by Bryan Marsh
With the continuing dominance of the OTAs and an ever more competitive online travel market, climbing to a prominent position in the search rankings is more challenging than ever. It takes an ongoing, committed SEO strategy to secure and maintain a high r...
Posted on Apr 6th 2018 by Bryan Marsh
Following a string of recent moves that amp up its presence in the travel sphere, Facebook has recently launched Trip Consideration, a new advertising tool designed to help hotel and travel brands reach consumers at the early stages of the holiday plannin...
Posted on Apr 3rd 2018 by Bryan Marsh
In an industry that's all about creating aspirational experiences, images sell better than words ever can. Investing time and resources to ensure your website features carefully selected, high quality photos of your hotel will pay dividends when it comes...
Posted on Mar 23rd 2018 by Bryan Marsh
Few can dispute the importance of social proof in the travel industry. When planning their breaks, almost all online holiday planners are influenced by the opinions of other travellers when it comes to choosing where to travel and stay. While review sites...
Posted on Mar 15th 2018 by Bryan Marsh
At a time when older generations are tightening their purse strings, adventure-hungry millennials are spending more on travel than ever. Unsurprisingly, it's OTAs that are seeing most of this increased spending, with data revealing that more than 50% of t...
Posted on Mar 9th 2018 by Bryan Marsh
It happens to anyone who produces content regularly. You spend time and effort crafting what you think is the perfect blog post, carefully optimised with the right keywords to rank highly in the SERPs. You post on social media to promote your blog and ale...
Posted on Mar 2nd 2018 by Bryan Marsh
Ever feel like you're reaching social media overload? You're not alone. More and more people are reporting dissatisfaction with the impact social platforms have on their lives. They're a great way to stay in the loop with family and friends sure, but let'...
Posted on Feb 23rd 2018 by Bryan Marsh
It has been a debate in digital marketing for a while now: do social signals impact search ranking? While the jury is still out for many on the issue, Google's Matt Cutts has said that a brand's social presence is part of the overall mix of search ranking...
Posted on Feb 16th 2018 by Bryan Marsh
We're all familiar with the stats by now: 75% of Google users won't bother to scroll past the first page of the SERPs, securing that elusive number one ranking spot will get you almost 33% of the clicks. Basically, getting to the first page of search resu...
Posted on Feb 9th 2018 by Bryan Marsh
It's getting more and more difficult for businesses to get their social content seen by the right audience on Facebook. Brands invest time and resources in creating great posts and building a fan base, but shockingly, as much as 90% of these carefully cra...
Posted on Feb 2nd 2018 by Bryan Marsh
2017 was another important year for email marketing. Despite the rise of social media, email remains the preferred choice for brand contact for 72% of consumers, according to Litmus' State of Email study. But email, just like every other kind of marketing...
Posted on Feb 1st 2018 by Bryan Marsh
Google is getting more and more sophisticated when it comes to differentiating between high and low quality content. Traditional SEO tactics such as link building have been replaced with an emphasis on creating the best possible user experience, and video...
Posted on Dec 22nd 2017 by Bryan Marsh
2017 has been another huge year for social media. Twitter boosted its character limit, live video streams are everywhere and Snapchat's popularity shows no signs of waning. With just over a week of the year left, your thoughts may already have turned to y...
Posted on Dec 18th 2017 by Bryan Marsh
The online marketing industry is constantly evolving, and the cycle from "next big tactic" to waste of time moves pretty fast. If you're using any of the content marketing strategies listed below, it's time for a fresh approach. 1. Generic, Churned-Out Co...
Posted on Dec 8th 2017 by Bryan Marsh
Out of all the tactics marketers will put into action to compete for their audience's attention this holiday season, email marketing continues to be one of the most important. If you want to maximise bookings this Christmas, you need to plan out a strateg...
Posted on Dec 1st 2017 by Bryan Marsh
Black Friday and Cyber Monday have come and gone in a whirlwind of consumer excitement and spending. It's now time to think slightly further down the road, adopt new tactics and target procrastinating guests still considering a last minute festive break....
Posted on Nov 24th 2017 by Bryan Marsh
If you have an active blog on your hotel's website - which you absolutely should if you want to maximise your brand's reach and generate direct bookings you're probably wondering how to get your posts seen by more of your guests. One of the best ways to m...
