5 Tips for Digital Marketing for Hotels in 2019

In 2018, constantly increasing cross-border tourism brought new growth for hotels in various countries. However, the direct hotel booking businesses are facing challenges from OTA companies. Wiitrans has been providing hotel groups in Asia, Europe, the United States, and other regions with translation and localization services covering various content types. Based on this experience and reports from HeBS Digital and data analytics companies, we list 5 tips for the hotel industry to achieve better digital marketing.  

1. Pay close attention to personalized recommendations and client experience on mobile end

A study by Salesforce found that those who want brands to predict their needs and provide relevant recommendations will account for 51% of consumers by 2020, with this trend, hotels could introduce a personalized recommendation system, to provide users with more intelligent and customized information services. In addition, with mobile becoming increasingly popular and prevalent and the time we stick to them increases, hotels should also take measures to ensure multi-platform/system and devices coverage and perfect user experience on them. Not only should you consider localizing your mobile content, but you should also make your content mobile-compatible.

(The mandarin version of Marriott Hotels' app has comprehensive features and all content has undergone high-quality localization.)

2. Provide customers with omni-channel experiences

An omni-channel experience is a multi-channel approach to marketing, selling, and serving customers in a way that creates an integrated and cohesive customer experience no matter how or where a customer reaches out. To provide customers with omni-channel experiences, hotels should collect information based on user behavior and feedback in all channels, such as websites, phone calls, and social media, to connect with, address, and respond to inquiries by users across channels in a timely manner.

(In general, Starwood Hotels responds to inquiries on Facebook within 24 hours in local language.)

3. Pump more investment into generating video content

According to user surveys and feedback, people prefer to access hotel and travel services through video content. 70% of consumers are willing to share branding videos, and 52% of consumers indicated that to know a product through well-made videos make them likes more trust worthy; even, they put more confidence into the results if they buy. Videos can be embedded on a hotel's official website, third-party sites, social media platforms, etc. Rich content, dubbing in the local language, and subtitles enable potential customers to experience a hotel's services even before they step into the lobby. Social media is especially helpful, and more user interaction and likes prompt consumers to make a decision more quickly.

(AccorHotels’ Sina Weibo account publishes a video with simplified Chinese subtitles.)

4. Dedicate efforts to precision marketing with destinations

67% of customers who did not have definite travel plans tended to book hotels that could provide relevant information on destinations that they were interested in. As such, hotels could consider using the following initiatives to attract this segment of customers:

• Provide detailed travel guides on official hotel websites.
• Create relevant videos on hotels and travel destinations.
• Work with destination tourist administration organizations to develop exclusive travel products
• Search engine marketing for destinations, and optimization of keywords to promote content on specific destinations.
• Put an emphasis on social media marketing, such as activate KOL and celebrities, to influence potential travelers.

 

5. Invest in multilingual content

Research shows that visitors generally spend 15 seconds or less to decide whether continue to browse a website. Therefore, you must provide your target customers with a website in their language to attract them and to ensure that they will not leave immediately. When you present your information in local language, cater to local users' features, you are conveying a very important message: your website has been optimized just for them, making him or her a highly regarded customer. Once you are also able to provide destination guides, tour guide services, and payment methods suited to customer habits, congratulations, you have just boost your chances of acquiring customers greatly. For example, Hilton’s website has also been customized for people speaking different languages, covering 23 languages. On the following simplified Chinese page, not only has text-based content been translated, the site also direct users to follow Hilton's WeChat Public Account and download the Chinese version of their app, both of which are features tailored to the habits of Chinese customers.

(Hilton's official simplified Chinese website)

Based in Asia, Wiitrans has provided top hotels with translation and localization services, and has native linguists in over 40 languages with hot destinations. We provide content translation services for hotel management manuals, marketing materials, customer reviews, etc., for hotels in popular travel destinations such as Southeast Asia, China, Japan, South Korea, and Europe, as well as quality localization services for official hotel websites, apps, and multimedia marketing content. We would make our professional efforts to support hotel's goal in digital marketing and acquiring overseas customers.