In the battle to win customers to direct channels, hotels
need to adopt a multi-pronged strategy finds new report.
Hotels are struggling to win direct bookings in a
hyper-competitive age of online travel booking. However, there is still room to
improve performance and make major headway in this important arena by reaching
consumers in the channels that matter and perfecting those channels for maximum
effectiveness finds a new report. The State of Hospitality Distribution: Direct
report, which
is free to download now, notes that hotels that focus the efforts on a carefully
crafted strategy across Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), metasearch, their own
sites, loyalty programs and social media and User Generated Content (UGC) stand
a good chance of boosting their direct bookings.
Looking at
what tactics are viewed as most critical amongst the travel industry, SEO,
content marketing and social are seen as the most critical for customer acquisition.
The
report notes an EyeforTravel industry survey, which found that travel suppliers
reported that their top area of investment for customer acquisition is SEO, at
54% of respondents, followed by content marketing at just under half of
respondents and then social media and blogs. Reinforcing the importance of SEO
and social, as well the pervasiveness of the most powerful advertising networks
on the internet, 63.7% of travel suppliers said that Facebook and Google were
positive influences that help their businesses.
It is
therefore critical that hoteliers address these fields. When it comes to SEO,
the game has to be played cleverly as more generic keywords reaching the
broadest segment of the market are already likely to be subject to fierce bidding
and therefore difficult to generate strong returns from. The report suggests that
hoteliers need to research their field of keywords, focusing on long-tail
keywords more specific to their properties, as well as the following:
●
Move to a responsive website: Responsive sites help
with ranking as it is easier for search engines to crawl and uses a single URL,
and Google has tweaked its algorithm with the release of Hummingbird to be more
focused on the mobile experience.
●
Look at code and content carefully to reduce page
load times: Look at page weight and figure out where the biggest strains are as
well as where there might be smaller savings. Approach imagery in a smart
manner, looking to compress, run off an image server, and combine background
images into a single image to reduce requests. Consider a Content Delivery
Network (CDN) to reduce latency.
●
Think about user purpose at all stages: Consider the
user intent at all stages and make it easy for them to navigate to the next
step.
●
Create quality, original content: Focus on being
trustworthy and authoritative. Poorly conceived and created content will mean
low dwell times, a lack of backlinks, high bounce rates, and poor ClickThrough
Rates (CTRs). Create content hubs related to your destinations or offerings
that interlink with each other and answer specific things that visitors would
want to know about the area or service.
●
Remember search engines are mostly text-based and
you need to make their lives easy: Look at underlying structural data that can
help engines and therefore your position. These include: meta titles, meta
descriptions and header tags, particularly the H1 tag, that use keywords
appropriately and help describe the page; alt tags, related file names and
descriptions for key images; and provision of a sitemap to Google.
●
Set up a Google Search Console account: Google’s
Search Console is an incredibly helpful tool to track site performance and
organic SEO.
Alongside SEO,
social is highly influential, particularly in initial phases of thinking about
and researching a trip, most notably among younger consumers. “Social media
plays a big part in who we are and how we reach new audiences,” said Kate
Martin, General Manager of the Luma Hotel Times Square in New York City. “Because we’re new and hip, we
find and connect with customer who appreciate us for being different and social
media is a big part of that.”
Jason Lee, Senior Director of Product and Technology at Travel Media Group, finds that
social media and in particular Facebook affect all phases of the buying
process, with “Facebook delivering the most bang for the buck because there’s
nothing like it in the social media sphere.”
Lee’s
strategy for hotel clients is to both invest in promoted content and ads and to
create content that builds engagement. Consumers will likely use social media
as a research tool, going elsewhere to book and largely ignoring Calls to
Action (CTAs) except when closely targeted, such as at choice moments of
heightened interest. For one hotel client, Lee spent $10 on a Facebook post
promoting room availability during dates when a high-profile artist was giving
a concert at a venue near the property. Within minutes of the post going live,
it was viewed several hundred times, shared 87 times and generated seven room
nights.
Some of the
above principles for social and search should be applied to the hotel’s website
itself, which is perhaps the most crucial element of driving direct bookings. Similar
to social, imagery is critical. For Sonesta International Hotel
Corporation relaunch of its website it took the route of going “Much more
visual that what we had previously,” said Scott Weiler, vice president,
marketing and communications at Sonesta. “We commissioned a lot of new photos
so that the site would be in lock step with the look and feel of the
hotels.” Much of the website balances a
single hero image across the top of a page with tiles that Weiler described as
visually providing users with a way of navigating a number of ideas very
quickly
Honolulu-based Aqua-Aston Hospitality chose to position
itself on its website as a Hawaii destination expert in addition to offering
lodging facilities. Travel suggestions are tailored to users’ preferences and
content themes change regularly and are tied together with customized
itineraries created by local influencers and ambassadors. The company also
amasses user data as they spend time exploring the site; that information is
used to improve target marketing capabilities, serve up more relevant offers to
users and further build its Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system and
loyalty program.
It is the last
point that is also perhaps being overlooked currently as the
report finds that the loyalty program and hotel loyalty in general are not dead.
Loyalty programs
continue to drive value for brands, attracting the highest spending consumers,
driving positive views of the brand and being a way to reach younger consumers,
surprisingly.
Over 90% of travel organizations believe that their loyalty
program has had a positive effect on their brand’s perception among consumers according
to an EyeforTravel industry survey featured in the
report.
The results also note that 78.5% of hoteliers reported that
their loyalty program members spent more than the average, with 30.8% reporting
that they spend ‘considerably more’. In a consumer survey also within the
report, membership for loyalty programs was skewed to higher income brackets, explaining
this higher spend.
Furthermore, satisfaction regarding hotel loyalty programs was
highest among the youngest age group. More than 80% of those aged 18 to 35 and
members of at least one program think that hotels provide good or excellent
service when it comes to loyalty membership. This declines to 73.8% for those
aged 36 to 55 and 65.4% for over 55s.
Even better, the most engaged members are those aged 18-35.
In this demographic cohort 70.3% report that they use their rewards on all or
most of their journeys, falling to 66.1% from the middle-aged group and then to
51.8% for those over 55
This suggests that there is enormous value to be mined from
a well-run loyalty program in targeting key groups of consumers and
understanding the brand’s customer base, as well as generating repeat bookings.
For more, download the report now to get the inside track on direct
bookings. This report features:
- Industry and consumer
survey data from hundreds of travel suppliers and thousands of consumers
- Viewpoints from major
hotel chains and independents on key tactics
- Analysis of the state of
direct booking rates to benchmark your performance against
- Tactics to improve direct
channel booking rates and increase loyalty
- Strategies to increase
channel visibility and get more guests into your funnel.
This report is part of the
State of Hospitality Distribution Report Series. In this we cover
metasearch, direct and OTA channels, assessing the health and landscape of each
before giving you the information to maximise their effectiveness. Keep an eye
out for our upcoming OTA report and click here
for the metasearch report.
