Have you ever seen your favorite influencer creating content by enjoying food or facilities at a specific hotel on social media? Yup, that’s a strategy called influencer marketing.
With the rapid development of social media, influencer marketing has become the best channel for hotel businesses to inspire other travelers in planning their trips and introducing your hotel.
Therefore, influencers have become figures who have significant influence with high demand in digital marketing industry.
If you are a hotel business owner or marketing team that utilizes social media as a marketing strategy, discover how hotel influencer marketing can increase brand awareness and accelerate the growth of your hotel business by reading this blog. Check it out!
Table of Contents
What is Hotel Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing is a marketing strategy that involves collaborating or a paid partnership with someone who has significant influence to help achieve a business’s goals.
In the context of hotel businesses, influencer marketing is generally maximized to increase the brand awareness or image of a hotel, as well as to increase customer loyalty and the number of hotel bookings.
By introducing your hotel brand to the audience and influencing them to stay and enjoy their time at your hotel, it is important to choose an influencer who has authenticity, a good image, or a similar audience.
An example of this is – from Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, where a group of influencers participated in promoting the campaign for the celebration of Canada’s Confederation 150th anniversary at Fairmont Hotels & Resorts. As a result, this campaign successfully reached over 32.9 million views through influencers, exceeding the target of 64.5%.
Note: Find further discussion about success stories from influencer marketing below!
Types of Influencers
Perhaps when you hear the word influencer, what comes to your mind is a famous celebrity, right? Although that is not entirely wrong, it is important to know that influencers can come from various backgrounds.
In general, the minimum aspects that an influencer possesses are:
- A larger number of followers compared to regular social media users.
- Significant influence over their followers, which can be seen from their engagement rate and the quality of content they produce.
To make it easier for you to understand, here are the types of influencers that you need to know:
Mega Influencer
Mega Influencer is an influencer with more than 1 million followers on social media platforms. They are someone who is famous nationally to internationally such as celebrities, actors/actresses, musicians, athletes, and so on.
Macro Influencer
Macro influencer is an influencer with a significant number of followers, ranging from 100,000 to 1 million on social media. Many of them are highly influential players in a specific business industry and have become experienced experts in that field.
Micro Influencer
Micro Influencers are influencers with a follower count between 10,000 to 100,000 on social media. They usually focus on a specific niche market with a smaller audience compared to macro and mega influencers, but still have more followers than regular social media users.
These micro-influencers generally have a high engagement rate even though their reach is not as extensive as mega and macro influencers, as their followers are more genuine and genuinely interested in the content they create.
Nano Influencer
Nano influencer is an influencer with less than 10,000 followers on social media. They are usually building their personal branding, thus having a high level of authenticity.
Benefits of Influencer Marketing for the Hotel Business (2024)
The demand for influencers to perform business marketing is increasing every day, even during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The popularity of influencer marketing continues to rise.
Especially in the tourism industry, where operational and marketing cuts are crucial to survive during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, in addition to adapting their business models, influencer marketing remains a key strategy for hotel businesses during and even after the COVID-19 pandemic.
How does influencer marketing strategy maintain its popularity? Find out the answer from the benefits of influencer marketing for the hospitality industry below:
Increasing Hotel Brand Awareness
Before convincing potential guests to book a room at your hotel, of course, they must first be aware of and familiar with your hotel, right?
If your target audience understands your hotel business well and is confident that their needs will be met, then the hotel business’s brand awareness campaign is successful. Having good brand awareness will also increase the chances of booking at your hotel.
By collaborating with influencers, your hotel business can be introduced interactively and authentically to a wider audience, not just their own followers. Content created by influencers tends to generate a reach or view that is much larger than that of regular social media users. This will certainly increase the brand awareness of your hotel business quickly to the right audience. Note: The estimated number of audiences is in line with the type of influencer you use.
Reaching a Wider Target Audience Quickly
By collaborating with influencers, your hotel can be reached not only by their active followers, but also by their network of contacts who may have connections or interest in your hotel business.
