Hotel Marketing White Papers
Providing Free Hospitality Industry ResearchSocial is the New Search
Social media has expanded past its original purpose of connecting people and evolved into a powerful tool for discovering new information. Hotels must maintain their social presence to ensure they remain relevant in online searches. This white paper discusses best practices for ensuring your property is taking advantage of social opportunities.
Spring Guest Sentiment Report: 3rd Edition
In our 2024 Spring Guest Sentiment Report, we analyzed over 2 million reviews and individually identified a staggering 8 million+ guest sentiment tags that provide the blueprint on how hotel owners and operators can tailor their on-site hotel operations to capture more traveler bookings and drive revenue ahead of the busy summer.
Hotel Renovation Best Practices
Maintaining guest satisfaction while undergoing renovations can be challenging. From mastering review responses to leveraging social media effectively, this white paper provides actionable tips to ensure a successful renovation process and set hotels up for long-term success.
Winter Guest Sentiment Report: 3rd Edition
We analyzed over 7 million guest reviews, 1.7 million guest sentiment tags across 24 of the most prominent review sites, so hoteliers can utilize the guest sentiment data from the 3rd edition of our winter guest sentiment report to make informed decisions to improve their operational and digital marketing strategies for their hotel properties.
A Hotelier’s Guide To TikTok & Instagram Reels
Creating captivating social media content through the use of engaging videos is the standard now for hotels. Travelers are using dynamic media to influence their booking decisions and get a first-hand look at what the guest experience is like at hotel properties. Check out our complete guide to creating Instagram Reels and TikTok Videos for your hotels to help you get started.
Fall Guest Sentiment Report
The busy fall season saw interesting travel trends and enormous amounts of guest feedback this year. Travelers were putting on display how they felt about their hotel visits this autumn by sharing their experiences across numerous review sites for hoteliers.
Summer Guest Sentiment Report: 2nd Edition
This summer season has been absolutely scorching, with millions of online hotel reviews containing vast amounts of guest feedback to guide hoteliers on what travelers felt and said about their summer travels. Hotels and hotel management groups can gain immense insights from the data that will aid them in making more informed and effective decisions that benefit their guests and businesses.
Spring Guest Sentiment Report: 2nd Edition
Uncover valuable and actionable insights from this year’s Spring Guest Sentiment Report. With data collected from millions of online guest reviews and over 7 million sentiment tags, the 2nd edition of our annual spring report includes key takeaways allowing hoteliers to make more informed decisions and detail what travelers say about their hotel experiences.
2023 TMG Media Kit
ROI of Responding to Reviews
Winter Guest Sentiment Report: 2nd Edition
We conducted our annual winter guest sentiment report by collecting and analyzing over 2 million guest sentiment tags. This information provides a clear insight into what travelers feel and say about their hotel experiences as well as when and where they are taking them. Hoteliers can then utilize this data to make informed decisions to adapt and improve their operational and marketing strategies.
Reshaping Your Hotel’s Reputation for 2022
Managing a hotel or group of hotels requires a lot of work and a ton of commitment. Hoteliers are stretched thin, especially with the labor shortage, trying to manage employees, boost their hotel ranking, and ensure guest satisfaction. However, you can’t let your reputation take a back seat, especially during times like this. That’s why having a reputation strategy in place will set your hotel up for success in 2022 and beyond.
The Anatomy of a Review Response
Receiving continuous feedback is instrumental to the way hotels understand the success of their operations. However, every piece of feedback requires a unique, timely response, and it can be difficult to know how to write a polished response every time. Understanding the anatomy of a good review response can help streamline the process for hoteliers, leaving them with a polished, professional message that will address any feedback left, no matter the source.
Customizing a Post-Stay Survey for Your Guests
Of all the guest feedback tools that hoteliers have access to, post-stay surveys are among the most insightful. Through them, guests can provide honest feedback about aspects of their stay in an efficient way, and hoteliers can use the data from each survey to further refine and improve their hotel experience. This white paper covers the various methods hoteliers can use to get the right insights and boost survey completion.
How to Compete in a New Build Market
Despite the changes brought to the industry by the COVID-19 pandemic, research shows that there are still plenty of new build projects happening nationwide. As travelers move from the dreaming phase to the booking phase of their journey, it’s important for tenured hotels to understand what makes them stand out from the rest of their new competitors.
