If you are a hotel owner then you won’t need me to tell you that these are tough times and that the vacation rental industry is taking customers away from your business. In order to overcome this slump, it is important that you move with the times and do all that you can to stay relevant and attractive to your customers. I stay in many hotels across the world and there are some who have not lost market share because of the way in which they promote themselves. Take the Bicycle Hotel and Casino in California for example, a hotel I have stayed in numerous times. This hotel is constantly busy and always full because of the way in which they conduct their business, giving hope to hotels that are struggling right now.
One of the best ways in which you can bring more business in is to be active on social media and here is why it is so important.
Exposure
The sheer volume of people who use social media is incredible and that provides you with a huge market that you can tap into. People use social media for far more than just connecting with their friends and this creates a great space for you to promote who you are and what you do. There are literally millions of people using social media each and everyday and this is exposure which you really cannot refuse.
Free Marketing
Hotels spend a great deal of money on a wide variety of marketing and whilst there is nothing wrong with investing money in this way of bringing extra clients in, social media provides you with the chance to do it for free. If you can get creative and upload some high quality and high value content, you can use your social media page as a great marketing tool.
Reviews
If you are offering an excellent service then you should be allowing people to leave reviews about it online. One of the best ways in which you can do this is to have a social media page where people can talk about their stay with you for all of the world to see. Equally, if someone wishes to leave a poor review or wants to express problems which they had during their stay, you will be able to get in touch with them directly to protect your image and help to fix the issue.
Human Touch
In order to gain the trust of your clients, you need to add a human touch to what you are doing and social media is the perfect way of doing exactly that. Through the use of social media you can show off the funny side of your business, you can comment on other people’s content and you can show that your business is not faceless. With so much competition out there, customers find it difficult to be loyal and trusting of a business, add a personal touch and you can reverse this trend.
