What is a hospitality marketing agency?

A hospitality marketing agency is a specialist service provider that creates and implements marketing strategies for hoteliers and other hospitality businesses.

The aim of hospitality marketing is to attract guests, boost bookings and build brand visibility. But it’s no mean feat to stand out in this ultra-competitive space, which is why many hotels partner with a professional hospitality digital marketing agency.

In this guide we’ll take a look at whether you should consider using a digital marketing agency for hospitality, the potential benefits of doing so, and how to identify the best.

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Why hotels are turning to hospitality marketing agencies

As a small, independent hotelier, you have enough on your plate. Faced with a mix of front desk, back office, guest experience, maintenance and management work, marketing your hotel inevitably falls down the priority list.

Marketing is also a complex and ever-changing discipline – even if you had the time, quite a lot of expertise and effort is required to run a truly game-changing hotel marketing campaign.

Partnering with a hospitality and tourism marketing agency brings commitment, structure, efficiency and effectiveness to your marketing efforts. The best will deliver incredible ROI, by securing you more bookings than ever before.

Top hospitality and tourism marketing agencies

The key to standing out in a crowded market is to choose the right marketing partner – ideally a dedicated digital marketing agency for hospitality industry businesses. Agencies that specialise in hospitality know the market and offer tailored strategies that are proven to work within it.

Some of the leading agencies in the hotel and hospitality space include:

Noble Studios

With offices in the US and UK, Noble Studios is an award-winning creative digital performance agency with a strong focus on travel and tourism. They offer data-driven marketing, SEO and content strategies, and are known for making clients stick – over 70% have stayed with the agency for 5+ years.

Voyage Travel Marketing

Dedicated exclusively to the hospitality sector, Voyage Travel Marketing is an English agency that offers bespoke travel marketing services. They specialise in helping boutique hotels to reach new markets.

Travel Media Group

A team of marketing professionals whose sole focus is the hotel industry, Travel Media Group is in the reputation management game, helping hotel brands gain greater awareness and recognition through a range of leading-edge, tech-driven strategies.

MMGY Global

Self-described as the world’s leading travel sector-focused integrated marketing company, MMGY Global boasts locations across the US and Europe, and a stable of ten brands that specialise in different elements of hospitality marketing.

Benefits of digital marketing agency for hospitality

Why partner with a hotel marketing agency? Put simply, the right agency could be the key to powering unprecedented growth for your hotel business. Here’s how.

Bigger reach

Hospitality marketing agencies have seen and done it all before. They know the tricks of the trade that will get your hotel in front of more potential guests and will craft a holistic strategy that spans a full complement of marketing channels. And they won’t advertise to just anyone – they’ll aim for only the most relevant and precisely targeted audiences.

Increase brand presence 

Putting your name up in lights online is easier said than done. Digital marketing agencies know how to do it by placing ads and content in places where your target audience tends to hang out.

Improve efficiency

A professional marketing partner will use strategies like A/B testing – where you put out two slightly different versions of an ad or email to see which performs better – to optimise your marketing campaigns over time. As you improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your efforts, your marketing ROI will improve too.

Measurable results

Speaking of ROI, a marketing partner will deliver clear, tangible, measurable results. They’ll offer regular reporting on all the key performance indicators of a given campaign, whether impressions, click-through rates, conversion rates or cost per acquisition.

Increase direct bookings

Agencies who regularly work with hotels will understand the value of earning direct bookings to side-step the 15-25% commission fees typically charged by OTAs. To support this approach, they will bring a range of strategies to win you more of this type of reservation; you’ll just need to implement a direct booking engine that potential guests can use.

Choosing the best hospitality marketing agency 

How do you identify the best hospitality marketing agency for your situation? You first need to understand your marketing objectives: increasing brand awareness, winning more guests, attracting different demographics, entering new markets. Once those objectives are established, it’s time to find an agency that can help you get there.

Realistically, a small, independent hotelier might have rather humble goals. With a limited number of rooms to sell, you might just need a little bit of help to get where you want to go. In that case, an investment in a digital marketing agency might be out of your price range.

But there is another option: a smart, automated marketing tool like Little Hotelier.

Size

Digital marketing agencies are ideal for larger hotels and hotel chains with revenues that can justify the marketing expenditure and potential revenue gains that can make the large investment worthwhile.

Little Hotelier is the perfect solution for small accommodation providers with 1-20 rooms, who may struggle to justify working with a professional agency.

Budget

Most full-service, hospitality-specific digital marketing agencies charge thousands of dollars per month for their services. This investment is generally worth it, but only if your hotel is large enough to generate the necessary ROI.

Little Hotelier, meanwhile, offers a range of flexible packages starting at just $39AUD/month. Our solution is also capable of driving an eye-popping ROI of 63x.

Features

When you choose a proven hospitality marketing agency you’ll enjoy a wealth of strategies and solutions designed to improve reach, convert more customers, and manage your reputation. You can hand responsibility over to the agency and focus on being the best hotel you can be.

While Little Hotelier represents a more hands-on option, our all-in-one property management solution offers a range of easy-to-use and often automated features that allow you to maximise global reach, boost website traffic and earn more direct bookings.

Simplify and gain control over your marketing efforts with Little Hotelier

Hotel digital marketing services don’t always have to be in the form of an agency. If you know what you want to achieve and how you want to achieve it, sometimes all you need is the right set of tools.

That’s exactly what you get with Little Hotelier: software that gives a small accommodation provider complete control over your business and brand, and that allows you to drive your own success.

  • Global reach: Use our channel manager to win bookings from guests all over the world, by connecting and automatically managing as many online booking channels as you like.
  • Branded presence on Google: Get a fully optimised website that you can use to create content, advertise your best deals, and accept direct bookings.
  • Improved guest experience: Use our online booking engine and guest engagement feature to win direct bookings, own the guest relationship from start to finish, and create happy guests.
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By Juhlian Pimping