How to Advertise for High ADR Hotels on Facebook and Instagram

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For the past year, a luxury hotel located in Palm Springs, California, has been advertising on Facebook and Display to promote its beautiful property along scenic vistas, offering anyone visiting a relaxing vacation. This property has a high ADR for its luxury hotel and the amenities it offers, which can make it challenging to get conversions through social advertising. Through various tests and trial and error, we have increased conversions through Facebook and Instagram advertising. 

Leverage different ad types

One of our first tests utilized dynamic ads, where we used multiple images, videos, and headlines that were optimized by users based on how they would interact with the ads. We saw incredible results with this ad type shown below:

We compared dynamic ads to static ads by click-through rate. As you can see, we got a 7.89% CTR with dynamic ads and a 2.87% CTR with static ads. Both of these click-through rates are incredible and above our general goal of 1%, but we found that when we used dynamic ads, there was a higher response rate and better interaction among the prospecting audience.

We then compared outbound clicks between dynamic ads and static ads. We found that there were a lot more clicks with dynamic ads than there were with static ads, most likely because dynamic ads tend to be more personalized and interactive for the user.

What helped these dynamic ads succeed was not only using multiple images but also multiple videos. Video advertising is becoming increasingly more popular, where the user can see the full experience of the hotel, rather than just a single image.

Reaching the luxury traveler

Getting conversions for luxury hotels can present a challenge when there is a high ADR. How can you target the right audience? How can you get your ad seen by the right people who will convert?

To answer those questions for this property, we used 1st party intent audiences. These audiences are collected through a large number of partners in the airline, hotel, rental car, and travel space and they assist in finding the right kind of potential guest who would stay at this luxury Palm Springs hotel. We use these in prospecting audiences to help us reach those people who are at the top of the funnel and eventually bring them down to convert.

Winning the booking

When it came to generating revenue, this property had two offers that really helped them in generating conversions. The first one was a resort credit offer where if you stay two nights, you receive a $100 resort credit. The second was a linger longer offer where if you stay three nights, you receive the fourth night free. Below, we will share the results of these offers:

This graph compares conversions between two different offers. The resort credit generated 8 conversions and linger longer generated 11 conversions. 

Although we generated more conversions from the linger longer offer, we generated more revenue from the resort credit offer at over $25,000, indicating that the resort credit brought in a higher value guest.

Having offers that appeal to different people is critical for all marketing efforts and especially in this example on Facebook and Instagram, along with using very specific luxury travel audiences to reach the right potential guest.

If your property is looking to reach the luxury traveler, contact us today for help with advertising on social media channels!

Get More Control of Your Hotel’s Website with Webflow

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Having a strong online presence is essential for any business, including hotels. As a hotel owner, you need to showcase your property, manage bookings, and provide a seamless user experience for potential guests. This is where Webflow puts you in the driver's seat, with user friendly navigation and website development tools. 

Intuitive website design and customization

Webflow offers a user-friendly interface that allows hotel owners to create stunning, custom-designed websites without the need for coding knowledge. With its drag-and-drop functionality, you can easily arrange and design elements on your website, such as images, text, booking forms, and testimonials. This level of customization enables you to create a visually appealing website that aligns with your hotel's branding and style.

Natively mobile-first design

In today's mobile-driven world, having a website that adapts seamlessly to different screen sizes is crucial. Webflow provides responsive design options, ensuring that your hotel website looks and functions flawlessly on various devices, including smartphones and tablets. By delivering a consistent user experience across all platforms, you increase the chances of attracting potential guests and driving direct bookings.

Powerful search engine optimization capabilities

A well-optimized website is more likely to appear in search engine results, increasing your hotel's visibility and organic traffic. Webflow offers built-in SEO features that allow you to optimize your website's meta tags, headings, URLs, and alt tags for images. Additionally, you can create SEO-friendly sitemaps, add canonical tags, and enable SSL encryption for a secure browsing experience. By leveraging these SEO capabilities, you can improve your hotel's online visibility and attract more guests through organic search.

Easy to use content management system (CMS)

Webflow's integrated content management system allows hotel owners to effortlessly update and manage website content. You can easily add new pages, update room descriptions, showcase special offers, or publish blog posts to engage with your audience. The intuitive CMS interface provides a streamlined workflow, enabling you to keep your website up-to-date with the latest information about your hotel, amenities, and promotions.

