How to Promote Hotel Business Online | 3 Sure Fire Ways of Promoting Your Hotel Online in 30 days

Foreign. Hi, thank you for sending this question to me. So, three ways of promoting your hotel online. Well, you can go into a lot of details and, and I already have a book called the AskAviaria book. Shameless plug right there. But I have a book called the AskAviaria book, which is about 50 questions asked by hoteliers. And I've answered those questions. So go through that book. It's available on Amazon. But for all of you people who ask this question, the three things that you can understand is that you got rooms to sell, you've got a banquet that can do with a few extra seminars or weddings, and you have restaurants in house that can do with extra footfall every given time. We can all do better with. We can all do with extra business. Now, most of the times what I've understood is that when we go into an operation, what we see is the occupancy of the business. Say if you've got 100 rooms, you're getting 80% occupancy. Well done. But I'm sure that as a hotel owner or a manager, if you're listening to this, you want to understand how I can get higher occupancy and even higher ARR. Average room rate. So if you want to increase that, you need to dig down and see what are the sources of your business. You see that 40% of your business may be coming from corporates and travel agents and you have given them a ridiculously low rate because otherwise you will not get the 40% business. And most hotels are getting that 40% business from them because they know that you at least take care of your basic operational costs and that's what you do. The second amount of business that is coming is from your OTAs, your third parties, and you're giving them anywhere from 15 to 25% business to be able to give you a continuous supply of business every single day. And then there is a channel called your website and social media, which is minuscule, which is anywhere less than 4,5% and sometimes even less than 2% in the cases of larger hotels. And this happens because we are as hoteliers. I'm a hotelier myself. I own and operate hotels and I market 700 hotels in 10 countries. Small, big, large, five stars, four stars. Revenue management, pricing. After working and understanding the whole ecosystem, I see a lot of fear in the unknown in human beings. And the same with digital marketing aspects of hotels where we fear spending money on social media, digital marketing at Google Ads, all of these, or collecting an email list because we say, where is the ROI. Now, unless you're willing to spend 25% with a travel agent or an OTA, your ROI is not direct on these third parties. When you're building a business and you want to build a steady pipeline which is coming to you, you need to understand that it is a three pronged approach. It's a multi layered strategy. So first you understand for your rooms to be able to run a Google and then a Google remarketing strategy so that people who are in your ecosystem are automatically marketed and remarketed offers. Today's websites are very intelligent. And every time somebody comes to your website and say you got hotels in four cities and he comes and sees a hotel and in Delhi, the website will automatically next time offer him a rate or an ad can follow him showing a rate for just that city. And therefore it's a personalized approach. The person comes in once and then after that it is the job of the general manager or the manager or the people to be able to offer him a loyalty price or an offer that the third parties may not be able to offer him, which is a personalized service, a room on maybe the first or second floor that he wants, or maybe some special attention for his kids or maybe a club room access that he wants maybe one hour only on a weekend. To be able to have a list of top 10 personalized items that are something which are of humongous value to one guest but not the masses is something that a hotel may be able to do, but an OTA may be not able to do or a travel agent may not be able to do today. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the differentiation that you bring in through personalization. So first get in your customer through Google and remarketing your website should be able to have a remarketing strategy so that only the section that he saw on your website is the ad that you're showing him when you're following him with that ad. Most people, when somebody has a conversation when you meet him again, you follow through on that conversation and say, last time we met and we spoke about this, we understood you've got two kids and six dogs and how's your dogs doing? And you kick carry on a conversation. However, when it comes to a website, for many hotels, what I have seen is that conversation starts afresh because you are not recognizing the guest or his IP address and therefore giving him a fresh conversation, therefore wasting the most important ingredient in his life, which is time, which is precious. So therefore he'd rather go to a travel agent or an OTA who recognizes him and understands him and already got his personalization bang on. Today there was a time airlines were 100% dependent on travel agents and third parties. Today, airlines have understood, invested time and money into intelligence systems to be able to offer personalized services to guests. I'm 6ft 2 most of the times. The good airlines that I work with, they give me a preferred seat. I love a certain meal at a certain time and they allow me, they wake me up at a certain time, they give me that kind of meal. And therefore I will never go to a travel agent today because I want to go