Resort & Hotel Advertising Agency Digital Marketing

An average hotel business should spend between $112,500 and $225,000 a year on marketing and advertising expenses, or roughly 7.5% – 15% of annual gross revenue. The total amount may be higher if you are in a highly competitive industry, want accelerated growth or your business generates high revenue during the holiday shopping season. 

Hotel business owners are often heavily involved with the day-to-day operations of their business. Some of the most common challenges for a resort business include: 

1. Intense Competition: With the proliferation of accommodation options, ranging from luxury resorts to budget motels, the competition is fiercer than ever. Add to this the surge of alternative accommodations like vacation rentals, and it’s clear that traditional hotel establishments need to find innovative ways to stand out and capture a significant share of the tourism market.
2. Fluctuating Demand: The tourism industry is notoriously cyclical, with demand surging in peak seasons and plummeting during off-peak times. External factors, such as economic downturns, political instability, or health crises (like global pandemics), can also drastically affect tourism flows, making it challenging for hotels and resorts to maintain consistent occupancy rates.
3. Digital Disruption: The digital transformation has reshaped the tourism landscape. Online travel agencies (OTAs) have become dominant players, and while they increase visibility for hotels and motels, they also command hefty commissions. Balancing direct bookings with OTA listings becomes a critical challenge. Additionally, managing online reputation is crucial as reviews on platforms like TripAdvisor can significantly impact bookings.
4. Operational Costs and Profit Margins: Running a hotel or resort is capital-intensive. From maintenance costs to staffing, utilities to marketing efforts, the overheads can quickly stack up. In an industry where price wars are common, maintaining healthy profit margins while offering competitive rates is a tightrope walk.
5. Keeping Up with Trends and Expectations: Today’s travelers seek more than just a bed for the night. They’re after experiences, local immersion, or wellness getaways. Adapting to these evolving trends is essential. Moreover, the modern traveler is also more eco-conscious, seeking sustainable travel options. Resorts, hotels, and motels must keep pace with these shifts to remain relevant and appealing.

Because hotel businesses are so focused on these challenges, it often becomes very efficient to bring in outside experts to help manage and ensure specific tasks are done correctly. Marketing and advertising are two of the most commonly outsourced areas businesses use because they are so critical to the business’s success. 

Hotel Lead Generation 

Many hotel companies are focused on generating leads. This can include building an internal email list for marketing purposes or generating high-value leads that can be quickly contacted to grow revenue. Lead generation typically involves creating a specific incentive, offer, or informational guide, then driving prospects to a landing page to collect their information. You can also collect the prospects information on a lead form hosted by the ad platform. Both options can be connected with your CRM or email marketing system so automatic calls, emails, and SMS messages are sent directly to your new prospect. If you want to help set up a lead generation for your tourism office, please contact the team at AdvertiseMint to discuss your options. 

Increasing Hotel Sales 

The most popular of all advertising objectives for hotel companies is sales. Increasing revenue is essential for every resort company to succeed. Many ad platforms have new tools that allow you to pass through values for each customer, which means they associate more weight towards the customers spending the most. This allows them to find more customers like your top spenders. If you want to help grow your tourism, please contact the team at AdvertiseMint to discuss your options. 

Hotel App Installs

Perfect for any hotel business that has a mobile app. The mobile app objective allows you to run ads either for new app installs or for app events, which are specific events set up inside of your app, such as account creation, payment method added, or transaction complete. It can also monitor usage inside the app or if users are reaching a certain area. This allows you to display highly targeted ads that are relevant to each user who sees your ads. The most common types of apps are games, utilities, or informational mobile apps. If you want to help grow sales or usage from your motel mobile app, please contact the team at AdvertiseMint to discuss your options.  

Hotel Local Traffic 

Many hotel companies have locations they are looking to drive local foot traffic to. This can be for a special event, promotion, grand opening, or daily usage. Local ads can be targeted down to a single zip code or a 1-mile radius around a spot on a map. This ensures you can reach the individuals that are located close to your motel location and get your ads in front of them. If you want to increase foot traffic for your resort location,  please contact the team at AdvertiseMint to discuss your options. 

