What is a hotel video marketing strategy?

A hotel video marketing strategy includes heavy usage of audio-visual content to communicate about your hotel/property to prospective guests. This strategy can benefit a brand in various forms. Right from creating increased brand awareness to see a bump in sales figures.

Is video a good marketing strategy?

In the past few years, we have seen a constant rise in platforms that are promoting video as a content type. Think YouTube, Instagram Reels, and TikTok. The primary reason behind this phenomenon is that a video can hold the user’s attention a lot longer than textual content. It activates both visual & auditory sensory organs of the human body to grab the user’s attention. This greatly benefits the platform as the video content uploaded by creators makes users stay longer on the platform.

This is why video becomes a great tool for hotels & resorts to communicate with their prospective guests in the best way possible.

With more than 57% of US adults spending 5 hours or more on their smartphones, video has become one of the best friends of the hotel marketer. With effective video communications hotels are able to communicate with their target audience at scale. That makes for a compelling reason why you should give this strategy a well-thought-out try. If done right, it can massively boost how successful your hotel/resort is in this digital-first world.

What are the benefits of having a hotel video marketing strategy?

A video-first approach is what we see in today’s platforms. All the stories that we have seen have video content in them. When the algorithms of such platforms see that as a brand you are uploading videos consistently, it starts rewarding you. It makes your videos reach a larger audience.

Production of video depends on the type of business goal. For e.g., if you own/manage a resort property at a travel destination based out of Mexico, one of the best ways to communicate to your target audience why they should come to your destination is through a well-made video with great imagery & supportive audio.

A well-made video with great imagery & supportive audio makes it so much easier to communicate with your prospective audience so that they choose your destination over another. Since the guest is getting to know about the destination from one of your marketing channels, there’s a higher chance of them getting in touch with you.

How to measure the success of the hotel video marketing strategy?

Measuring the success of any strategy is wholly dependent on what would be the desired outcome.

For e.g. the table below outlines

1. Desired outcome
2. Video-based strategy
3. KPIs for success

Outcome	Strategy	KPI
Increase Sales of Service	Testimonials of customers who are extremely happy using the service. These testimonials are shared with prospective customers showing how someone like them is using the services and are extremely happy about it.	Increase in Sales Figure
Increase Brand Awareness	Creating an about us video showcasing core competencies & USPs. The produced video is then amplified through digital outreach using paid media.	Increase in the number of branded search queries, increase in website traffic, increase in social following, etc.
Product Adoption	Creating a set of knowledgebase videos showcasing how a tool can be utilized to its utmost potential	Increase in the number of Daily Active Users, Weekly Active Users, and/or Monthly Active users
Promotional awareness	Suppose as a resort property you have come up with a promotional offer. Sending that promotional offer as a video to your email list can greatly enhance repeat purchases. To attract new audiences the same video can be posted on social channels & amplified through paid media marketing.	Increase in the landing page visitors of the promotional offers. Bookings of resort increase during the promotional period.

The strategy does not define the KPIs. A business objective defines them. The above table clearly solidifies the point of selecting KPIs.

How to create a hotel video marketing strategy?

Before creating a strategy there are 3 important elements that have to be understood & decided upon.

1. Audience Type
2. Desired Outcome
3. Implementation Budget

Once these 3 points are fixed, the rest of the strategy will fall in place automatically. Instead of giving a broad generalized strategy, let me try & give 2 strategy examples. One for a restaurant/coffee shop. The other is for hotels.

Strategy for restaurants/coffee shops

Objective/Goals	Strategy	Outcome
Increase Awareness & Footfalls	1. Create an offer. Example – “How well do you know your coffee?“ 2. Execution Plan – Anyone who walks into our shop would be given a cup of coffee in a blacked-out cup. If you can identify the coffee flavor, you’re a coffee connoisseur. So basically you don’t have to pay anything. Not only that, we’d like to take your photograph and hand it on our “Wall of Coffee Connoisseurs of the town“. 3. If someone fails at this challenge, ask them to tag a friend who believes they are coffee experts and challenge them to take up this challenge. If the tagged person actually happens to win the challenge, you got one new person to come into your coffee shop & spread awareness for your brand. On the other hand, if they are not able to complete the challenge the friends can have a good banter about their loss & you get to keep the money for the coffee which was served.	1. With such an activity happening, there’s a high chance that users who can guess their coffee correctly may end up sharing a photograph of them at the coffee shop. That increases awareness of your shop among his/her circle. 2. When this sort of challenge is organized, there’s a high chance that no other coffee shop is doing a similar challenge at the same time. reach out to prospective local online magazines to cover this event. This in turn will get your coffee shop additional eyeballs. 3. Invest in paid media to spread awareness with the photographs you end up taking of the “Coffee Connoisseurs”.