Webflow provides hotel owners with a comprehensive platform to create stunning, user-friendly websites and take control of their online presence. With its intuitive design tools, mobile-responsive capabilities, booking management integration, SEO features, content management system, and analytics tracking, Webflow empowers hotel owners to attract more guests, streamline operations, and drive direct bookings. By harnessing the power of Webflow, you can elevate your hotel's online presence, improve guest experiences, and ultimately increase revenue in today's competitive hospitality industry.

Need a new stunning website? Let the website design experts at GCommerce assist! 

The Symbiotic Relationship of Revenue Management and Metasearch

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When it comes to luxury hospitality, every empty room represents a missed opportunity and mastering the art of revenue management is paramount. But revenue management doesn't exist in isolation; it thrives when sales and marketing work with it in concert, and one of the primary channels that transcend both marketing and revenue management is metasearch.

Metasearch engines have revolutionized the way travelers search, compare, and book accommodations. From the perspective of our digital marketing agency, which specializes in boosting direct bookings for luxury hotels and resorts, understanding the symbiotic relationship between revenue management and metasearch is the key to unlocking success in today's competitive landscape.

The role of revenue management in luxury hospitality

At the core of revenue management lies the art of optimizing room rates and availability to maximize revenue. For luxury hotels and resorts, this becomes even more intricate due to the higher price points and the desire to maintain exclusivity. Here's how revenue management benefits luxury properties:

Dynamic pricing: Revenue management systems allow luxury hotels to adjust room rates in real-time based on factors like demand, seasonality, and special events. This ensures that rooms are priced competitively while maximizing profits.

Inventory control: By carefully managing room availability, revenue managers can create a sense of scarcity, driving up demand for luxury accommodations. This scarcity can also be leveraged to promote direct bookings and loyal customer relationships.

Data-driven decision-making: Revenue management relies heavily on data analytics. It helps luxury hotels make informed decisions regarding pricing and promotions, ensuring that every room is optimally monetized.

The rise of metasearch engines

Metasearch engines have transformed the way travelers plan their trips. Platforms like Google Hotel Ads, TripAdvisor, and Trivago allow users to compare prices, read reviews, and make reservations directly through the platform. For luxury hotels, metasearch offers several advantages:

Increased visibility: Luxury properties can showcase their offerings to a global audience. This visibility is crucial for attracting high-end travelers seeking unique experiences.

Direct booking potential: Metasearch engines often facilitate direct bookings, which is a priority for luxury hotels aiming to reduce reliance on online travel agencies (OTAs) and retain higher margins.

Data Insights: Metasearch platforms provide valuable data on user behavior, helping luxury hotels refine their marketing strategies and better understand their target audience.

The symbiotic relationship

The symbiotic relationship between revenue management and metasearch is where the magic happens. Here's how they complement each other:

Real-time data sharing: Metasearch engines provide revenue managers with real-time data on market trends, competitor pricing, and user preferences. This information is invaluable for making pricing decisions.

Optimized presence: Revenue management ensures that luxury hotels are competitively priced, while Metasearch engines ensure that these competitive rates are prominently displayed to potential guests.

Direct booking incentives: Revenue managers can create special offers and promotions that are exclusive to direct bookings, enticing travelers to book directly through the hotel's website.

Targeted marketing: With the insights from metasearch data, luxury hotels can tailor their marketing efforts to specific demographics, improving the efficiency of their ad spend.

Success stories in luxury hospitality

Many luxury hotels and resorts have successfully harnessed this symbiotic relationship. By integrating revenue management strategies with metasearch optimization, they've seen increased direct bookings, improved profitability, and enhanced guest experiences.

In conclusion, for luxury hotels and resorts, the marriage between revenue management and Metasearch is a symbiotic relationship that drives growth and profitability. By leveraging real-time data, optimizing pricing, and strategically promoting direct bookings, luxury properties can thrive in today's competitive landscape.

As a digital marketing agency, we understand the power of this synergy and are committed to helping luxury hotels and resorts unlock their full potential in the digital age. Contact us to explore how we can tailor a custom solution for your property and maximize your revenue through this symbiotic relationship.

Need help taking your hotel’s metasearch marketing to the next level? Schedule your Metadesk demo today.

4 Tips to Win Black Friday in 2024

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Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales are often the biggest revenue-producing periods for hotels. With increasing competition and more companies fighting for your guests' wallets in 2024, planning your Black Friday strategy early is key to having a successful weekend (or week) once November rolls around.
 
Here, our team of hotel digital marketing experts will share some of the best tips and tricks for making the most of Black Friday.

  1. Kick off Black Friday early this year

Every year, Black Friday seems to come earlier and earlier. What was once a 4 day rush from Friday to Monday has become a multi-week long sale period spanning from early to late November.

