How do young, modern travelers behave online? What connects to them, and how can your hotel use that information to drive direct bookings through your hotel website? Google’s Consumer Barometer gives insight into exactly that. In turn, you can apply this information to your hotel’s direct booking strategy.
We’re going to give you 5 key insights into the millennial market, and ways to turn those insights into direct revenue for your hotel.
The benefit of focusing your online strategy of direct bookings is, of course, that you pay significantly less commission on bookings that come through your brand website than those from OTAs and other third parties. It’s important to have a revenue strategy in place to ensure that your total CPA (cost per acquisition) remains as low as possible for all bookings. When it comes down to it, direct bookings are often the key to growing your revenue.
Here’s what you’ll be learning:
Sound good? Ready to find out the best ways to bring the modern traveler to your hotel? Let’s get started.
90% of millennials – the 16-34 year old bracket – go online every day. These young travelers will be some of the most frequent travelers and heaviest spenders within the decade. When they’re online, they visit their social media channels, watch videos, shop, and research everything from trips to restaurants to potential dates.
When your customers move online, you need to be there too. Hotels will always be brick-and-mortar establishments (at least until virtual reality gets much further along!), but they still need a strong, active online presence. The internet is key to growth, and a direct booking strategy is the most cost efficient way to grow online.
If you’re already on top of these things, excellent. If you’re wondering whether your website is where it should be, here are 5 key ingredients for high converting hotel websites. For advice on OTAs, here’s a compilation of great pieces on building an OTA strategy.
“Just Google it” has become a common refrain in members of the younger generations, and in more than a few of the older, too! 55% of millennials go to search engines when they do product research – including hotel research.
Hoteliers can – and must – take advantage of our reliance on search engines. SEO is a field unto itself. While there is much debate about which ranking factors the world’s leading search engine algorithms rely upon, there are also whole hosts of expert opinions to help you on your quest. SEO starts from the very beginning. Make sure SEO is taken into account by the people that build your hotel website, and then optimized on an ongoing basis.
A word of caution: SEO isn’t the end-all and be-all of getting your potential guests’ attention. It’s a first step. Think of SEO as a building block to help you build your site and focus your message. After your SEO is solid, focus on more interactive ways of marketing, like running campaigns, creating content and doing outreach to your target audience.
To implement these SEO tips and find out more ways to rise in the ranks, talk to your hotel’s resident marketing gurus! If you get stuck, feel free to reach out to Net Affinity’s marketing experts. SEO is one of our specialties, and we’re happy to have a chat.
Mobile is on the rise in every demographic, but none more so than in the young users niche. 3 out of 4 millennials use their mobile devices at least as often as they do a computer, with 1 out of 3 going online more often via their smartphones.
Their mobile usage isn’t just about social media and Google Maps, either: 25% of all bookings were on mobile in Q3 2016, according to Net Affinity’s own data. Is your mobile site up to snuff?
The up-to-date users, which millennials assuredly are, expect a responsive mobile site. It’s not just a nice bonus anymore. If someone lands on your mobile site and finds themselves having to zoom in just to read your navigation bar, they’re not likely to do much research on your hotel, much less try to complete a booking. Google also expects this. If you don’t have a mobile-friendly site, you’ll be penalized in search engine results and pushed down the page.
Along with frequent use of multiple devices, most of us have a shorter attention span. That means you need to grab that attention as quickly as possible, and make it easy for travelers to get interested in what you’ve got.
Here’s a more in-depth look at the importance of mobile across all demographics, and different options your hotel has for making a beautiful mobile site.
Also, make sure your mobile site is ready to convert users once you have them on your site. Mobile conversions, while significant, are still nowhere near desktop’s conversion rate. Here’s 6 ways to conquer mobile cart abandonment.
To give you an idea of how important video is to the average millennial, 40% of them use YouTube at least once a day, and 20% consider YouTube videos more relevant and interesting than TV.
Video has a serious foothold in the modern imagination. The ease with which short ones can be watched, engaged with and shared is practically a recipe for viral reach – if you can get it right. The 16-34 demographic are, unsurprisingly, the most likely group to watch videos. However, those 55 and older are second most likely. Video’s appeal is as broad as it is sure.
If you don’t have one already, you need a video marketing strategy for your hotel.
Video marketing is key when it comes to mobile. In research conducted by Ipsos for Google, it was found that ‘micro-moments’ of truth are the new cornerstone of selling. For travel, those moments fall under 4 broad categories: I want to know, I want to do, I want to go, and I want to buy. Think about ways to hit those four moments.
In turn, they found that many of these moments happen specifically when people are watching video on their mobile devices.
2016 is going to be a major year for video on mobile: Facebook has 8 million video views every day, a figure which has doubled in the last 6 months, and 55% of mobile data traffic comes through mobile. Google will be incorporating video ads in search results, and advertisers are making videos 15 seconds or less to run on social media apps. Those ‘micro-moments’ are exploding.
In a recent Tnooz article, statistics from Google UK sales director Dr. Bernd Fauser were cited, and they’re very compelling:
They don’t need to be massive projects with corresponding budgets. If you’re doing a silent video, even the camera on an iPhone will work – as an added advantage, it strips away a layer of formality and makes your video come across as more authentic.
Another easy way to create video might be to run a video contest for your guests. Run a contest where you encourage guests to create videos of themselves at your hotel. Since that can be quite a project, make sure to offer a suitable incentive.
For ideas, here’s a link to some of the best video travel bloggers on the internet – go find some inspiration!
Millennials love to share news about themselves online, and they do it more trustingly and more often than any other generation. They engage with others, too: half of all millennials comment on or ‘like’ a friend’s post at least once a day.
Social media creates a dialogue with your potential guests. Contests are popular among millennials, and vivid imagery in your posts will grab attention.
Speed is another key factor on social media. You have the ability to respond to problems immediately, and many will expect you to. It’s all public, so if you aren’t responding to your guests’ comments, it’s going to be noticed. A lack of responsiveness will be a serious downside for some of your guests.
However, the most important rule is to be genuine on social media. Remember, you’re not talking to a demographic. You’re talking to a person, and if they’re talking to you, they’re probably at least a little interested in staying at your hotel.
So, beyond those basic rules, are there ways to excel on each platform? Of course! Here are a few:
Those are the only channels we’ll cover here, although hotels are dipping into YouTube and Snapchat as well. To find the right mediums for your hotel, test out different platforms and find out where your voice stands out.
Check out these guides and search out your own. To get ahead of the game, give your hotel a crash course in social selling!
There you have it: 5 of the most important trends and patterns to the modern traveler, and ways to turn those trends into an advantage for your hotel. If guests are turning to the internet for all their travel needs – and many are – it’s time to use the internet to attract their interest and get your hotel more direct revenue.
What tips have you found most useful when engaging with millennials and encouraging them to book a stay directly? Let us know in the comments below.
Words By Taylor Smariga