Where is Video coming into the above strategy?

All the steps above can have a set of videos created showcasing the vibe of the coffee shop, the audience which frequents the coffee shop along with the offer description. Asking users who have already taken up the challenge to use the video to challenge their friends can be a great mechanism for spreading the video content among communities which otherwise would have been extremely difficult & costly.

Hotel Video Marketing Strategy

Objective/Goals	Strategy	Outcome
Increase Length of Stay	Make a list of 5 unforgettable experiences a leisure traveler would want, but are not on their priority list when visiting the destination. Yet, if they end up experiencing any one of them it would make their holiday all the more special. Label the experience as “Unforgettable 5“ While the guest is in the planning phase share a well-made video informing the guest about the “Unforgettable 5”. That way when the guest is blocking time for their holidays, they will keep your offer in mind & take off from their work accordingly.	Having a custom-designed page communicating the value of “unforgettable 5” shall help the guest get as much information. Put 360 videos of your room & property to further woo the customer to stay at your property. Have well-made customer testimonials signifying the message – “If I had not taken the Unforgettable 5 package, I would have missed out on so much”

Offer a guest a %discount for the extended stay if the guest ends up staying at your property for 1-2 more days to experience the “Unforgettable 5”.

Needless to say, the experiences which you would want to offer must not be readily available in the market.
Think of “a custom-designed cooking class for the wife from the executive chef of the property on authentic cuisine of the destination”. Or maybe “taking the guest on a hike accompanied by a property associate from where the guest can take a wonderful travel shot which completes their vacation”

NOTE: Only on extensive research can 5 such experiences be curated. For a guest to extend their stay by a day or two is hard. Keep this in mind when designing those experiences.

Video types used in marketing & communications?

As I have highlighted several times in this article video can be used in various stages of customer acquisitions, depending upon the context of communication. I am listing out various video types with one use case for you to understand the power of video communications.

1. Walkthrough video of your property/facility – can give an overview to any probable customer of your property or facility.
2. Events Video – this can showcase how the vibe of your property during an event. It can also showcase the kind of crowd your property entertains. That way probable customers would be able to decide if they would be a good fit while looking to book an entry to your next event.
3. Team Video – An about us video goes a long way in showing probable customers how people are treated at your business. It also showcases how as a business you want to make a positive impact with the various initiatives that you are undertaking.
4. Special Offer Videos – these can be utilized to showcase the offers in an ad-based environment. The ad is only shown to users who have already been a customer before for your business & you want to increase repeat business.
5. Testimonials – A happy customer can bring in another happy customer and more. Having a testimonial video produced for a customer may urge the customer to share the content on their social profiles. Thus creating more awareness for your brand in a new circle.

Examples of using hotel video marketing

During my entrepreneurial venture in Kolkata, I worked closely with some of the best hospitality brands based out of the city. Starting from JW Marriott to Westin to Novotel & more.

Here are a few examples of hotel video marketing content that we produced that helped push brand awareness for the properties.

Promoting the launch of the night-club of JW Marriott Kolkata

AXN Challenge – Chef’s Artwork

Mother’s Day Tribute

Here’s a link to an article that I had written sometime back about how the marketing manager of JW Marriott pushed for video marketing back in 2018. it helped her gain a significant competitive edge in the local market in which JW Marriott was operating in.

Conclusion

The ideas that I mentioned are just a few use cases where videos can be utilized for a strategy to achieve business goals. In this article, I listed more than 20 video marketing ideas for hotels. It may be worth your time to check it out.

If you want me to give you a comprehensive list of video ideas that can help you in your marketing, drop me an email at talkwithme@debduttobanerjee(dot)com. I’d be more than happy to help you out in your video marketing journey.

A key thing to remember when you are thinking of creating a hotel video marketing strategy for your business is to understand where this fit in the over scheme of the digital marketing strategy. Is video to be used for brand building & awareness creation? Is video to be used as a sales mechanism? or for some other purpose?

I had written a detailed article outlining the core concepts behind digital marketing. At the end of the article, I highlighted how one can create a digital marketing plan. If you have a few more minutes, it’s worthwhile that you read the article & come back to this one. It shall make much more sense once you’ve seen the omnichannel approach which digital demands from any business.