There’s more to this than just beating your competitors to the punch this year though: in our increasingly algorithm-driven marketing environment, your ads need more than just 4 days to optimize and deliver the best results. Getting data early on what ads are performing the best, allowing algorithms to optimize who is seeing your ads, and making key adjustments are all possible only when your sale period is longer than 4 days.

The short:

  • Extend your Cyber Sale to at least 7 days, ending on Cyber Monday.
  • Extending your sale past Cyber Monday usually doesn’t drive additional conversions.
  • Although we recommend a minimum of 7 days, some of our most successful campaigns have been for Cyber sales longer than 14 days.
  1. Avoid high CPMs by leveraging first-party data and cyber sale teasers

With Black Friday advertising spend increasing 55% from 2022 to 2023, the competition for ad space on our platforms is increasing every year. In 2023, we saw CPMs increase for some hotel properties by 5 times their average non-sale period. These high CPMs make it harder to reach potential guests at a time they’re already being bombarded with more ads than usual. 

These CPMs are especially high just before and on Cyber Weekend. By running Cyber Sale teasers and email collection campaigns in early November before CPMs rise, you can engage new customers interested in your sale and collect their emails to re-engage them during your sale period, avoiding spending most of your budget at the most expensive time to advertise.

The short:

  • Find ways to engage your customers outside of paid media, like email.
  • Leverage low CPMs before Cyber Weekend to build anticipation and collect new email signups for Early Access to your cyber sale.
  • Expect CPMs to rise during Cyber Weekend: plan for fewer impressions with the same spend and consider increasing spend accordingly.
  1. Offer a percent discount and avoid narrow hotel stay dates

As we’ve covered, your prospective guests are seeing new offers from their favorite brands for almost all of November. Contrived offers with different savings for different stay durations, narrow stay dates, and many exclusions confuse customers and make them skip to the next company. Across our sales, we consistently see that campaigns with the clearest offer and fewest exclusions far outperform other offers.

The short:

  • Keep it simple. A 20% off offer is easier for your customers to understand than a Third Night Free offer, even if savings are better with the latter.
  • Multiple stay date exclusions just confuse customers, especially if they aren’t outlined clearly. If a customer can’t find your offered rate easily for the stay dates they prefer, they’re likely to just leave your website – not keep searching.
  1. Use your platform’s features

If your Cyber Sale strategy is to just launch a couple ads on one platform, you’re missing out on a variety of features available on both Search and social. On social, test out adding reminders to your posts for your sale to deliver a notification to your guests when your sale goes live. Although countdowns aren’t available natively on Meta’s ad platforms, consider scheduling ads to update for the last few days of your sale emphasizing that your offer is about to end.

On search, consider doing a full ad takeover instead of just launching sitelink extensions. In addition to ad takeovers, add countdowns to your search ads within copy and headlines to drive a sense of urgency, especially as your sale comes to a close. Using images to mirror your social and display campaigns can also drive visual interest while posts on Yext, Google My Business, and Bing Places can help the people who care the most about your hotel find your sale easily.

Consider setting up a Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar event that users can add to their calendar from your email sends. This is a great way to get out of the inbox and reach your customers in a unique way once your sale begins. Here’s a guide on how to do that in Google Calendar.

The short: 

  • Use new features your competitors aren’t using to bring attention to your sale.
  • Countdowns, reminders, and events are all great ways to create a sense of urgency while reminders and events can be a great way to get into your guests’ notifications when your sale begins.
  • Don’t be afraid to experiment!

It may not seem like it now, but the end of year cyber sales are just around the corner. Now’s the time to start making a plan for your Cyber Sale. Reach out to GCommerce to help reach more guests and supercharge your marketing this Black Friday.

Which Ad Preformed Best? Can you Guess?

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Facebook ads are a powerful tool for businesses to reach their target audience through personalized and engaging content, but selecting the perfect elements for an ad is like finding the missing puzzle piece to campaign success.

Take a look at these Facebook ad variations and see if you can guess which one outperformed the others? Discover more here.

[E-Book]Promoting DEI in the Workplace

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Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) covers a variety of topics and tactics related to the fair treatment of all people. In the workplace, this means creating a space where all employees feel safe and welcome.

More and more businesses are starting to implement DEI programs, but there’s no real standard, given the broadness of the topic. Some programs are designed to support underrepresented social groups, some to compile employee resources, and others to signify a progressive company culture. Because of this variation, it can be hard to decide which strategies will work best for your business.

Learn our tips and strategy for promoting DEI in the workplace, in our full E-Book, here.

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