How to advertise your hotel with a low budget
Whether you’re marketing a global hotel brand or a local bed and breakfast, every property shares the same goal: filling all their rooms. But when you have a limited hotel marketing budget, it can be difficult to determine how to best use your funds. How can you maximize your marketing campaign and extend your brand’s visibility without blowing your budget?
We did a deep dive into four of our solutions that can help you increase your brand’s visibility without compromising your budget.
Reach your target audience with TravelAds Sponsored Listings
TravelAds is an easy to use, pay-per-click solution that connects hotel advertisers with highly qualified travel shoppers across Expedia Group’s global portfolio of travel brands. No long-term commitment is required, which means you can quickly test and optimize your marketing campaigns. Another cost-effective aspect with TravelAds is that your ads only appear when rooms are available.
With TravelAds you can also reach potential guests with advanced targeting capabilities that allow you to connect with travelers based on how they search and interact with our 200+ travel sites. And you can make the most of your budget with real-time reporting that monitors ad performance, travel windows, room nights booked, and more to ensure that you know exactly what kind of traction you’re getting with what you’re spending.
Our first-party traveler data gives you the information you need to tailor your strategy and stay on top of trends in the hospitality industry.
Success story
Sotetsu Hotels, a Japanese hotel chain, wanted to increase the visibility of two new hotels they opened in Myeongdong and Dongdaemun in Seoul, South Korea.
A year after opening, Sotetsu wanted a solution that would drive visibility and demand for each of the hotels since they were new to the market.
Sotetsu worked with our digital media experts to launch a TravelAds campaign for one of the properties. Using the reporting dashboard, Sotetsu was able to monitor the campaign, and after seeing positive results, the hotel opted to use TravelAds for both hotel listings and expanded its marketing efforts to include display advertising.
After implementing a combination of TravelAds and display solutions, Sotetsu saw an average increase of 65% year-over-year (YoY) in demand between the two hotels, and a 300% increase in room night demand month over month (MoM).
TravelAds increases our visibility on Expedia brand websites, which helps to have more revenue as well as to increase our brand awareness. We will continue to run regular TravelAds campaigns.SAKAMOTO KAZUHIRO, GENERAL MANAGER
Maximize advertising efforts with co-op campaigns
Expedia Group Media Solutions offers co-op campaigns that allow hotel marketers to maximize their marketing spend by participating in customized campaigns with other brands in the region that have similar goals. These collaborative campaigns use our solutions to reach highly qualified travelers while aligning with each advertisers’ marketing budgets and business objectives.
With co-op campaigns, hotel marketers stay informed throughout the campaign process — from start to finish — without having to do any heavy lifting. Our team of experts delivers customized creative assets, a tailored advertising strategy and robust reporting to ensure that the campaign meets every brand’s goals and performance benchmarks.
Whether partners are looking to drive awareness and engagement or drive bookings and conversions, co-op campaigns can be flexible and customizable to meet collective marketing goals and needs.
Success story
In 2018, the Hawaiian Islands experienced a series of natural disasters, including earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tropical storms, and hurricanes that caused a significant decline in travel demand. Consequently, this resulted in a 29% drop in room night bookings.
Various brands, including Hyatt, Marriott, and Outrigger, collaborated with Media Solutions to create a custom co-op campaign to help restore tourism to Hawaiian Islands.
Through the integrated use of compelling offers, co-op campaigns and TravelAds, the participating travel brands were able to recover and help secure room night growth. The campaign generated a 29% increase in YoY room nights on Black Friday, and an 18% jump YoY in room nights booked during the promotion period.
Boost brand awareness with Accelerator
If you’re looking to fill rooms within a specific date range, Accelerator can help maximize your property’s bookings and revenue by targeting certain booking windows. The solution serves as a budget-friendly model that increases visibility and helps hotels reach travelers when they’re ready to book.
