What are the most important factors for creating content that sells hotel rooms? What does 'content' â" that buzzword of all buzzwords â" mean when it comes to hotels?
There are two main areas where content is important for hotels: firstly, the foundational content on your hotel website. Your website is your online âhubâ. Reflect that with the effort you put into the writing and imagery. The better your website content (along with your website design, revenue strategy and marketing strategy), the more direct bookings youâll get.
Secondly, content marketing. This can come in the form of articles, guides, even quizzes and playlists â" the skyâs the limit! Thereâs a lot of buzz about content marketing in the hospitality industry. Most of it is even warranted. Content marketing is a great, cost-effective way to increase brand recognition, win over guests and drive direct bookings.
However, that doesnât mean that all content is by definition worthwhile. It certainly doesnât mean that all content will get you direct bookings.
Today, weâll be talking primarily about content marketing.
Weâve picked out 6 of the most important characteristics of content that does well. Weâre also going to give you lots of examples of great content. You can adapt these for your own hotelâs needs, take them as inspiration or just keep them in your back pocket for the future.
Read the 6 steps:
1. It is not promotional
Promotional materials arenât usually exciting or inspiring, both critical components of content marketing.
Good content inspires genuine interest, social sharing, and brings people back to you. How? It does one or more of the following: (Hannah Smith, Verve Search)
- Creates a strong feeling in your audience: sadness, awe, excitement, hope, or even anger. If thereâs no emotional component to content, itâs much more difficult to make your potential guests care.
- Polarizes your audience: Itâs important to keep this light â" for example, does Bono deserve to be named Glamourâs Woman of the Year? Whatâs the ideal arrangement of pillows on hotel beds? None of these questions are important in the big picture, and differences of opinion only provoke faux-outrage. If youâre creating polarizing content for your audience, keep it light!
- Makes us nostalgic: Nostalgic content is a hit song from the â80s, or the favourite brand of chocolate from your childhood. It allows us to âinstantly connect to others who shared similar experiences,â says Hannah Smith.
For example, hereâs a Festival Playlister created by a content company, Verve Search, for Expedia. It creates playlists from specific festivals (e.g. Coachella 2013), bringing the listener instantly back in time to when they went to the festival and heard their favourite bands.
This, of course, has nothing to do directly with Expediaâs business. However, Expedia features its logo prominently featured on the page, and high-traffic sites like Forbes, The Mirror, Ticketmaster, Life Hacker, and many others covered the project. Expedia got serious exposure for the brand.
Of course, to do these things, your content needs to be engaging and informative as well. The next steps will show you how to do that.
2. It is relevant
Generic articles, stock photography and done-to-death gimmicks will get you nowhere. Instead, turn your focus to highly relevant offerings.
When you write content, you must make sure it will be useful to the reader. This is true regardless of whether it supports your company message directly. Keep the needs of your hotel second to your guests, or youâll lose sight of what makes good stories so successful.
Start figuring out what to write by taking a look at your guests. Who are they? What are their interests? Is there a target market you have that youâre not quite hitting? Figure out who your ideal guests are, and look at their tastes, interests and needs.
Some specific types of content that might be relevant, interesting and useful to your guests are:
- Guides to the local area: you can make these regardless of where your hotel is. Whether youâre near great hiking trails or in a city, thereâs bound to be something good for you to write about. If youâre in a city, consider writing a quick guide to the best brunch places near your hotel. You can even source stories from your previous guests about the best spots they hit while they were in town. If youâre in the country, consider creating a guide to the local wildlife, an interactive map of the nearby trails, or a resource on the best beaches.
Here, the Waterford Castle Resort has created a hand-drawn map of their grounds and golf course. Hereâs a guide to all the activities you can participate in on their island.
- Event-specific content: Does your hotel specialize in weddings or conventions? Write about it! Write about the best local florist, dressmaker, and caterer. If you can, ask them to give you a shout out on their websites as well â" youâll each get a bump in search engine rakings. For conventions, consider offering a checklist of organizational tips or similar.
Hereâs a fairly straightforward, but very well-written guide to weddings at the Ardboyne Hotel. It details their wedding packages and gives a good sense of the luxury of the hotel and ceremony. It also discusses getting your family and friends from the airport, and the perks of having your wedding in their culture-rich location in Meath, Ireland.