Identifying the New Traveler
Capturing More Interest with Targeted Marketing
The effects of the coronavirus led many industry experts to refer to 2020 as “travel’s lost year.” A lot of changes occurred to traveler behavior when booking hotels, and learning what those behaviors mean for the way you market your hotel will be crucial to your hotel’s success as we continue to navigate the pandemic. This white paper shares tips for how to match travelers’ interests with your hotel experience.
Social Listening 101
Social media is no longer a choice for hotels – it should be an active part of your hotel’s digital marketing strategy. However, like with most elements of marketing your hotel online, there are numerous elements of social media to consider. Social listening is increasingly important, but it can be difficult to understand how and when to tune in to the conversation. Knowing exactly how to use social listening to your advantage will give you an edge over your competition.
Utilizing LinkedIn for Your Hotel Marketing Strategy
LinkedIn is a fast-growing platform with over 171 million users in the U.S., and 30 million companies actively online. While it’s been used commonly as a B2B marketing platform, the popularity of LinkedIn as a B2C platform is on the rise as well, especially in response to the global health crisis. Hoteliers should take advantage of this growth and utilize LinkedIn to market to a unique audience of local business travelers.
Branding for the Next Generation
Marketing Strategies to Capture Gen Z’s Attention
The next generation of consumers is on the rise, and the sooner you’re able to pivot your marketing strategy to capture their attention, the more conversions and bookings you’ll earn. Generation Z makes up 40% of the consumer population right now, and as a group that thoroughly understands the power behind their purchase, you’ve got to show them clearly why your hotel is perfect for their next great vacation.
The Importance of Social Media for Hotels
Benefits & Best Practices
Social media is a highly influential – and equally essential – piece of every hotel’s marketing strategy. With how connected travelers are to their phones for every other part of the booking process, it only makes sense to gear your marketing strategy to capture their interest as early as possible. By following best practice guidelines, you can boost your hotel’s reach, reputation, and overall earn more bookings.
Email Marketing Best Practices for Hotels
Engage Your Guests with Professional Email Campaigns
Email is a powerful tool for businesses that can provide some of the best ROI on your marketing investment — up to 44%. Like any advertising avenue for your hotel, the best strategy involves some testing, measuring, and refining. This white paper shares what you need to know to get started using email marketing for your hotel.
Building a Content Strategy To Satisfy Travelers’ Needs
To succeed in a constantly changing market, hoteliers need to keep an eye on what’s trending and how travelers are finding their way to hotels – that way, they can develop a content strategy to directly capture the needs of travelers. These various consumer needs can be tracked through search trends, and further monitored through the success of compelling marketing content geared toward specific desires.
The Lasting Impact of First Impressions for Hotels
How Travelers’ Opinions Affect Your Hotel Long-Term
First impressions drive a guest’s motivation to book with a hotel, and what they see could impact their opinion of a property for a long time. Depending on what guests find, the result could be the beginning of a trusting relationship between guest and hotel, or drive the traveler to book with another property entirely. Knowing the best strategies to implement in reputation management will help improve the first impression guests have about a hotel both in person and online.
The Key to Reputation Success in 2020
Why Recent Reviews & Responses Matter More Than Ranking
By only focusing on the overall rating of your hotel, you can be affected by the whims of an algorithm change. But by having a more holistic approach to your reputation online, you can make your hotel more attractive to people searching on review websites. What many hoteliers don’t realize is that being #1 isn’t the only way to succeed. While ranking higher than a competitor gives you an edge, there are other factors that affect what a person browsing hotels thinks of your business.
Travel, TripAdvisor & Trust
How TripAdvisor Influences Traveler Booking Decisions
Whether travelers are comparing hotel website specials to their loyalty points or OTA deals to their work travel perks program, one thing remains the same. Almost all travelers reference TripAdvisor before, during, and after they book. What does this mean for hotels? That even if you’re doing everything right – maintaining OTA listings, adding strong SEO content to your website, creating engaging social media posts – you still won’t be able to keep up with your competition if you aren’t putting the time into TripAdvisor.
How Responding to Reviews Affects Your Bottom Line
What’s the ROI on Review Responses?
While review responses are most well known for influencing travelers, they also serve to increase occupancy at your hotel in other ways. Review responses are good for SEO and can increase your ranking on local search. They can increase loyalty, leading to return customers that cost you less to book. And, responses give your guests and potential guests an idea of your personality and how you handle issues at your hotel. Above all, responding to reviews shows that you care.
