To draw guests to your hotel, bar, restaurant, or entertainment venue, you need to reach them where they are. And unless you're targeting a very senior market (and even then!), most of them are doing their research online.
Paid advertising is one way to reach them, but it's costly, stops working for you once you stop paying for it, and by nature, comes across as salesy and, therefore, less trustworthy.
So, what's a better way to reach potential guests?
Hospitality content marketing.
What Is Hospitality Content Marketing?
Content marketing is the strategic practice of creating and distributing various types of content (blog posts, social media posts, videos, …) to raise brand awareness, create demand, and attract the right kind of guests at various stages of the buyer's journey.
Some of the most relevant forms of content marketing for the hospitality industry are:
- Blog content.
- Social media posts.
- YouTube videos.
- ewsletters and other forms of email marketing.
- podcasts.
The Importance of Content Marketing for Hospitality
People don't just book a bed at a hotel or a table at a restaurant. They book luxurious tranquility in a former palace or sharing plates with loved ones in a cozy environment. They book an experience.
Through content marketing, you can inspire future guests, make them dream, and show them what they can expect. It is the number one way of sharing your brand's story and a powerful lead generator.
Here's what content marketing can do for hospitality brands:
Generate Awareness and Demand
Consistently creating and distributing original, quality content is an effective way to reach new audiences and stay top of mind with the people who've already heard from you. Compelling narratives around your brand or destination can inspire guests to book that next trip, visit, or experience.
Increase Brand Authority and Visibility
Unlike user-generated content, such as reviews, content marketing gives you control over the narrative around your brand. Highlight the strengths and unique aspects of your hospitality business on your website and social media channels, share awards and press features to establish credibility, and use photos and video content to establish trust around what potential guests can expect.
But you can't have brand authority when nobody notices you. That's why a good content marketing strategy combines content creation with effective distribution. More on that later.
Lower Dependence on Paid Advertising and OTAs
The more people find out about you through your own channels, the more direct bookings you're able to generate and the less you become dependent on Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) and paid advertising.
Reach the Right Type of Traveler
When you control the content, you control who you're targeting. Content marketing allows you to craft content that attracts your target audience. As a result, the bookings you get will be a better fit, and the likelihood of a positive review afterward is higher.
Build a Steady Pipeline of Leads
While paid advertising stops working once you stop paying, optimized blog content keeps performing for months to years after it's been published. This means that if you keep your marketing efforts constant, your results will continue to improve.
Once you've established a solid collection of performing blog posts, you could even lower your efforts at times when you need to invest heavily into a temporary project.
Keep Past and Potential Future Guests Engaged
Compelling content is content that is interesting even to those who aren't looking to buy right at this moment. It's like that magazine you read every week just because the stories in it are so good. Valuable, non-salesy content has the power to both attract guests and build a loyal customer-base by keeping people engaged.
7 Steps to Creating a Hospitality Content Marketing Strategy
Some businesses implement their content marketing strategy from a spreadsheet, while others use dedicated marketing tools. Whichever way you go, there are eight steps to take if you're setting up a strategy from scratch or revising the one you have.
1. Get Clear on Your Goals and Budget
What do you want your content marketing to achieve, and how does that fit in with your wider business goals? A few examples could be:
- Increase direct bookings.
- Sell more matinée tickets.
- Generate more website traffic.
- Grow weekday lunch reservations.
- Grow your brand's Instagram followers.
- Get more locals to buy day passes for your hotel spa.
While your content marketing can have multiple goals, it's important not to dilute your efforts and focus on one main thing you want to achieve. This is especially true if you have limited resources. It can be better to focus on one goal for one year and then revise that the next, than to try to accomplish five things at once.
2. Define Your Audience
If you start creating content without a clear audience in mind, it's likely to fall flat. Get clear on who it is exactly that you want to attract.
- How old are they?
- Where do they live?
- What's their gender?
- What are they looking for that you offer?
- What motivates them to choose you over your competitors?
- Do they typically use your service alone or with friends/family?
It's possible that your target audience consists of multiple profiles. In that case, get clear on each of them and take into account that you'll have to segment your marketing campaigns to target each of them separately.
