Marketing—in every business—crucially helps build awareness, maximize profits, and ensure guest retention. Hospitality marketing remains the primary way the hotel industry conveys a unique brand (and proposition) to new customers. 

In boosting the visibility and consideration of their business, marketing helps brands stay top-of-mind. But, effective hospitality marketing strategies demand a clear idea of today’s unique hospitality meaning and definition.

Times have changed. COVID-19 hit. Hospitality ordering systems, their convenience, and resulting customer satisfaction still soar. Explore the most current insights and challenges for hospitality marketing. Then, steer a seamless experience for your customers with sustainable food tech to sharpen a competitive edge.

Key Takeaway: Hospitality marketing helps capture new business by showcasing the customer experience on digital platforms for a newly mobile-first market.

What is Hospitality Marketing?

In essence, hospitality marketing includes the whole range of tactics and techniques used to promote your travel, tourism, or food and beverage service. Such a focus for marketing can be a catalyst for extraordinary change, drawing eager customers in with captivating offers.

Tailored to hospitality groups—the main focus of hospitality marketing aims to build brand awareness, create interest, and drive customer engagement. To do this, hospitality marketers craft strategies and campaigns to allure specific audiences. 

Today, the landscape has shifted with digital innovation and global health concerns. To showcase their rooms, features, and experiences, businesses must now go far beyond traditional methods. 

Hospitality Marketing in the Digital Age

Using personalized messaging and data-driven promotions, the most successful hospitality marketers understand they must innovate to reach their goals. Whether they want to increase loyalty, bookings, footfall, or revenue—digital solutions help turn the art of hospitality into a science of attraction.  

In the last few years, the entire hospitality industry has changed and challenged itself to meet new consumer needs. Today, more customers are focused on simplicity and sustainability as they reimagine how they dine, order out, travel, and book stays.

As the world evolves into hybrid-work models, explores sustainable choices, increases plant-based offerings, and expects more consumer spending—hospitality marketing faces pressure. Every hospitality marketer must find a solution to overcome the challenges of uncertainty, loyalty, and mobile readiness in our digital age. 

Challenges in Hospitality Marketing Today

In our digital era, hospitality marketing meets the need to adapt and thrive despite hospitality industry trends and disruptions. Review these most common concerns marketers carry about the modern market dominated by new generations with new interests.

Uncertainty

More and more, customers are making spontaneous travel decisions. Brands should be poised to leverage a growing sense of adventure. 

Recent studies showed that over a fourth of customers like “last-minute” trips. At the same time, a further fourth of Americans prefer spontaneous activity at their destinations—rather than making many plans in advance. This means businesses may not know what to expect from guests who book services at their pace—and on the fly. 

Hospitality marketing notes this rising need for surprise by emphasizing shorter lead times. Marketers must ensure brands stay visible, enticing, and digitally ready to convince customers when wanderlust strikes.

Loyalty

Loyalty, in a competitive market, remains irreplaceable. Survey data shows at least a third of Gen Z and millennial consumers engage in loyalty programs with on-premise service restaurants. To push for preference, hospitality marketers should highlight values and exclusive customer experiences. 

If they succeed at crafting a compelling loyalty program, marketers can expect to capture the attention of generations who are eager to earn perks, privileges, and special offers. Hotel management software can help advance these campaigns with valuable customer data insight.

Mobility

The smartphone dominates. In your customer’s life, their phone continues to transform how they review, book, and pay for services in the hospitality industry. Increasingly, the majority of money-earning people rely on their mobile devices and third-party apps—especially for travel, dining, and entertainment.

In recent research, statistics reveal that the vast majority of customers use their phones for discovery. They look for local activities, research distant destinations, and plan their accommodations with a few taps of their fingers. 

Reaching mobile-first customers means hospitality marketing needs mobile optimization for their online offerings or digital menu ordering. They should closely consider their activity and visibility for mobile users. 

4 Tips for Marketing in the Hospitality Industry

Clearly, hospitality marketing demands staying informed and agile. To offset these sticking points, businesses can get familiar with consumer and technology trends in the hospitality industry. By staying ahead of challenges, hospitality marketers can tap emerging preferences and expand their capture.

1. Expect Bigger Bookings

Experts predict that the hospitality industry will see more bookings at higher prices than ever. Booking volumes have already exceeded pre-pandemic levels with a 40% expected increase in gross bookings for online travel alone.

2. Create Safer Experiences

To thrive post-pandemic, marketers must make safety one of their strategies. Customers expect clear communication about your efforts to protect their physical or digital safety. They want reassurance and well-being. 

3. Refine Personalization Efforts

Targeted content for individual customer segments allows companies to leverage automations and information technology for hospitality. Marketers should use customer information to deliver messages that leave a lasting impression.

4. Increase Sustainable Offers

Most Gen Z and millennial customers are willing to spend more on more sustainable services, including trips and stays. Using more conscious, responsible practices should be communicated to customers as well.

Frequently Asked Questions About Hospitality Marketing

Get answers to the most common questions on hospitality marketing. See what makes hospitality marketing unique, what the latest trends in the hospitality industry are, and how to take advantage of them through some of the best-practice strategies. 

Why is hospitality marketing different?

Hospitality marketing cuts itself away from ordinary marketing by focusing on experiences rather than tangible products or specific services. 

Rather, hospitality marketing emphasizes the feeling, excitement, and memory of engagement with the company, showing customers what to expect and who to choose.

What are hospitality marketing trends?

The latest hospitality marketing trends center on evolving customer needs and preferences. This includes more sustainable offers, eco-friendly travel, personalized experiences, and tech-enabled services like self-service, facial recognition, virtual tours, online ordering software, and more.

Which marketing strategies are best for hospitality?

Hospitality marketers have learned that digital strategies are increasingly effective for their brand’s expansion into new technology, service, and standards. Some well-favored strategies include:

• Active social media presence
• Personalized email marketing
• Loyalty and rewards programs
• Virtual walkthroughs and videos
• Optimized mobile booking and ordering

Maximize Your Hospitality Marketing

Picture this: Your reception area—sleek and inviting—bustles with satisfied customers pacing in and out of a vibrant atmosphere. Staff speeds through exceptional service with SaaS. In fact, hospitality SaaS software can sync right up with your POS system and payment solutions.

Your team’s cutting-edge technology optimizes workflows, streamlining processes with marketing automation software and synchronized customer data. In the process, your team exudes business values of quality and speed through impeccable service for every guest. 

Don’t settle for ordinary customer experiences. Your business can achieve more success with the allure of convenient, consistent, and quality service delivery powered by state-of-the-art hospitality software. Demo Revolution Ordering today.