Posted on Nov 17th 2017 by Bryan Marsh
As any online marketer will tell you, SEO is an increasingly complex art to master. Not only are there more than 200 different factors which make up Google's algorithm, the search landscape is constantly shifting, and each shift brings with it a new set o...
Posted on Nov 10th 2017 by Bryan Marsh
Do you know what the world's second biggest search engine after Google is? YouTube. Billions of people are making billions of video searches and watching hour upon hour of content everyday, on their TVs, tablets, desktop and Smartphone devices. If your ho...
Posted on Nov 3rd 2017 by Bryan Marsh
One of the biggest shake ups in SEO in recent years has been the arrival of voice search. Thanks to mobile personal assistants and technologies such as Amazon Echo and Corona, consumers can quickly and conveniently find what they're looking for online wit...
Posted on Oct 26th 2017 by Bryan Marsh
The days when social media was simply another platform for businesses to use for self promotion have long passed. Your guests are increasingly using their online networks as a first point of contact with you during the planning stage of their breaks and t...
Posted on Oct 20th 2017 by Bryan Marsh
Email remains one of the most powerful ways to strengthen your relationship with your guests, promote targeted offers and drive bookings made through your hotel website. All businesses want a bigger email contact database, but as any savvy marketer will t...
Posted on Oct 12th 2017 by Bryan Marsh
Making use of audience generated content on social media offers a uniquely compelling way to communicate your hotel's story, gain the trust of your guests and drive traffic and bookings. Thanks to Facebook's news feed algorithm update of 2016, it has also...
Posted on Oct 9th 2017 by Bryan Marsh
In the struggle to keep up with the constantly evolving digital marketing landscape, it's all too easy to lose sight of basic SEO practices we should all be using to get discovered by the right audience online. Although every new algorithm update inevitab...
Posted on Sep 27th 2017 by eTourism Support Team
Do you have an SSL certificate on your hotel's website? If not, it's time to act fast. That's because from the start of October onwards, Google Chrome will release an update that will display a "Not Secure" warning on any web page, contact form or input f...
Posted on Sep 15th 2017 by Bryan Marsh
It's a no-brainer: social media is now an essential component of every hotel's online marketing campaign. And because all your competitors and every other business under the sun are using the channel daily to build brand awareness and engage their audienc...
Posted on Sep 8th 2017 by Bryan Marsh
Are you guilty of reaching out to your guests with bland, uninspiring emails? If so, you can bet they're ending up straight in the "Junk" file along with the heaps of other generic and impersonal marketing messages they receive everyday. Guests crave high...
Posted on Sep 1st 2017 by Bryan Marsh
Setting up a business profile for your hotel on social media is ridiculously quick and simple. Getting noticed by the right audience and expanding your reach until you're consistently driving a steady stream of social traffic to your website is not always...
Posted on Aug 25th 2017 by Bryan Marsh
With the explosion of content marketing in recent years, the competition to get your hotel noticed by your guests online is fiercer than ever. Unfortunately, there's no quick fix to SEO. But with a little patience, dedication and commitment to these best...
Posted on Aug 18th 2017 by Bryan Marsh
Repeat guests are your most valuable asset. They are cheaper to market to, provide a reliable source of revenue and are likely to provide plenty of word of mouth recommendations. So how do you turn more of the travellers checking into your property for th...
Posted on Aug 10th 2017 by Bryan Marsh
Despite the evolution of the search landscape in recent years, using white hat tactics to build high quality links remains an important touchstone of good SEO. It's simple: however great your content and on-page SEO techniques, you need relevant, authorit...
Posted on Aug 4th 2017 by Bryan Marsh
Maintaining an active presence on YouTube is a great way to show off all that your hotel has to offer, widen your reach, promote your website and ultimately, drive bookings. In today's blog, we'll look at three simple but effective tactics for converting...
Posted on Jul 28th 2017 by Bryan Marsh
Have you taken a look at your old blog content recently? If you've been running the blog for several years, it's probably overdue a bit of a clean up. Why bother? Because both Google and your guests strongly favour fresh, highly relevant content. What's m...
Posted on Jul 19th 2017 by Bryan Marsh
Thanks to the lighting pace of online marketing, new digital strategies come and go almost on a weekly basis. It's perhaps surprising then, that one of the oldest channels in the marketer's handbook has not only stood the test of time but actually steadil...