3. Choose Your Channels
Being everywhere your potential guests are is not the same as being everywhere. Figure out where they spend most of their time online and focus your efforts there. You can do that by talking to them or by investigating where your competitors are active.
If that still doesn't tell you much, run tests: decide to focus on one channel for at least a few months to see if you can get traction there. If yes, continue; if not, move on to the next channel.
That being said, most hospitality brands can't go without having a website. It's the only online property, alongside your newsletter, that you truly own.
In addition to that, Instagram can't be ignored because of its visual focus, and especially for those looking for restaurants and bars, Google Maps is a powerful search engine.
Other popular channels to consider:
- TikTok.
- Facebook.
- LinkedIn (for business travelers).
4. Brainstorm Content Ideas
Once you know why you want to publish, for whom, and where, it's time to figure out the what. While this might seem daunting, there are a ton of ways to brainstorm ideas:
- Figure out what matters to your guests by reading reviews and talking to your frontline staff.
- Make a list of all your services, facilities, and selling points. Then set a timer and think of as many topics as you can related to each of those before the timer goes off. Here's an example:
Service: breakfast
Content ideas:- close-up photos of breakfast plates.
- a video of people enjoying your breakfast.
- a social media post highlighting breakfast specials.
- a blog post about the best breakfasts in your city (yours being #1, of course).
- Spy on your competitors for inspiration.
- Gather your staff to do a round-robin: everyone needs to contribute one idea and nobody can comment on an idea before everybody has shared.
- Work with a content strategist to analyze what potential guests are looking for in the search engines, and what your website is already ranking for.
- Think of how you can showcase "days in the life of" certain staff members to give potential guests a glimpse behind the scenes while at the same time enticing potential new staff.
Whichever way you decide to come up with content ideas, always verify that they're aligned with your brand, your target audience, and your marketing goals.
5. Create a Content Calendar
The next step is to create a content calendar. Your content calendar or editorial calendar defines what you'll publish when. In its most simple form, it contains:
- A description of what you'll publish.
- The channel you'll publish it on.
- The date on which you'll publish it.
More elaborate versions also contain things like:
- Notes on who will do what by when.
- An SEO briefing.
- Images and other material to be used in the content.
When creating your editorial calendar, mark key dates such as holidays, important events you'll be organizing, and any relevant awareness days. This helps you promote time-sensitive initiatives and capitalize on events in the world relevant to your audience.
When you’re out of content ideas, editorial planning can also serve as inspiration for content themes and topics. For example, you may notice that World Cocktail Day is May 13. This is the perfect opportunity for any hospitality business to create a fun article or video around cocktails in general, or even a specific cocktail guests can find at your property.
Lastly, settle on a content publication frequency and be realistic: it's better to publish less but remain consistent than to publish a lot at first, only to realize you can't keep up, lose your motivation, and stop posting altogether.
6. Set Up Workflows
Up until now, most businesses have been fine. The tricky part of content marketing is consistent execution. A workflow helps with that. A workflow SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) details every step from content ideation to publication and distribution.
It outlines who does what, when, and in which tool, step by step. It ensures smooth progress and makes it easy to spot where things get stuck, and processes might need to be adapted.
Instead of trying to pour everything into a single document, create SOPs for the different types of content you're creating. A video will be produced differently from a blog post, and Instagram posts need different captions than Facebook posts.
7. Prepare to Track
The only way to know if you're reaching your goals is by tracking your content marketing performance. The metrics you'll track will be specific to your goals, but here are a few general ones that are good to keep an eye on regardless:
- organic traffic to your website.
- referral traffic from Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT.
- if and how you appear in LLM answers.
- direct bookings and reservations.
- social media engagement.
Hospitality Content Marketing Best Practices
Adhere to Your Style Guide
Even when you're creating different types of content across a variety of channels, your brand needs to be clearly recognizable. Make sure your style guide includes information on how to use images, colors, and specific terminology throughout everything you put out there.
Where needed, break things down to the level of each content type:
- Blog post guidelines include information on how to format headings, insert images, craft paragraphs, and more.
- YouTube video guidelines may explain what to include at the start and end of each video, or where to put the brand logo.
- Instagram images may all be made from a single template.
Not only does this enhance recognizability, it also looks a lot more professional and trustworthy than sharing content that looks one way one day, and another way the next.
