The hospitality industry is a multi-billion-dollar industry, generated by all types of people every year. This income is ensured by a variety of marketing avenues that take place in both the digital and physical world. This way, hoteliers can reach a large audience, and be guaranteed a large number of customers. Without marketing for a hotel, it could lose business and fade from existence, but with proper and wide-ranged adverts, that business can grow.
A traditional way of marketing that helps the hospitality industry are billboards. If a family decided to take a road trip and finds themselves on the highway for hours on end with their destination nowhere near them, your hotel, inn, or B&B could be their savior for the night with a well-placed billboard right by or near an exit. Billboards have long been a staple in marketing for getting a large audience due to the high volume that interstates and national highways see every day. A billboard that is well-placed or even looks inviting enough, can entice travelers coming right from airports to check out that location instead of their previously planned, routine place.
The Travel Channel is a dream network for some, and an informational channel for others. While it does give amazing information on new countries and places to visit, their advertising space could also be an amazing place for a lodging establishment. Hotels find much of their business by advertising on the channel that features traveling the most. While customers plan their vacation, they can add in an advertised hotel as well. On television advertisements, you can have a spokesperson talk about deals, pricing, and special events to invite in guests that may have not had anything special in mind about their temporary stay, giving the hotel a few new clients.
Mobile smartphone applications, colloquially termed “apps,” are the newest form of convenience right at a customer’s fingertips. In the newer age of technology, apps have become a normality for the younger generation, and especially clients that have stressful, busy work lives. If a lodging establishment has an app, it not only helps the customer with any problem or question they may have at that location, but also serves as a way to be recommended, or even have an advertising spot on the phone. The app can feature enticing pictures, which engage new viewers to check the establishment out. Keep in mind, more than 95% of people own a phone. An app for a hotelier could reach millions, if not billions of potential customers every year.
Article by Juliana, FVM