How To Create A Hotel Marketing Plan That Will Work

Creating a hotel marketing plan is difficult, challenging and unfortunately, not on the mind of many managers. There is this approach of simply taking into account the regular promotional channels that we were used to in the past. That is definitely not great since we do have access to an increase in the number of opportunities and marketing channels that can be used.

It does not matter if you manage a single hotel that is small, one that is medium sized or an entire large hotel company. Various challenges appear and you need to always be sure that your goals are always going to be met. This is not possible without having a really good marketing plan.

A hotel marketing plan needs to be constructive, built based on a focus on the really important elements. You do not want to create a huge monster since this is a plan that is necessary on a daily basis. At the same time, you have to regularly update the plan so that it is coherent when referring to the overall business strategy. With this in mind, the most important facts that you have to remember are the following.

Determining Hotel Marketing Goals

The beginning is to basically focus on some facts in order to create a really great business strategy. This is only possible when you consider the following:

• what the target audience is
• the hotel’s specialization and differentiation when compared with other hotels
• advantages offered to customers
• the competitors that exist
• the services and products that are offered
• weaknesses that the hotel has
• what is the vision for the future

Write down the goals that you have for the marketing campaigns. For instance, do you want to increase the bookings made through the hotel’s website by 5 to 10 percent? This is the type of goal you are looking for. The plan has to include specific targets so that measurement would be possible in the future.

Creating Marketing Measures

Marketing plans start with SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis. Then, the business strategy is defined. Then, marketing plans are created for the hotels. Measures have to be created in order to eventually measure success. You thus have to consider the 4 Ps of a marketing plan:

• place
• price
• promotion
• product

Talk to people in the marketing department, the business owner and employees. This will help you to figure out what should be included in the hotel marketing plan and what should not. The most commonly used elements in a hotel marketing plan are:

• business cards
• company logo
• social networks presence
• direct mailing
• telemarketing
• SEA
• Online advertising

You need to achieve the measures you formulate in a specific time frame. Do remain ambitious but remain honest with the current state of the hotel’s powers and weaknesses. The target audience has to be remembered at all times. There are hotels that are perfect for those that have more money while others are more suitable for budget conscious travelers. The difference between the two is huge.

Do be sure that the marketing plan is shared with the employees and that you let them know the fact that they are a huge part of the strategy.

Hotel Marketing Plan Performance Review

Constantly changing goals is a necessity and you can only do this in the event that you measure the performance of the marketing plan. Various internal changes will have an impact on the hotel and all the marketing efforts that appear. Try to always be up-to-date with the external events that happen so that you can properly adapt.

The performance reviews will give you access to information about the business strategy and marketing effort’s profitability. Control success by analyzing stats and numbers on a regular basis.

Other Facts Of Interest

The hotel marketing plan will support the hotel in various ways. It will aid in getting new guests and also turn those that visit once into repeat customers. You manage to understand business goals, build frameworks to achieve them and then measure success of implementation so that you can see if you have to adapt. Only when you manage to properly analyze everything that you do you can be sure that you did all that was in your powers to market the services of a hotel.