Posted on Jul 12th 2017 by Bryan Marsh
In an online market dominated by online travel agents with steep commission rates, every hotel wants to increase the number of bookings made directly through their property's website. Here are 5 ways to wrestle control away from the OTA's and maximise rev...
Posted on Jul 6th 2017 by Bryan Marsh
There are few digital marketers out there that would dispute that both search engine optimisation and social media are essential components of any effective online strategy. After all, SEO is the original tactic for helping the right audience find your ho...
Posted on Jun 23rd 2017 by Bryan Marsh
Facebook provides an incredible platform to showcase your blog and drive traffic back to your website. In fact, promoting your blog posts on social is every bit as important as writing the posts themselves if you want to get your content discovered by the...
Posted on Jun 14th 2017 by Bryan Marsh
Whatever new social platform your guests are adopting, email remains a powerful and reliable way to engage your audience from first contact right through to booking and (hopefully) return trip. Thanks to analytics data and your own knowledge of your guest...
Posted on Jun 7th 2017 by Bryan Marsh
In the past year or so, Facebook has been very busy revamping established features and rolling out some pretty exciting new ones. Have you been keeping up? Whether you have or you haven't, you're probably wondering how you can adapt your hotel's social ca...
Posted on Jun 1st 2017 by Bryan Marsh
Engaging, SEO boosting, and powerfully promotional, blogging is a tool hotel marketers ignore at their own peril. But it's one a lot of hoteliers are still in the dark about, or see as an optional 'extra' that they'll get round to now and then when they h...
Posted on May 25th 2017 by Bryan Marsh
Most of us already receive more emails on a daily basis than we can comfortably handle a fair chunk of which are marketing messages which are easier just to ignore, am I right? Does that mean that sending email campaigns to your guests is a waste of your...
Posted on May 18th 2017 by Bryan Marsh
Social media has been discussed at length for around a decade now. But despite the hold Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram have over most of our social lives, there still exists some pretty big myths when it comes to using social media for business. Let's t...
Posted on May 10th 2017 by Bryan Marsh
Representing the percentage of visitors who land on your website only to leave before checking out any other page, bounce rate is one of the few metrics you really don't want to increase. A high bounce rate often indicates that a page offers a poor user e...
Posted on May 4th 2017 by Bryan Marsh
Increasing the amount of time guests spend watching your hotel's YouTube videos not only ensures that more of your content gets viewed, it helps it get discovered by an even wider audience. Following a 2012 algorithm update, watch time or "audience retent...
Posted on Apr 26th 2017 by Bryan Marsh
Responsible for delivering holiday planning travellers directly to your website, SEO is one of the most important components of your hotel's online strategy. Unfortunately, it's also one of the most difficult areas to master, with hundreds of Google algor...
Posted on Apr 20th 2017 by Bryan Marsh
Whatever else changes in the online marketing world, reviews will continue to form an integral part of the hotel shopping process for your guests. More than half of travellers around the world won't even consider booking a hotel before reading what previo...
Posted on Apr 12th 2017 by Bryan Marsh
Since sending out any email - let alone an important bulk marketing mail out - is an irreversible process, you have just one shot to get it right. In today's post, we'll look at some of the most common mistakes which could be jeopardising your open and cl...
Posted on Apr 5th 2017 by Bryan Marsh
It's something we all know by now: if you want to get found by your guests, you've got to make it to page one of Google search results. But getting there isn't easy. If you want to secure a spot on the first page of the SERPs, simply publishing great cont...
Posted on Mar 29th 2017 by Bryan Marsh
Social media has been a core component of every brand's online strategy for years now, but as the world of networks and apps continues to evolve, competition for your audience's attention is fierce. In a bid to get noticed, many marketers are striving to...
Posted on Mar 22nd 2017 by Bryan Marsh
For most hotels, online travel agents are a necessary evil. Like it or not, they're the first port of call for most travellers researching their breaks online, and if your property is not listed you're going to miss out on a huge amount of exposure. But w...
Posted on Mar 15th 2017 by Admin
If you really want to capture your audience's attention online, you need to add video to your marketing mix. Few other forms of content have the power to excite and inspire your guests so effectively, with Google data revealing that up to 42% of online tr...
Posted on Mar 7th 2017 by Bryan Marsh
Smartphones have all but destroyed landlines, and they've struck a serious blow to desktop too, with mobile searches overtaking those made on a laptop or PC for the first time in 2015. There's no longer any argument that the future of content marketing is...