Repurpose Existing Content
In a lot of cases, producing new, high-quality content can be resource-intensive. However, there are a ton of ways that you can breathe life into your existing content and use it in new ways. Not only does this save costs, it's also a great way to distribute your stories across your channels.
Say you own a boutique hotel in the middle of a city, and you already have a strong presence on Instagram. You can reuse the same photos with a slightly different caption on Facebook. Alternatively, group together a bunch of Instagram photos on the same topic to use in a long-form blog post on that same topic.
Don't be afraid to reshare things either. The chances of someone having seen and remembering something you shared a year ago are small. If it worked well, consider using it again.
As a bonus tip, take a look back through your social media posts. Which ones have received the most likes, comments, and shares? Use this information to your advantage by writing blog articles that cover similar topics. They are bound to resonate well with your audience!
Include a Single Call to Action
Even though content marketing isn’t intended to be as forward as an advertisement, you should still always include a single call to action (CTA) at the end of each piece of content that you publish.
A call to action can be as simple as inviting the audience to view another blog article or video, or it can even prompt them to make a reservation. The most important thing is to always invite readers to do something else and engage further with your brand. Typical calls to action that work well for those in the hospitality industry include:
- Place a reservation or booking.
- Sign up to a mailing list.
- Follow your business on social media.
- Sign up to receive a free coupon or offer code.
- Enter to win a drawing.
- View another blog article, video, or web page.
It might be tempting, especially in longer blog posts, to include different CTAs, but while it's okay to link to other pieces of content, you want to be very clear about the main next action you'd like a user to take. If you give them too many options, you're diluting your message, and they're more likely not to do anything.
Audit and Update Your Content Strategy on a Quarterly Basis
After you have been publishing content consistently for at least a few months, it is always a good idea to reflect on its performance and make updates.
- Which pieces of content performed the best, or the worst?
- Can you directly tie any specific article or video to an increase in leads?
- Did any piece of content gain traction in the press?
- Are the members of your content team happy within their roles?
- Are you staying on budget?
- Are there any new content types or platforms worth investing in?
And most importantly: are you moving towards your goals?
These are all considerations that you should make either quarterly or, at the very least, annually. The digital landscape for content has been changing rapidly over the last few years, and it's important to always keep your finger on the pulse.
Content Marketing Challenges for the Hospitality Industry
Content marketing offers a wide range of opportunities for you to get found by your target customers, but it also comes with some challenges.
Changes in Search
The rise of LLMs has changed how people research their next experiences. It's no longer enough to get found in Google search results or on social media. Your potential guests are now also using tools like ChatGPT and AI-driven search engines like Perplexity to plan their next stay, dinner, or activity.
On top of that. Google's AI Overview means that, for many search queries, the answer appears right at the top of the search results.
LLMs and AI-driven search features reference information from websites, forums, and even social media platforms like LinkedIn.
It's more important than ever to be everywhere it's relevant for your brand to be and not depend on third parties, like OTAs, to drive your reservations.
User-Generated Content
User-generated content can be both a gift and a risk. When guests tag you on social media, they're offering you great social proof to share on your own accounts. The same goes for positive reviews. The latter helps you build trustworthiness as well.
On the other hand, you don't control what guests will share. Luckily, that doesn't mean you're completely powerless. Monitor your brand mentions across the web so you can respond (kindly) to critical reviews, forum entries, and social media content. This shows potential guests that you take customers seriously and treat them respectfully, even after a bad experience.
Standing Out
There are markets in which it has become increasingly hard to stand out online. Brunch restaurants all share the same smoothies and stacks of American pancakes; restaurants all have that dark glow over their visuals.
Standing out comes down to knowing how your brand is different from others and communicating that effectively across platforms. It requires marketers - in-house or freelance - who are deeply acquainted with your brand and go beyond the adaptation of free-for-all templates.
A Holistic Approach to Reaching Your Customers
When you get it right, hospitality content marketing is a powerful tool to reach potential guests at various stages of the buyer journey.
By combining brand, audience knowledge, market research, and competitor research into valuable content, it allows you to tell your unique story and attract the right audience across the different online spaces in which they do their research.