Hotel Brand Awareness 

As your tourism company grows, it will become essential that you stay ahead of your competition. This is generally done by Brand Awareness campaigns, which focus on reaching a wide number of targeted users consistently over a long period of time. This ensures that your resort company stays at the top of mind for your consumers, and they continue to purchase your products and services. If you want to increase your Brand Awareness, please contact the team at AdvertiseMint to discuss your options. 

As technology advances, travelers have access to information through their smartphones, resulting in a shift in traditional advertising methods for hotels, motels, and resorts. Content marketing has become a powerful tool for these establishments, giving them an edge in the competitive tourism industry. How do businesses utilize content marketing to improve their advertising efforts?

1. Telling a Story: Gone are the days when a mere listing or a flashy ad would entice a traveler. Today’s audience seeks a narrative, a compelling story that draws them in. Be it a historic hotel with tales from the past, a motel that’s been a part of the iconic Route 66, or a beach resort with mesmerizing sunsets, content marketing allows these businesses to weave a story around their brand. And stories are remembered far longer than plain facts!
2. Engaging Through Visuals: In the realm of tourism, a picture truly is worth a thousand words. Through content marketing, resorts and hotels are leveraging high-quality photos and videos to showcase their amenities, the beauty of their locales, and the experiences they offer. A captivating image on Instagram or a virtual tour on YouTube can be the deciding factor for a potential guest.
3. Leveraging User-Generated Content: Nothing beats genuine testimonials. Encouraging guests to share their experiences, be it through reviews, photos, or blogs, adds authenticity to the brand. When potential travelers witness real stories and memories from fellow tourists, it builds trust and credibility.
4. Educational and Informative Content: Content marketing isn’t just about showcasing the hotel or resort. It’s about adding value to the reader. Hotels are now curating local travel guides, blogging about cultural events, or creating videos about local cuisines. This positions them as a valuable resource in the tourism sector, not just a place to stay.
5. Search Engine Visibility: Effective content marketing, sprinkled with relevant keywords, significantly boosts search engine rankings. When a traveler types “best beach resorts” or “historic motels,” a strong content marketing strategy ensures that a particular establishment appears at the top of these searches.

The world has changed for tourism, looking to increase their marketing and advertising efforts using AI. Various new tools now enable automation and AI to be used in areas like sales, graphic design, video production, content creation, voiceovers, spokesperson, video creation, blog writing, and more. 

The current average cost per click (CPC) on Google ads for the term “hotel industry” is $1.68 and is expected to increase over time. SEO generates these same clicks from targeted keywords for free. There is tremendous value from SEO as you can generate a high volume of traffic for your key business segments, however, SEO is a long-term investment. We recommend that tourism companies should be willing to plan for 6-12 months of SEO services before expecting an increase in results from these efforts. Please know that with SEO, the work is foundational, which means each task builds on top of each other. Each action ads more credibility to your website in the eyes of Google and other search engines. AdvertiseMint only believes in high-quality SEO, or long-game efforts, when building SEO. Most SEO tricks or gimmicks often work for a bit but later end up hurting your hotel company when updates are made to the search engines. The only way to move forward regarding SEO is by doing a lot of the right things and doing them faster than your competitors. Hotel SEO involves three main areas. The first is onsite optimization, which means the pages of your website contain content and are optimized for the search engines. The second step is to build more topical authority around your business to help Google understand that you are an expert in the motel area. This is done by writing consistent blogs between 500-2000 words on core topics relating to your business. The final area is off-site linking, which means other websites are linking back to your site and using specific anchor text. This can be achieved by public relations, outreach, and building relationships with other websites. When these three are done together, the result is that your hotel SEO will improve, and your organic ranking will start to increase, thus sending more traffic to your website. If you are looking to improve your SEO, please contact AdvertiseMint. 

Yes. Every motel should have email marketing and SMS marketing for their company. Email marketing has continually been proven to be one of the most profitable marketing channels for hotel companies. Email marketing allows you to reach your prospects and customers with specific messaging based on where they are located in your customer journey. These “flows” can be set up so that every person experiences the same informational process regardless of when they join. This ensures your company is communicating 24/7 with the people who are most interested in your hotel services. SMS messaging is also becoming highly profitable for breaking through all the noise and reaching your most valuable prospects via text message. There are many rules regarding SMS marketing and how to add and remove people from your motel SMS marketing. If you want to learn more about optimizing your Email and SMS marketing for your tourism company, AdvertiseMint is here and ready to help. 

