For hotels, the most valuable bookings are those which come to them directly either via their website or over the phone. Bookings which come in via Online Travel Agents (OTA’s) like Expedia can cost anything from 15-25% in commissions – seriously impacting the bottom line for the hotel.
As a result, increasing direct bookings is the biggest priority for virtually every hotel marketer. Inbound360 – an online advertising company who promote hotels via paid search, display advertising and social media have written a free eBook designed to tackle this problem and provide strategies and tactics which hotels can use to get more direct website traffic and cut out the middleman.
There is a large section on search engine marketing best practice for hotels which includes pragmatic advice designed to maxmise ROI from hotels marketing budgets – there’s no point most hotels competing directly with OTA’s on the most competitive keywords because they simply can’t convert traffic at anything like the rate of an OTA site. Instead focusing on more niche keywords and low competition organic search terms is the recommendation made in the guide. As well as lots of clever strategies for using other channels to deliver high converting, profitable website traffic which actually converts into bookings and revenue for the hotel.
In such a competitive industry this eBook is essential reading for hotel marketers, and best of all its free!