With its pay-per-stay structure, Accelerator boosts a property’s position in search results within the selected check-in window, making it easier for highly engaged travelers to find and book the property.
Payment is made with the compensation received for the booking, which means a marketing budget isn’t required. Marketers can also pause at any time to assess the predicted results to ensure the ads are performing effectively.
Success story
Le Capitole Hotel is a 5-star hotel in the heart of Old Quebec City known for their fine dining options and rooms that provide spectacular cityscape views.
After a year of renovations and border restrictions, the hotel was eager to reopen its doors, but they found it challenging to fill their rooms and re-establish brand awareness with international guests.
Le Capitole worked with our team of experts and found that Accelerator’s pay-per-stay structure enabled the hotel to customize the dates of their campaigns to address periods with low room bookings while also doubling as a budget-friendly approach to paid advertising.
This initial Accelerator campaign generated a 275% increase in search impressions and page views, allowing the hotel to reach more travelers and convert more room night bookings. The hotel continues to use Accelerator in its holistic marketing strategy, using the tool monthly with varying check-in date windows and compensation levels based on market trends and pre-existing bookings.
Using the Accelerator tool in Partner Central made it easy for me to increase my hotel’s listings visibility during slower times of year. KARINE HOUDE, GENERAL MANAGER, LE CAPITOLE HOTEL
Targeting multiple channels with Display Advertising
Raise your visibility with highly qualified travelers throughout various stages of their journey with our display advertising solution.
With display advertising, hotel advertisers work with our team to create custom user experiences that align with a brand’s budget and goals. Our ads are designed with the traveler in mind and provide a cohesive shopping experience for travelers whether they’re looking or booking for their next trip.
Our display solutions are structured to ensure that a hotel is continually building brand awareness while targeting travelers at every stage of their shopping journey. Here’s how our display advertising solutions can enhance a hotel’s marketing campaign:
- Display ads on mobile apps: Connect with high-intent travelers through our branded mobile apps. Our exclusive first-party data enables precise audience targeting to ensure that a hotel is getting in front of the right people.
- Branded emails: Showcase promotions and travel deals with emails that reach and engage highly qualified travelers. This includes recent shoppers, loyalty members, frequent travelers, and more.
Success story
Blinkup is a digital marketing consulting agency that manages hotel advertising campaigns for Place of Charme, a group of six hotels in Tuscany, Italy. Blinkup wanted to help increase Place of Charme’s presence in the competitive market and connect with more international travelers.
The agency worked with our team of advertising experts to deploy a display advertising campaign that highlighted one of its locations, the Villa Neroli. The project included a custom landing page and precisely targeted ads showcasing the villa’s unique features and nearby attractions.
The display advertising campaign generated a return on ad spend of 6:1, prompting the agency to select a combination of additional solutions that drove a near 600% increase in room nights YoY.
Using different Media Solutions products enabled us to capture several market opportunities and connect with travelers through all stages of their journey, ultimately driving a near 600% increase in room nights. EDOARDO DAL NEGRO, BLINKUP CEO
The size of your marketing budget shouldn’t determine the success of your hotel’s advertising campaign.
We understand that every hotel is different and, in that sense, so are marketing budgets. If there are fluctuations in the market, some hotels don’t have the flexibility to expand their advertising budgets to meet increased levels of demand. That’s why we offer multiple solutions to scale to your unique needs and budget and ensure that you’re able to react to market shifts.
With over 20 years of travel advertising media experience, we can help you find a solution that meets your targeting and booking goals without overextending your budget. To learn more about the array of advertising solutions we provide, connect with one of our experts today.
About Expedia Group Media Solutions
Expedia Group Media Solutions is the world's leading travel media network. We connect advertisers with hundreds of millions of travelers across the globe. Our exclusive first-party data on traveler trends, search behavior, and booking data provides travel marketers with unique insights to inform their strategies. We offer a full-funnel suite of solutions to help you convert travelers, and our digital experts can help you create advertising campaigns that deliver.
