In today’s hyper-competitive hospitality landscape, hotels can no longer rely on a “build it and they will come” mindset. The hunger for travel is insatiable, but the demand for a hyper-personalized experience that starts long before a potential traveler clicks ‘book now’ has hit an all-time high. In this market, loyalty must be earned – not given, and digital marketing is not a luxury, it’s a necessity.
As hotels face increased competition from both traditional rivals and alternative lodging options, like Airbnb, capturing demand at scale has become more important than ever – but it’s also increasingly complex. What was once a straightforward task of promoting rooms and services has evolved into a sophisticated, data-driven effort to capture attention, appeal to individual guest preferences, and establish meaningful relationships. With personalization now at the core of guest expectations, the ability to deliver targeted, timely marketing across multiple channels is the key to driving bookings. For hoteliers, the challenge is not just how to execute these strategies, but how to do so efficiently and at scale, while ensuring return on investment.
The Evolution of Digital Marketing in Hospitality
The rise of the internet and the emergence of Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) in the late 1990s reshaped how travelers searched for accommodations, and the emergence of digital-first marketing strategies quickly became inevitable. As digital touchpoints usher in new norms of convenience and personalization, attention has become a commodity, and hotels must meet prospective guests where they are (online) if they hope to capture their interest. After all, travelers begin their ‘planning’ journey via multiple online sources, from social media inspiration to online research and reviews, long before they ever finalize the details of their next trip.
To this effect, research from Expedia revealed that travelers spend an average of 303 minutes, or over 5 hours, engaging with travel content in the 45 days leading up to a booking decision.
Moreover, that research found that travelers utilize an increasingly diverse range of online resources during their planning process, including:
80% of travelers rely on Online Travel Agencies (OTAs)
61% turn to search engines
58% use social media for inspiration
54% visit airline websites
51% explore meta travel websites
The digital landscape is vast – but it can also make for a fragmented journey, and travelers embark on an extensive period of research while considering their next destination. With this in mind, hotels must establish a strong online presence to connect with guests at each point in their pre-booking journey, by focusing on owned, earned and paid digital channels.
The Best of Both Worlds: Direct Bookings and OTAs
The tug-of-war between hospitality brands and OTAs is not new, and it won’t end anytime soon. OTAs have been the fastest-growing distribution channel in the tours, activities, and attractions space over the past decade. Still, throughout the pandemic, travelers demonstrated a renewed preference for direct bookings. During recessionary periods, however, OTAs typically experience an uptick in performance as guests become more cost-conscious.
Direct bookings allow hotels to capture more revenue per booking and establish direct relationships with guests, which provides opportunities for upselling and personalization that may otherwise be missed. At the same time, however, direct channels alone can limit a hotel’s reach, as OTAs have a global presence and extensive marketing budgets. Through OTAs, hotels can reach guests who might not otherwise consider their property.
Hotels should always employ tactics to increase direct bookings; however, they should also strike a balance between OTAs and direct bookings by leveraging OTAs as an entry point to reach a broader audience, capturing first-time guests who may later be converted into loyal, direct bookers. By promoting direct booking benefits, such as exclusive discounts or tailored packages, hotels can encourage repeat guests for future stays, thus cultivating stronger, more personalized relationships. When hotels establish a healthy balance between both channels, they can preserve their brand identity, maintain control of guest data, and ultimately drive more sustainable revenue growth across all booking platforms.
How Technology Empowers Hotels to Scale and Optimize Digital Marketing
Fortunately, the embrace of digital-first marketing strategies allows hotels to collect valuable guest data, enabling a far more impactful and scalable result than traditional, one-size-fits-all campaigns of the past. After all, expanding marketing reach across diverse markets, languages, and cultural nuances while ensuring that campaigns remain relevant and personalized is no small task. This process requires sophisticated data integration and tech-enabled automation, where guest preferences, booking behaviors, and regional trends are all captured, interpreted, and automatically leveraged to tailor marketing messages.
Notably, digital marketing technology has become more cost effective and measurable than legacy methods, largely due to its iterative design. Digital campaigns can be tracked and adjusted in real time, allowing hotels to pull in guest data from various touchpoints, optimize their marketing spend, and improve return on investment (ROI). Unlike the “spray and pray” tactics of the past, a dedicated digital marketing platform offers A/B testing, audience segmentation, and budget allocation to achieve better, measurable outcomes.
What’s more, hotels can accelerate (and automate) the deployment of promotions across multiple channels, without the need for tedious, individual reviews across disconnected platforms. Using a centralized system, designed specifically for marketing to travelers, hotels can ensure consistent messaging across all channels, while eliminating inefficient and repetitive workflows.
As the saying goes – you can’t manage what you can’t measure, and the use of digital marketing technology unlocks deeper insights, providing hotels with customizable, automated reports. These performance summaries provide hotels with a roadmap to refine their strategies, improve bookings, and build stronger guest loyalty. It should come as no surprise, then, that research from the HotelTechReport revealed that 81% of hoteliers believe it’s very likely that technology will be more important for the success of a hotel business in the next five years.
With such a fast-paced, data-driven world, hotels that fail to embrace digital marketing automation risk being left behind. By leveraging powerful digital marketing platforms, hotels can seamlessly navigate the otherwise complex world of modern guest expectations, efficiently manage multi-channel campaigns, and strike the right balance between direct bookings and OTA visibility. With the right digital marketing automation platform, hotels will not only drive demand at scale – they will also foster meaningful, lasting relationships with their guests while curating stronger brand identities.
About DerbySoft
DerbySoft is the Travel Commerce Accelerator, with a mission to converge the diverse elements of travel, creating a unified and efficient ecosystem of connectivity services, high-performing AI-driven marketing services, and an end-to-end content platform. Our world-class services are designed to deliver seamless, frictionless commerce, accelerating the pace at which properties can connect, grow, and optimize profit. DerbySoft consistently pushes the boundaries of innovation to unlock new opportunities and accelerate travel commerce. Our team of travel industry experts is passionate about uniting people and technology and committed to enhancing every aspect of travel, making it more accessible, efficient, and enjoyable for all. Our approach is centered on making travel better – not just for today, but for years to come. Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, USA, DerbySoft’s cutting-edge technology is trusted by the world’s leading online travel distribution partners and hotel companies in 197 countries. To learn more, visit DerbySoft.com.
With six offices around the globe and over 300 employees in over 11 countries, DerbySoft continues to grow and develop the next generation of online hotel distribution infrastructure. DerbySoft.com.
Caroline TerryDirector, Corporate MarketingDerbySoft
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