When marketing your hotel you may desperately seek inexpensive and unusual tactics to help you stand out and keep to a tight budget, but chances are that significant funds will have to be devoted to spreading the word. Don't ignore some of these basic, proven tactics which have served the launches of many hotels.
Tourism Office
Find out how the local tourism office can help to advertise the hotel options in your city or county. They may offer listing on their website with the purchase membership at the very least. If you go further and advertise in tourism materials, make sure you are prominently placed in materials tourists look at before arriving to the city. Being in a pamphlet they receive only upon arrival to the local tourism office will be of no help. Look for advance materials, such as website or promotional packets the tourism office sends to those who express interest and to travel agents.
Public Relations
A public relations strategy is key to crafting the story of why your hotel is newsworthy. From a local perspective, this may be an easy sell. More work must go in to the greater travel press and business press (if you will cater to business travelers). You or your carefully chosen public relations agent or firm should craft press releases which explain the story of interest to the paper, taking the guesswork and legwork out of the equation for them. A good PR firm should be keeping abreast of helpareporter.com, a website devoted to reporter calls for experts testimony and stories.
Internet Marketing
To outspend competitors and hotel booking websites like hotels.com and tripadvisor.com on Google ad keywords for hotels in your city will be difficult. Start by making sure those sites include your hotel, even if you must pay fees or commissions for rooms rented through them. Work your way up the "organic" Google listings (the list of links on the left-hand side of the page) by making sure your original web designer has search engine optimization (SEO) in mind and that you retain the services of an SEO firm to continue to improve your rankings. Look at all of the non-competitor sites that come up for the keywords you want to rank on and attempt to receive from them (or let the SEO firm work on this).
Events
Pre-opening and launch events can create buzz about your hotel in the community, building community member understanding of the services you will offer to your customer target market. The local businesses, residents, and government won't refer visitors to your hotel unless they know about it and they think it would be a good place for their clients, friends, and visitors to stay, so events should focus on building awareness and brand image. If events can be designed with an unusual twist all the better - they make a bigger splash by becoming newsworthy and tying in to your PR campaign.
Are you looking for more tips on how to start a hotel or develop your hotel business plan? Call 800-506-5728 to learn how Growthink can help you start or grow your hotel business.
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