The hotel’s marketing budget generally accounts for approximately 4 to 5% of total revenues. However, although it is a small amount in relation to the total, much of the hotel’s success is directly proportional to the efficiency with which that budget is used. In addition, to date, approximately 55% of hotel bookings are made on the Internet. For all these factors we want to tell you: learn how to measure the ROI of online marketing for hotels and succeed.
You know we care about you. And with the aforementioned hotel budgets, if the return on investment (ROI) is less than expected, money is being wasted.
SOURCE: HeBS Digital’s The Smart Hotelier’s Guide to 2016 Digital Marketing Budget Planning.
In the HeBS survey of 376 hoteliers on the channels where they see the greatest return on investment, 70% said they saw the best results from their online marketing efforts. Approximately 73% of those same hoteliers say they rely on in-house staff to manage their digital marketing efforts, but recent HSMAI research indicates that increased ROI would result from outsourcing these efforts to an online marketing firm.
There are several factors or best practices to consider when measuring hotel online marketing ROI.
- Monitor the hotel’s online presence on a regular basis. Establish a process and assign responsibilities to ensure regular monitoring of the hotel’s online presence.
- Evaluate and identify ROI for each channel. Create a sales plan to distribute most of the online business to the most profitable channel.
- Track the abandonment rate in the booking process. Identify what is missing, in terms of content and messaging, and what can potentially attract more users to the booking process.
- Measure the session time that users are on the web. Identify content that is not on your website that can help visitors stay longer on the site.
- Enhance each year for growth. Design a format to track ROI year over year.
ROI measurement and analysis play a key role in the overall marketing process. The great work involved and the resources necessary for the construction of a good website, ensuring that content is interesting and then marketing successfully, means that learning from all the actions that are executed in hotel online marketing is essential. If initiatives are not measured, we will not know which were successful or unsuccessful. Learning from the latest initiatives will play a crucial role in determining what worked and what didn’t and, therefore, what to move the hotel forward.
We don’t want to finish without recommending a post that will give you a clue on how to measure the success of your website.