Social Media
Your Hotel’s Marketing Super Power
At Travel Media Group, we like to think of each social media network like a superhero. Like the Avengers or the Justice League, your social media strategy requires each individual working together to save the world your occupancy. To understand each network better, we’re sharing information about their superpowers, fan base, and specialty to show you why each is an important addition to your marketing strategy.
How to Create Actionable Social Media Content
To Attract More Hotel Guests
The most effective social media posts are ones that inspire followers to take action. In this eBook, we explain how to use calls to action and engaging content to move travelers along the booking path. In addition, you’ll see specific examples of creative social media posts for hotels to use to encourage action at every stage of the booking decision journey.
TMG TripAdvisor Hotel Marketing Guide
Optimize your TripAdvisor to best engage with travelers.
TripAdvisor plays a big role in helping hoteliers engage with guests, improve their reputation, and market their hotel. In this white paper, you will gain an understanding of how to optimize your TripAdvisor business listing and improve your ranking. In addition, you’ll get to learn how to cultivate reviews, respond to them and how to best promote your hotel.
Complying with Brand Standards for Reputation
Understand the importance of meeting brand standards.
Maintaining a great hotel reputation doesn’t typically happen overnight, but it is certainly possible to achieve one. The best way to keep your hotel’s reputation in line is to respond to reviews in a timely manner, to make sure you respond often, and to provide quality responses. In this white paper, you’ll learn more about how to implement these brand standards into your hotel’s reputation strategy.
Best Practices for Multi-Property Hotel Marketing
Manage each of your hotels’ marketing practices on one platform.
Managing marketing strategies for multiple properties can be demanding in many ways. It’s essential to develop great marketing tactics with a plan to implement them across your entire portfolio. In this white paper, we’ll help you discover the multi-property identity that best fits your hotel group or management company. This identity can inform the most effective ways to implement marketing strategies for social media, reputation management, websites, and more.
Facebook FAQ for Hoteliers
How to access and manage your Facebook business page.
With so many travelers on Facebook each day, it’d be a poor choice not to create or have access to a Facebook page for your hotel. You’re probably wondering how you can get started. In this guide, we explain how you can create a new page, and we cover the difference between a Facebook Page and Facebook Profile. We also share answers to frequently asked questions that you might have if you have a Facebook page out there but have no access to it.
What Makes a Good Response Writer?
How to find a writer to represent your hotel.
Response writers create thoughtful responses to your hotel reviews. You can read guest feedback to improve the hotel while the writer provides a smart response. Because the writer will be representing your hotel online, you need to know you can trust them. In this white paper, we share the four traits that we look for in review response writers.
Attract Last-Minute Travelers Without Paying Commission
Reach travelers online and offline.
Because there are so many different types of travelers, it is important to diversify your marketing efforts to reach them in as many places as possible. We’ll dive into all the ways you can reach last-minute travelers online and offline – all without paying commissions to OTAs and travel agencies.
How to Get the Most Out of Your Hotel Website
Ways to attract more travelers and get reservations.
For hoteliers, a responsive vanity website offers a compelling option for commission-free booking. But once your website goes live, how do you ensure it leads to more reservations? In this white paper, we’ll explain how to optimize your website to boost your exposure, and how to increase direct bookings as a result.
How to Manage User-Generated Content
Ways to manage what people post about your hotel online.
User-generated content (UGC) is being created online at a startling rate. For hoteliers, this can be anything from vacation photos on Instagram with a geo-located tag to reviews on a multitude of social media and OTA websites. How can you manage the content about your brand that you did not create? In this white paper, we’ll explain how to find UGC about your hotel, how to engage with posts online, and ways to leverage it to attract more guests.
Call Out Culture
How to respond when travelers call out your hotel online.
When a customer feels like they have been wronged by a company, they used to only be able to tell others about this through word of mouth. Today, it’s all too easy to click Share or Retweet on a post that an unhappy customer writes online. Before you know it, a business has been called out for hundreds or thousands of other potential customers to see. What do you do when someone calls out your hotel online? Learn how to respond and protect your reputation.
Success of Social Media at the Brand Level
Using local social media to maximize your brand’s reach online.
Even while hotel brands are managing national ad campaigns and social media accounts, it’s more important than ever for hotels to take advantage of their local level social media profiles. In this white paper, we’ll explain the importance of management companies using their individual hotels’ social media profiles and how to manage a local social media strategy.