directly to that airline because that airline recognizes me. But for all the other airlines where I get no personalized service and I have to keep on racking my mind that I'm coming to you again and again and I have to be and I'm a fresh customer to them, they don't care about me. Then it's only a price war. So it's only then I'm only a commodity and then I'll go to anybody who's giving me a cheaper price. For your hotel room not to become a commodity. You need to understand this aspect of personalization that is aspect number one. Aspect number two is when it comes to the mice. And I love it when there are mice opportunities in your business. One extra seminar, one extra opportunity to be able to get one extra wedding, one extra banquet, one extra mundan, one extra. You know, whatever small opportunity you get can increase the P L and make it completely different from what it was last month. LinkedIn has got HR heads, LinkedIn has got administrative heads. LinkedIn has got conversations happening where people are talking about events that an organization is doing. Where are your social media people? Where are your managers? Online. I don't see hotel people engaging online with their audiences. Ladies and gentlemen, the PR agent of a hotel and the hotel managers and all do fantastic jobs of tracking every move of a person or VIP guest in the hotel to make sure that they're comfortable. But when it comes to social media, all your customers are there and giving information about their next move and what they want to do. I don't see anybody actually making a move. You outsource the work to an agency and you expect them to do it. It's not the best strategy all the time. So my second piece of advice is get a LinkedIn sales navigator, actually start doing one on one conversation with HR and admin heads, send them personalized videos and say, hi, my name is ABHI Arya. I'm the banquet manager and I understand you have got two events coming in. Look at the size of my hall. Actually show them the video and say, this is what I can do for you. This is the kind of cuisine. Send them a video message and tell them, this is what we can do for you. Why will that not help you? People are. Businesses are all across the country. You don't need to travel, you save travel costs, you save the time, and you're able to close the deal within a month using micro videos. That's what we teach in our Micro Video Mastery program as well. How hoteliers can close more deals for their banquet halls using Micro Video Mastery. If you're watching this video or hearing this anywhere, go to the Micro Video Mastery site or come to my Monday or Thursday webinars where over 1100 people are coming and logging in every Monday live. And we're teaching them concepts on how they can take their hotels and restaurants to the next level using micro videos. Ladies and gentlemen, we live in 2020. It is time for us to change the way that we're doing digital marketing for our hotels. The third thing I wanted to talk about in my experience has been that amazing value has been provided by making the best cuisines, getting the best chefs to market restaurants. I love the concept of marketing the people behind the scene. Because if it's a celebrity chef, people come into your restaurant, but does that always last? Are you always able to afford the celebrity chef? Your occupancy goes down, your hotel's footfall goes down. The first person that you need to unfortunately fire is the celebrity chef. And, and then what happens? Ladies and gentlemen, I love the strategy of micro influencers. There are real estate agents who might be wanting to have meetings. There might be kitty parties, there might be women, you know, who are part of a soccer club. There are so many micro communities on Instagram and these micro influencers have anywhere from 5 to 10,000 followers. They don't have millions of followers and they don't expect big money in return for posting. Invite a list of 25 micro influencers who stay in a vicinity of 2-5 km in your city. Ask them to come and dine with you. Ask them to get their families. Make them part of your family. Make them belong to the hotel. They will get in the guests, they will post regularly. And that strategy has always helped you get all the regular footfalls in your hospitality business. Again, this is a strategy that's something that your agency can do, but it has to be. The hotel has to get those guests and make them belong. Show them a tour of the place, get their kids to come in. Sure. Make them brand ambassadors. Not by giving them just a fee and saying come and take a picture, actually make them belong. These are the three basic strategies that we've implemented in hotels and we've seen huge results coming in as we get into 2020 and beyond. Ladies and gentlemen, if you're running a small hotel, large hotel, mid size hotel, brand chain, non brand, doesn't matter. I hope this video or this audio message wherever you're listening to really helps you to take your hotel to the next level. If we can do anything for you, the best thing, best place to find me is on Instagram at Askavyaria. And if you want to see a live demo of how we help businesses go from level A to level B, join me on my Monday night webinar or my Thursday night webinar where There are over 1000 people from all over the world coming and their questions are being answered. And we give a 60 minute demo on what's working with digital marketing. Once again, this is Avi Arya, father of two girls, six dogs, husband to a superwoman, a streetcar racer turned hotelier, now social media marketer, founder of Internet moguls, signing off. Thank you very much for listening.