In 2010, American hotels spent about $2.7 billion on online travel agency commissions. To avoid spending money on these commissions, hotels are working to increase direct bookings by developing their own Web sites and encouraging travelers to choose direct bookings. Hoteliers should focus on ensuring that hotel Web sites have “fresh content, rich media and frequent promotion updates” to increase their online hotel bookings.
2. Increased focus on content marketing
Marketing experts will discover that brand awareness is key to reaching a wider audience. More experts will agree that content marketing is the best way to get the word out, rather than traditional advertising. A strong online presence is crucial for content marketing. Engaging blogs and social media tools, webinars, newsletters, e-books, and photo and video-sharing media are efficient and cost-effective ways to reach people quickly. People prefer direct bookings and making their transactions online, and therefore, “fresh content, hassle-free transaction modes and user-friendly navigation” are needed to rise above the competition.
The Essay on Online marketing vs Traditional marketing
Traditional marketing have many advertisement methods that have been used in the past. By saying this, we can assume business cards, print ads in magazines or newspapers, posters, radio, television commercials, brochures and billboards. Traditional marketing uses anything as long as is not digital to “brand” your product or company logo into the minds of people. People sometimes can find you or ...
3. Quality
The emotional value that comes along with a trip will become more important to travelers. They will look to ensure that their quality of life during leisure vacations is strong. Tourists will focus more on the experience and less on the cost of trips, and they’ll be willing to splurge.
4. Quality food ingredients
Tourists now are more focused with the food they eat and will care less about the presence of celebrity chefs. They will be demand quality, organic ingredients and healthy food.
5. Social networking
Social media tools are key to attracting tourists. Researching everything using social media is gaining popularity in the hospitality industry. People often read and compare hotel reviews before planning a trip, so a good online persona is important. Hoteliers should participate in review sites and hotel-listing Web sites. They also should update blogs frequently and provide testimonials from former guests. And they should have Twitter accounts that focus on customer service.
6. Mobile phones
Social media and mobile devices are inseparable, so hotel marketers should work to capitalize on mobile applications.
7. Visual media Video- and photo-sharing sites such as Instagram and Pinterest attract travelers. People are increasingly interested in sharing videos and photos, which is a good way to advertise hospitality businesses.
8. More international visitors
The site predicts that there will be a large increase in the number of international visitors to the United States. Hotels should make efforts to meet this demand and stay ahead of competitors.