Posted on Mar 1st 2017 by Bryan Marsh
Striving for new ways to retarget your guests on Facebook? The social media platform has recently made some changes to its Custom Audiences tool to help you get even more refined with your Facebook advertising. Thanks to the update, you can now choose to...
Posted on Feb 22nd 2017 by Bryan Marsh
With the huge emphasis that has been placed on content production in recent years, competition for travel consumers' attention online has never been fiercer. A high quality and strategic SEO campaign is therefore essential if you want to be the best answe...
Posted on Feb 15th 2017 by Bryan Marsh
Whatever exciting new social networks, apps and digital strategies emerge for reaching your guests in the coming months, email marketing is going nowhere in 2017. It remains one of the most powerful and cost effective ways to reach your guests wherever th...
Posted on Feb 8th 2017 by Admin
The competition for your guests' attention online is fiercer than ever, and one thing's for sure; if other local hotels are doing a better job reaching them than you are, your booking rates are going to suffer. So, how do you know if your competition is s...
Posted on Feb 3rd 2017 by Bryan Marsh
It's a debate that rages on and on, and not least when it comes to online travel marketing: is search engine optimisation still relevant, or is it a dying practice? Well I can confirm, SEO is alive and well in fact, organic search consistently generates t...
Posted on Jan 27th 2017 by Bryan Marsh
If you've been using content marketing to promote your hotel online for a while, chances are you've already created a sizeable number of blog posts. But are they actually generating traffic? No matter how interesting, helpful and engaging your content, if...
Posted on Nov 19th 2016 by Bryan Marsh
Mastering mobile can make the difference between skyrocketing booking rates and stagnation this holiday season. In today's blog, we'll look at 4 key ways you can make the most of mobile marketing to reach more of your guests this Christmas. A Responsive W...
Posted on Nov 16th 2016 by Bryan Marsh
Content Marketing is a crucial tool for driving audience engagement, promoting your hotel and boosting your property's position in the search engine results pages. There's a huge amount of advice out there about how brands can deliver better content onlin...
Posted on Oct 20th 2016 by Bryan Marsh
Choosing the right words to rank for can make or break the success of your hotel's PPC campaigns. By taking time to conduct research into the market's demand for certain keywords and phrases, you can identify the words to target to reach more of your gues...
Posted on Oct 19th 2016 by Bryan Marsh
It's approaching the end of October, which means Christmas will soon be snapping at our heels. As marketers, that means it's time to at least start to spare a thought towards this year's holiday campaigns. Social media offers a fantastic opportunity to re...
Posted on Oct 13th 2016 by Bryan Marsh
Social media marketing is about promoting your brand and getting word out there about your hotel, but it's also about nurturing your audience. With the right care and management, your social audience will grow bigger and stronger and start to do some of y...
Posted on Oct 11th 2016 by Bryan Marsh
Maintaining a high click-through rate is essential if you want your hotel's marketing campaign to do what is actually designed to: drive website traffic and generate bookings. If you've been running your hotel's email marketing campaign for a while, no do...
Posted on Oct 5th 2016 by Bryan Marsh
Blogging is a great way to differentiate yourself from the competition, establish yourself as an authority in the eyes of Google, climb the search rankings and engage your guests. Unfortunately, it's also really easy to get wrong. With millions of new pie...
Posted on Oct 4th 2016 by Bryan Marsh
Large chain hotels have been using carefully designed loyalty programs for decades, and the OTAs have followed suit with their own discounts and promos designed to retain more guests. Yet, for small hotels and resorts with just one location, such schemes...
Posted on Sep 30th 2016 by Bryan Marsh
There are few better ways to show off the unique vibe of your hotel than a professionally shot video. Surpassing static image and text in terms of emotional connection, video has the unique ability to get travellers imagining their breaks and itching to b...
Posted on Sep 28th 2016 by Bryan Marsh
If you want to market effectively, you've got to know who you're marketing to. Google Analytics provides a mine of data to help you paint a clearer picture of your audience and inform and improve your social media efforts. It's free to use and easy to get...
Posted on Sep 23rd 2016 by Bryan Marsh
Do you know how long it takes the average reader to decide whether your hotel's content is worth the effort? Roughly 15 seconds. But what exactly runs through your audience's mind in this tiny timeframe? In a world overflowing with blog articles and socia...
