Editor’s note: Hawthorn Creative Founder and CEO, Jessica Kaiser, presented a webinar with the International Luxury Hotel Association on strategies for driving hotel engagement and bookings. Watch the entire webinar here.
F
or hospitality marketers, enticing travelers to choose their property is getting more and more challenging. There’s so much competition out there — both in physical locations and the digital ways to research them — that travelers can quickly become overwhelmed by the choices. According to Jessica Kaiser, founder and CEO of Hawthorn Creative, hotels and resorts can cut through the clutter, but it takes hard work, diligence, and dedication to staying on top of trends.
Your website is your most important tool
To help your property rise above the noise, it all starts with your website. The clearest path to success begins with understanding what’s working and, more importantly, what’s not. And it’s about much more than clicks, bounce rates, and conversion rates. “If you can understand this undercurrent, you have a much better chance of impacting the results,” Kaiser said.
Armed with that information, you can create a strategy that refines your funnel by optimizing the good and minimizing (or eliminating!) the bad. To get a clear picture of what’s happening on your site, ask yourself questions like these:
- Are your high-traffic pages leading to the booking engine? (If not, why?)
- What pages are driving the highest exit rate?
- Do you have enough CTAs throughout the site encouraging people to book? (And are they placed high enough on the high-traffic pages?)
On average, Kaiser noted, travel and hospitality websites average six page views per session. If your site isn’t seeing that level of engagement, it’s time to reassess.
Tap into buyer psychology in marketing
According to Kaiser, there are five categories to consider when developing your marketing strategy: simplicity, consistency, social proof, scarcity, and pricing. Together, these add up to what she calls “buyer psychology,” or the beliefs and behaviors that drive their decisions:
- Simplicity: One thing buyers across all personas have in common? They don’t like to be overwhelmed by information. To avoid decision fatigue, don’t offer too many options — or, be sure to break those options into clear categories and present the information in a way that’s easy to understand.
- Consistency: For luxury hotels, your website needs to reflect that sense of luxury and exclusivity in all areas of your marketing. That means the negative space, large images, and clean fonts that you use on your website home page should remain throughout every sub-page, on your social media pages, and especially your booking pages.
- Social proof: Hotel reviews are oftentimes the deciding factor in which property a traveler chooses. For that reason, it’s essential to incorporate the best testimonials on your site or, even better, integrate a feed that updates in real-time. Giving travelers the chance to read reviews directly from your website also keeps them within your ecosystem.
- Scarcity: In Gen Z terms, this is also known as FOMO, or fear of missing out. One way to address this fear is to note in your booking engine how many rooms of each type are available on a traveler’s preferred days. Or, if you’re running promotions, be sure to include how much time is left before the special ends.
- Pricing: What should the price be? When should we shift it? How should we sort pricing on the booking engine? All of these questions have psychology-based answers: luxury hotels over $400 per night, Kaiser said, should sort prices by high to low in order to showcase premium products first. If that number decreases during the off-season, though, sort prices by low to high in order to be more competitive.
Direct bookings are on the rise
Since 2020, travelers have shifted their booking behavior away from OTAs in favor of direct bookings. And ironically, this is somewhat due to advertising. Called the “OTA billboard effect,” some hotels see an increase of as much as 25% in direct bookings when they advertise on OTAs.
The key, once those travelers make their way to your website, is to keep them there. One of the best ways to do that, Kaiser advised, is to give them direct access to what they value most about OTAs: multiple services in one location.
An OTA, for example, makes it quick and easy to compare rates and reviews for all the local hotels. Add in the benefit of booking a flight or renting a car, and it’s hard not to take that deal. Hoteliers can create that same atmosphere on their individual websites by announcing clearly and up front that travelers get the lowest rate guaranteed when they book directly. To sweeten the pot, direct bookings can also include exclusive bundles or upsells like spa experiences, a free drink at the hotel bar, or a discount on local activities as part of a direct booking package.
Focus on experience vs. amenities
Travelers today tend to book their lodging based on the type of experience they’d like to have. Spa resorts, for example, attract guests looking for relaxation, education, and personal growth for the mind, body, and soul. Family-friendly seaside retreats, on the other hand, bring in guests looking for excitement and adventure.
Once hospitality marketers understand the experience they’re able to offer (and the experience their guests expect) the key to success is to promote the concept everywhere, including your website, digital media, social media, blog, short-form video, influencer content, and whatever other tactics make sense for your marketing mix. Kaiser said targeted promotion, along with a smart SEO strategy, will go a long way toward attracting the right travelers for your property.
Understand the changing luxury travel space
The bottom line is to understand as much as you can about your industry, region, property, and most importantly, your ideal traveler. And once you have that information, never take your eye off the ball. “Every choice you make about marketing should revolve around the values and desires of your buyer,” Kaiser said.
To hear more advice from our CEO Jessica Kaiser on how to drive more bookings to your property, watch the full webinar.