Sentiment Analysis
How to interpret, share & invest for the future of your hotel.
From a hotel review perspective, sentiment analysis provides a wealth of information about guest experience at your hotel. In this white paper, we will share tips on how to use review sentiment reporting to gain insights about your property. This white paper provides a three-step approach to interpreting the data, sharing it with key stakeholders at your property, and making smart investment choices for your hotel.
Pinterest for Hotels
Help travelers find inspiration and a new favorite hotel.
How can hotels use Pinterest to boost web traffic and inspire future travelers to book? In this white paper, we will share the top four types of content that hotels should be Pinning to reach travelers in the research phase of travel planning. This white paper combines tips and research from our previous Pinterest publications to provide actionable tips for hoteliers.
Beyond Business & Leisure
Capitalize on new travel trends online.
The future of travel isn’t as black and white as business and leisure. While travel may include some work elements, that’s far from the most important part of a trip. Tap into the passions of trip planners to encourage travelers to choose your hotel as a part of their travel experience. In this white paper, we detail three travel trends that you need to incorporate into your hotel marketing.
Harness the Power of User-Generated Content
Influencing travelers with the most trusted type of content online.
Most travelers share photos on social media when they travel. That content goes a long way in inspiring their friends and followers who are deciding where to travel next. Learn how to find and share user-generated content (UGC) online to influence future travelers to choose your hotel. Our actionable tips will help you get noticed on social media.
Social is the New SEO
Understanding social media’s impact on traveler search behavior.
Social media users are leaving behind traditional search in favor of social media search, making controlling these pages as important as updating your Google business information. Plus, social media posts and content help businesses get found on traditional search engines. Learn how you can optimize your hotel’s social media profiles to improve search results for both social networks and traditional search engines.
Guide to Responding to Online Hotel Reviews
Learn how to manage and respond to reviews about your hotel.
Before booking, travelers research word-of-mouth recommendations from thousands of people through online hotel review websites like TripAdvisor, Yelp, and OTA websites. Nearly 9 out of 10 travelers say that reviews are influential when deciding where to book. Are you doing everything you can to win over travelers who are reading online reviews?
How Hotels Can Compete with Rentals
Stop losing bookings to private accommodations.
Did you know that Airbnb is now the 4th-largest OTA in the world? As more and more travelers choose to book through vacation rental websites, hotels will be the ones hurt. We look at the latest research in the home-sharing economy to find out why people choose rentals and how you can entice them back to your hotel. Learn why hotels are the better choice and how to communicate this to guests who may be lured by the local culture promises of private accommodations.
Effective Pinterest Strategies
Using Your Time on Pinterest to Gain Followers and Increase Website Clicks
In this eBook in our series on using Pinterest for Business, we take you through the best practices of how to create Pins and boards on Pinterest. Use your time wisely and create a profile that will attract Pinterest users to follow you and click on Pins that direct to your website. Along with understanding which Pins work most effectively, find out how to show up in searches, manage your boards, and encourage clicks to your website with Pins.
The Traveler’s Journey 2.0
How Social Media, Mobile Booking, and More Affects Travelers
We revamped our Traveler’s Journey with new research reflecting the new road to decision travelers take. The statistics may surprise you and make you rethink your current marketing strategy! In addition to helpful information about how travelers are interacting with destinations and other travelers online, learn how you can use this to your advantage to get ahead of the competition and be a part of travel decisions.
Getting Started on Pinterest
Guide to Setting Up and Using Pinterest for Business
Pinterest is one of the most active social networks, and 28% of all adult Internet users have accounts. Of daily Pinterest users, 28% say that Pinterest is their “go to” source for travel information. Pinterest is where travelers Pin destination inspiration, travel ideas, and plan future vacations. To reach these key Internet users, you need to set up a Pinterest for Business profile. This eBook will explain how Pinterest works, how to get started, and how your Pins can reach travelers for weeks, months, and years to come.
The Essential Hotel Launch Marketing Plan
How to Market Your Hotel from 12 Months Before to Grand Opening
You’ve laid the foundation for your hotel, but have you done the same online? There are many steps between now and your grand opening, and if you want to have rooms filled on your first night then it’s time to get serious about your digital presence. In this guide, we provide the steps to take to set up your website, listing management, social media, and give tips on how to attract guests and create brand advocates before you even hand out your first room key.
