Exclusive Feature: There is a constant battle with getting potential customers to visit your hotel website, and book a stay, as opposed to booking via an Online Travel Agency (OTA), this no secret.

A huge amount of time and resource is spent on maximising Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), yet once you thought you’ve cracked it, the next day you find you’ve dropped down the rankings.

Though we will never stop aiming to reign supreme, there are other alternatives we should consider, to increase our direct website traffic. But before we go into that, we need to be mindful of this astonishing statistic:

Forrester Research recently did a survey and found that “55% of consumers visiting a hotel website, abandoned the transaction because they couldn’t find the answers to their problems or questions”

That is over half of our potential customers, simply getting up, and walking away. So before we go into how we can attract more direct traffic, we need to ensure that when they do land on our website, they remain, and more importantly book a room.

With people today wanting an easy life geared towards instant gratification, we need to make sure that we meet these demands, especially if we want to attract millennial travellers. Hoteliers also need to take note of this generation's inclination for "authentic experiences" as opposed to purely material ones.

Making our websites easy to navigate and showcasing our brand and values in the best possible light, with a focus on one of a kind experiences, will ensure that our brand is at the forefront of consumers' minds when making current and future travel-purchase decisions.

Accordingly, it is pivotal that our rooms page, which is the most visited hotel website page, is clean and clear, and not cluttered with too many options. We must make it easy for everyone to find out about other facets of the property, using vivid images to promote our restaurants and amenities such as the Spa and gym and other sections such as local attractions.

So to the question in hand. What other alternatives should we look to consider, to increase website traffic?

Word of mouth has always been the most powerful marketing tool for a business, but unfortunately, it is offline, not scalable and invariably localised. Today, all of that has changed, as word of mouth has gone digital. It has become scalable and more importantly, can be targeted via influencer marketing.

Social media, along with travel Influencers have now given us the opportunity to promote positive brand awareness through the eyes of a typical guest who will share positive reviews and post inspiring images of your venue.

Through an influencer's followers, we can reach hundreds of thousands of potential customers at a touch of a button. We have the ability to market to our target demographic and expand into new ones. We can also work more efficiently on retaining existing customers as social media has greatly facilitated the promotion of loyalty programs with our devoted guests.

This is what the Marriott recently said about the subject:

“Influencer marketing is here to stay, and should play a central role in your strategy to win the hearts, minds and wallets of consumers”

But it’s not only the big hotel chains that benefit from this form of marketing. John Fowler Holiday Parks, have 3 family orientated parks based in the south of England.

These were their results, following a continued Influencer marketing campaign

• 67% increase in revenue
• 630% Return on Investment (ROI) in 3 months
• 52% increase in organic conversation rate

Influencer marketing works, but what platform should be used?

There are so many to chose from, however, there is one that stands out from the rest, Instagram.

Instagram is an imaged based platform and the fastest growing social media network to date, increasing by 100m users every 6 months. It's effectiveness from a marketing and advertising perspective stems directly from the workings of the human brain.

The human brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text, and images provoke instantaneous emotion and desire. This in turn starts the potential customer on the “dreaming and planning” phase of the travel purchasing journey.

Chris Burkard (@chrisburkard), a top travel influencer, recently said “Now you’re less than 10 clicks away from seeing an image on Instagram to purchasing a ticket to go”.

Needless to say, other social media platforms can also provide benefits to your brand. However, Instagram is unique and must be exploited in order to retain existing customers, expand into new markets and of course, drive website traffic.

This is strictly an exclusive feature, reprints of this article in any shape or form without prior written approval from 4Hoteliers.com is not permitted.

Steve Cox is a Hotel & Agency Partner Manager at Swayy. Swayy is the world’s leading influencer booking, campaign and relationship management tool in the hospitality industry.

www.swayy.me / hello@swayy.me