Hotel Marketing
Knowing your online competitors is an essential part of any digital marketing strategy. The real-life competition more often than not differs online, and your business can be digitally competing with a business you are not even aware of. Hotels and hospitality brands in particular must stay current on their competitors' activities, as the industry is highly competitive and constantly changing in terms of pricing, service offerings, and amenities.
Performing an effective competitor analysis can help your brand to gain valuable insights into its own positioning within the market and give you the tools needed to craft your own unique strategies. By gathering information on what competitors are doing, hotels can gain a better understanding of their target market and customers’ needs.
But is it an effective competitive analysis if you conduct it yourself just by looking at the competitors' websites? What you will find missing is the knowledge to give further recommendations and the information of what marketing activity that you can see they take is actually converting into bookings or guests for them. This is the reason we recommend a professional marketing audit or analysis that will benchmark your business accordingly to competitors.
For example, competitor analysis can uncover valuable data such as pricing structures, product offerings, marketing tactics and customer service levels. This data can be used to help a business work on more effective digital marketing activities for hotels and gain from a competitive edge. Hotels may discover which channels competitors are using most effectively for the same or similar target audience, or perhaps which offers work best in driving new business or loyalty from existing customers.
Competitor analysis is also important for recognising opportunities for growth within the hospitality industry that may have been previously overlooked by other brands. For instance, if a hotel discovers that its competitors offering discounted rates on certain services or products, they may be able to capitalise on the situation by offering their own promotions.
Our audits in different areas of marketing: SEO, PPC, websites and social media can help you understand how your competitors are gaining their portion of the traffic and inspire you with marketing activities in the same or different direction. By delving into the tactics and successes of your competitors, you can gain valuable insights into their customer base, marketing channels, pricing strategies and more. With this data in hand, hotels can adjust their own digital marketing plans accordingly and create marketing campaigns and strategies that will give results.
Competitor analysis helps identify gaps in current offerings and possible areas of growth for hotels. The aim is to inspire your marketing team with marketing insights in order to help your brand stay ahead of the competition. Armed with this knowledge, hotels can create targeted campaigns that appeal to customers looking for services or products that their competitors do not offer. Furthermore, by understanding what works for other businesses in the hospitality industry and why it works, hotels can develop more effective digital marketing plans that will have a greater impact on boosting their visibility online.
The competitive landscape is ever-changing and with our competitor analysis tools, we assure to give the best recommendation for the industry and the goals the business has in mind to achieve. As experts noticing industry trends in digital marketing is not a challenge therefore our audits will get you steps closer to your target customer. Taking informed actions through any marketing channel, whether social media platforms or website, will be detrimental to driving results and it will all being with the correct marketing efforts.
The real answer is you cannot go wrong with trying to understand your direct and indirect competitors. For the hospitality industry, as the offering is mostly similar to one massive target audience, being able to analyse your competitor's market share will give you the advantage to take action according to the marketing activities that work for them rather than testing them yourself.
If your hotel business is on a future growth plan to retain more direct bookings compared to using online travel agents (OTAs), then digital marketing audits can help you determine which channels of marketing you are using to their full potential and on which you can improve to stay ahead of your direct competitors and also reduce your cost of the online travel agents that might be driving most of your bookings.
In a simple scenario, if you are not sure what to do to move the needle for your business and how to develop that marketing strategy that delivers then competitor analysis with recommendations from experts can be the solution you are looking for.
When it comes to digital marketing, there are both direct and indirect competitors. Direct competitors are those businesses within the same sector that offer similar services or products to yours. These brands may have a strong online presence with active social media accounts, effective PPC or advertising campaigns running, and other digital marketing strategies in place. Indirect competitors include those who offer similar services or products but not directly competing with your business. While they don’t compete on the same level as direct competition, their presence can still affect customer choice if their product is more attractive than yours. It is important for hotels to understand both types of competition when it comes to crafting digital marketing activities to retain or gain a market share percentage.
It is a common misconception even among big luxury hospitality brands when it comes to direct online competition it is assumed that the hotel next door or of the same size is competition. On many occasions, it is completely wrong and the competition analysis and thorough marketing research uncover that businesses are unaware of who their competitors are. The direct or indirect competitors can be businesses that your digital marketing team hasn't even heard of!
In summary, hotels and hospitality brands must stay informed of competitor activities in order to create an effective digital marketing strategy that will differentiate them from the competition. Competitor analysis can provide invaluable insights into how to reach potential customers, identify opportunities and build loyalty within the existing customer base. With these performance metrics as knowledge in hand, hotels can confidently enter a crowded market with sound strategies for success.