3. It closes a gap
Content marketing should answer a question or problem common to your guests. This can be a great way to generate topics for content. Look at your guest personas, and find out which of their wants and needs youâre able to answer with content.
An added benefit of this useful information is its ability to be used in lead nurturing. When guests turn to you as a source of interesting or useful information, over time theyâll think of you as the place they want to be when they travel.
For example, I personally have signed up to Kimpton Hotelsâ loyalty program, simply because I was so intrigued by their offering and the way they wrote about it. I have no current plans to travel to the cities their hotels are located in. When I do, though, you can bet Iâll try to book a stay with them!
While that isnât strictly an example of content marketing, itâs a good example of what you want all your content to do: surprise and delight your guests! Make your website and your brand a carefully-curated place to find interesting, relevant content.
4. It is written well
Poorly written thought leaderÂship doesnât just provide poor results. It may also hurt your hotelâs reputation. Fortunately, this one is straightforward to fix.
Take time to ensure content is presented in a thoughtful manner and is free of errors. Run a second pair of eyes over everything that gets published, and make sure those eyes have a good grasp on grammar and ways to write interesting copy.
If you donât have the next Pulitzer Prize winner in house, consider using a free or inexpensive online writing tool. Here are 11 tools that might help, and they can check anything from grammar to clichĂ©d phrases to basic readability. For our money, we recommend starting with the Hemingway App.
5. It is relevant to your hotel
Weâve discussed how important it is to keep your guests at the forefront of your mind; hereâs the caveat. If the content you create does not support your hotelâs goals in any way, it is a waste of resources to produce.
While x may be interesting, will it persuade guests to book with you? Does it matter to the type of guests you hope to attract? Ask yourself the following questions before you start putting time and money into an article or video:
- Does this matter to the guests we want?
- Will reading/seeing this help guests remember our hotel?
- Will reading/seeing this lead to a guest making a booking?
- Does this portray our hotel as a place who values the same things our guests do?
If the answer to all four of those is no, donât make the content. If the answer to one or more of those is yes, think about how it slots into your booking funnel.
- Is it designed to draw the attention of those who may not know about your hotel? A good example is this article on âalternative wedding venuesâ people might not have heard of. While it wasnât made by a hotel, itâs a valuable list for a little-known hotel to appear on. Itâs specifically for someone who is looking for an alternative wedding venue and isnât sure what they want yet.
- Is it for guests who are doing deep research into different hotels? This page on the family history of Castle Leslie Estate in Ireland is designed to set the scene for the prospective guest, and help them feel connected to the hotel.
- Is it for the guest who is almost ready to book, but needs one more push?
Know who youâre writing for and where in the sales funnel you want them to read it. Without a disciplined approach, youâll find even the best-written, most interesting pages on your site will miss the mark.
6. It gives proof
Since you write to support the ultimate goal of getting guests to book a stay at your hotel, your content may seem biased. To overcome that, make sure that the content you create argues your point.
If itâs about the natural beauty social proofsurrounding your hotel, make sure to include compelling pictures. For pieces based on hard facts, give actual metrics and statistics. If it concerns activities at your hotel, give proof through quotes and testimonials that show your previous guests have had wonderful experiences.
Conclusion
Take these 6 steps as a checklist when youâre developing content for your hotel. Creating successful content requires creativity, but youâre not working blindly.
Follow best practices, keep your audience in the forefront of your mind, and find topics that close gaps for your guests. Once you have a handle on these basics, youâll see you content shared around the web and a serious uptick in bookings!
Taylor Smariga
Taylor is a Conversion Data Analyst & Distributor at Net Affinity. She graduated from Trinity College Dublin in May 2015, and studied Political Science, Philosophy, Economics and Sociology, all of which gave her a broad view of the social sciences and the way different disciplines approach a problem. She is passionate about writing, data, digital marketing, graphic design and dance, and does her best to apply the first four to her work at Net Affinity.
Net Affinity
Focused exclusively on the hotel sector, Net Affinity has collated the brightest, most commercially focused, experienced and passionate team of online marketers, account managers, designers and developers whose combined skill set ensures our clients online success and continued growth. We created this blog because we wanted to share our expertise with you, and offer you the knowledge that over 15 years experience in the hotel industry has given us.
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