When it comes to hotels, as for any marketing budget, you need a goal.
Marketing is all about how much you will earn, not about how much you will spend.
You have an online marketing budget. Even if you don't think you do. The commissions
you pay to OTAs are indirect marketing. What they spend in their visibility to provide
your bookings, they make you repay in commissions, plus their margin. When you look at the « OTA commissions » line of your P&L, there you have your online
budget marketing for the year. Pretty big for a marketing budget, right? This leads to your marketing goal: spend this money for a better purpose. Selling your
rooms through your own website is a higher purpose. First, that money is spent entirely on your brand, not for some hotel aggregator's
brand. Second, this is money you won't have to spend every year for each client. When your
clients book on your website, you build loyalty. These clients know you personally, you
have their e-mail address. You can communicate with them, offer promotions to them,
you can… well, market your hotel to them. Now some math. 10 rooms x $15 savings x 365 days = $55.000 budget. You sell your rooms at 100ADR via OTAs. Let your objective be to switch 10 of those rooms from OTAs to your own website this
year. With an average commission rate on OTAs of 20% and an average commission of your
website booking engine of 4%, you will save 16% of your room price. That's $16 / room / day. To make sure clients will book on your website, make it $1 less expensive there, that's
all it takes. $15 x 10 room x 365 days of the year. Your marketing budget this year is roughly
55.000 dollars. How hard can it be to spend that much money? First, put 10K every year on a highly converting, highly convincing website for your hotel.
For example a new 30K website every 3 years. That's including media production
(content photos, videos) and updates. Then, you need to bring traffic. 30K a year seems right to reach your objective of
switching 10 rooms from OTAs. Split it in 2: half for Search Engine Advertising, and half
on meta-search websites such as Tripadvisor. $30K to « buy » 3650 room night brings it
down to $8,2 per room night acquired, a very reachable ROI through adwords and meta-
search. OTAs get many bookings through their link on your Tripadvisor page. How simple is it to
have them book on your website instead? As simple as $1 per room. And if you're afraid this won't work and you could lose all your money, find a Booking
Engine / Hotel Marketing provider that will be happy to invest that money for you. But you have spent only 40K out of the 55K of your budget. Reinvest 10K in your hotel,
or send them to your happy investor. And with the remaining 5? Take your family on a holiday trip. And make sure you book
it on the hotel's website. Infographic available: click here
Organization
D-EDGE Hospitality Solutions
https://www.d-edge.com/
64-66, Rue des Archives
Paris, 75003
France
Phone: +33 (0)1 8721 3940
Email: communication@d-edge.com
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