Posted on Sep 20th 2016 by Bryan Marsh
Now that almost every brand under the sun has its own blog, businesses have to work harder than ever to ensure their content gets read and even more importantly, that it actually converts. Although competition for your guests' attention online is fierce,...
Posted on Sep 17th 2016 by Bryan Marsh
Since around 77% of travel consumers will check the feedback of other travellers before booking a hotel online, reviews have the powerful ability to pull in your guests in big numbers or drive them straight to the competition. Social media, blogs, forums...
Posted on Sep 14th 2016 by Bryan Marsh
Whether it's down to the cost of international travel, safety concerns amidst terrorist threats or changing visa regulations, holidays closer to home are more popular than ever. The rise of the so-called "staycation" is great news for your hotel; not leas...
Posted on Sep 12th 2016 by Bryan Marsh
Are you using videos as part of your hotel's social media marketing mix? If not, you really should be, since visual content routinely drives more engagement than text posts across each of the major social media platforms. Once you're regularly includi...
Posted on Sep 8th 2016 by Bryan Marsh
Whether your target guests are young or retired, married or single, smartphones are their constant companions. The soaring popularity of smartphones across all demographics resulted in mobile searches overtaking those made on desktop for the first time la...
Posted on Aug 25th 2016 by Bryan Marsh
Whatever the demographic makeup of your guests, it's safe to say that many of them live out a large portion of their lives on social media posting holiday selfies, catching up with friends, but also interacting with travel brands, reading reviews and rese...
Posted on Aug 23rd 2016 by Bryan Marsh
One of the fundamental rules of marketing is this: you need to understand your audience, inside out. Without this knowledge, how can you expect to create effective strategies to reach your audience and craft messaging that resonates and turns casual trave...
Posted on Aug 6th 2016 by Bryan Marsh
With so many other hotels and resorts vying for your guests' attention, one of the biggest challenges of any property's online marketing campaign is how to drive a steady stream of traffic to their website. And of course, not just any traffic, but high qu...
Posted on Aug 3rd 2016 by Bryan Marsh
Tech-savvy, socially aware and hyper-connected, millennials can be a difficult nut to crack. However, since they represent such a lucrative market, it's essential to get on the right side of this new generation of travellers planning their breaks online....
Posted on Aug 1st 2016 by Bryan Marsh
If you keep an eye on your website's analytic data, you'll have probably noticed your organic traffic fluctuates from time to time. While delving into Google Analytics and Search Console will often provide immediate explanations for a decline in traffic a...
Posted on Jul 26th 2016 by Bryan Marsh
If you know where to look, social platforms offer a wealth of analytic data which can help you modify your marketing efforts for improved reach, engagement and visibility. Here are 4 ways to use Facebook metrics to boost your hotel's marketing campaigns o...
Posted on Jul 21st 2016 by Bryan Marsh
If you want to maximise your hotel's online bookings, one of the most important elements to get right is your website photography. Industry research has revealed that travel shoppers are up to 150% more likely to engage with a website which features a min...
Posted on Jul 16th 2016 by Bryan Marsh
Building a sizeable contact database is the first step of any email marketing campaign and it's perhaps the task that gets talked about the most. If you actually want to drive results though, you've got to pay as much attention to building a trustworthy r...
Posted on Jul 13th 2016 by Bryan Marsh
Social media is in a constant state of flux, so what's next? There are obvious answers: new apps, new networks, a continuing move towards The Internet of Things and the increasing prevalence of Virtual Reality. But while the technology is important, it's...
Posted on Jul 11th 2016 by Bryan Marsh
Today's travellers expect to be more than just another name on your hotel's contact list; they want a personalised marketing experience tailored to their individual needs and preferences. In simple terms, the more relevant the content you can deliver to y...
Posted on Jul 7th 2016 by Bryan Marsh
When starting out on social media, most hoteliers approach content creation from their property's perspective, focusing on creating posts that show off all their great facilities, offers and discounts. It's not surprising, since the whole goal of social m...
Posted on Jul 4th 2016 by Bryan Marsh
93% of all online experiences begin with a query typed into a search engine. SEO is all about helping Google and the other search engines understand how your website is likely to be a relevant and helpful source of information for these queries. Appearing...
Posted on Jun 28th 2016 by Bryan Marsh
Do you want to expand your hotel's social reach? Then you need to drive more shares. Generating lots of shares is key to building your brand, driving engagement and making sure your content gets discovered by the widest possible audience. By fine-tuning t...