Certainly, advertising restrictions can vary depending on the country, state, or region in which a resort or hotel operates. Here are some general advertising restrictions and considerations that resort and hotel businesses might face:

1. Truth in Advertising: Globally, the core principle in advertising is honesty. Resorts and hotels must ensure that their advertisements accurately represent their services and amenities. Exaggerated claims or misleading images can lead to legal repercussions and damage to the brand’s reputation.
2. Cultural Sensitivity: Some regions might have guidelines regarding cultural representation. Hotels and resorts need to be cautious that their advertisements don’t unintentionally offend local customs, beliefs, or traditions.
3. Environmental Claims: “Eco-friendly” and “sustainable” are buzzwords in the tourism industry. However, if a hotel or resort claims to be environmentally friendly, they must be able to substantiate these claims. False environmental claims can lead to accusations of “greenwashing.”
4. Use of Endorsements and Testimonials: If endorsements or testimonials are used, they must be genuine, and the advertiser must have permission to use them. If payment or an incentive was given for the endorsement, this must be clearly disclosed.
5. Comparative Advertising: Some regions allow for comparative advertising, where a business advertises its services as superior to a competitor. However, these comparisons must be fair, based on verifiable facts, and should not misleadingly disparage a competitor.
6. Data Privacy: With the rise of digital advertising, hotels and resorts often use targeted ads based on user data. They must adhere to data protection and privacy regulations, ensuring they have proper consent to use personal data for advertising purposes.
7. Alcohol and Tobacco Advertising: If a resort or hotel features advertisements for events or amenities that include alcohol or tobacco, they must be aware of the regulations surrounding such advertising. This might include not targeting ads to minors or showcasing excessive consumption.
8. Use of Imagery: Ensuring that all images used in advertising have the proper licensing and permissions is essential. This includes photographs of guests, copyrighted landmarks, or music in promotional videos.

You can find examples of hotel competitor ads online in several places. Here are the instructions for how to view competitor ads running on Facebook, Google, and TikTok ad platforms. 

View hotel Competitor Facebook Ads 

1. Go to Facebook Ad Library 
2. Select the country where the ad appeared. 
3. Select ad category (All, Politics, Housing, Employment, Credit).
4. Search by keyword or advertiser.
5. Review Facebook ads.

View Motel Competitor Google Ads 

1. Go to Google Ads Keyword Planner
2. Sign into Google Ads.
3. Click ‘Tools and settings’ in the top nav.
4. Click ‘Keyword Planner’ under the ‘Planning’ heading.
5. Click ‘Discover new keywords’
6. Type a relevant keyword into the box.
7. Click ‘Get Results’
8. Review Top of page bid and Google ads. 

View Resort Competitor TikTok Ads 

1. Go go TikTok Ad Library 
2. Select ad target country 
3. Select ad type.
4. Select ad published date.
5. Enter in the desired keyword or advertiser.
6. Hit search. 
7. Review TikTok ads. 

For most companies, revenue is the KPI (key performance indicator) we monitor when determining whether marketing and advertising efforts are successful. The revenue can be used to determine the ROI or ROAS for your campaigns over a set period of time. ROI (Return on Investment) is calculated by subtracting the initial cost of the investment from the final value, then dividing this new number by the cost of the investment, and finally, multiplying it by 100. ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) is determined by dividing the total revenue by the total ad spend for a specific period of time. 

In addition to revenue, other companies may use metrics such as CPL (Cost Per Lead), CPA (Cost per Acquisition), or CPI (Cost per Installs) for mobile apps. Monitoring these costs over time can help understand factors increasing or decreasing these numbers. They can be affected by various factors, such as landing page optimization, time of the year, and competitors. 

For companies interested in branding and spending over $100,000 on advertising, many digital ad platforms offer a tool called the brand lift study. This study is used to measure the impact on the perception of your brand when running ads. A brand lift study splits a specific audience into two groups. The first group is shown your ads over a specific period of time; the second group sees none of your ads. At the end of the study, users in both groups were shown a survey by the ad platform. The difference between the first and second groups is called the brand lift, or the increase of consumer awareness of your brand due to running advertising.