In fact, the hotel business is closely related to travelers, many of whom are social media influencers who have an audience interested in recommendations for quality hotels. Putting your hotel business in front of this audience through influencer marketing will not only reach a wider target audience, but also attract potential quality bookings.
Read Also : TOP 5 Hotel Video Marketing Ideas to Increase Hotel Booking
More Personalized Content
The popularity of user-generated content (UGC) shows that content that engages audiences doesn’t just come from high-quality videos or photos, but also from content that successfully demonstrates a genuine relationship between the content creator and their audience.
And one of the benefits of influencer marketing is that you can create more genuine and trustworthy user-generated content about your hotel business. Imagine if your favorite traveler influencer shares their enjoyable hotel stay experience.
As an followers, you will be encouraged to book a room, won’t you? Audiences are more likely to trust that their experience at your hotel will be the same if it comes from someone they trust and follow. That’s why influencer marketing has been rapidly growing in recent years – audiences are seeking their genuine and trustworthy opinions before conducting their own research.
Efficient Use of Budget
Although the budget range for influencer marketing is not definite, collaborating with influencers has proven to be a cost-effective marketing campaign with a significant impact on businesses, especially in the hotel industry. Influencer marketing campaigns can be executed with an efficient budget and even lower if they have clear business goals and collaborate with influencers who align with the target audience and the image of your hotel business. Other reasons supporting this are as follows:
- Influencer marketing campaigns can be customized to specific demographics and interests, making it more effective in reaching the desired target audience.
- Generating a higher engagement rate. A high engagement rate increases the likelihood of bringing in good conversion rates.
- Getting high-quality content that can be reused on other marketing channels (Recycled content)
Read Also : Digital Marketing Budget for Hotels This Year
Types of Influencer Marketing Strategies
Reviews
One popular strategy used by influencers is providing reviews or evaluations of specific products or services to their followers on social media or other platforms.
Certainly, a positive review from an influencer with a large and actively engaged audience can help increase trust and interest in the recommended product or service.
The “Reviews” strategy in influencer marketing is particularly suitable for the hospitality industry. Hotels can collaborate with influencers or travel bloggers who have significant followings on social media to provide reviews or evaluations of their stay experiences at the hotel. This can raise brand awareness for the hotel and encourage potential guests to consider staying at the hotel.
Giveaways
The “Giveaways” strategy in influencer marketing can be highly beneficial for increasing follower engagement and brand awareness of products or services.
In this strategy, the influencer and the brand collaborate to provide prizes or free content to followers as a reward for participating in contests or sweepstakes.
In the hospitality industry, hotels can utilize this strategy by holding competitions or quizzes involving influencers as partners. For example, a hotel can collaborate with an influencer to offer attractive prizes such as free stays, dining vouchers, or other hotel facilities to the winners of the quiz. This can help boost the hotel’s brand awareness and attract interest from potential guests.
Program Promotion
Promotional programs or affiliate marketing are one type of influencer marketing strategy in which an influencer or affiliate promotes a specific brand’s products or services and receives a commission for each sale or specific action resulting from their promotion.
In the hospitality industry, promotional programs can be implemented by providing a unique code to influencers for their followers to use when booking hotel rooms. This code offers discounts or special benefits to the influencer’s followers and provides a commission to the influencer for each booking made using the code.
To maximize this strategy, hotels can look for influencers with an audience relevant to their target market and a good reputation on social media.
The Use of KOLs in Influencer Marketing Strategies
The Use of KOLs in Influencer Marketing Strategies A Key Opinion Leader (KOL) is someone who has significant influence in a particular industry and can impact the opinions of their followers. You may wonder, what is the difference between a KOL and an influencer? Although both have influence over their audiences and have a large number of followers on social media, there are significant differences in the types of content they create and the platforms they use. Influencers are typically more active on social media platforms like TikTok, which focus on entertainment and lifestyle.
On the other hand, KOLs tend to create more detailed and analytical content that offers stronger and more specific insights and influence within a particular industry.
In contrast, KOLs usually produce more detailed content that offers insights and analysis rather than entertainment. KOLs have a more focused and specific reach and influence within certain industries, making them more suitable for reinforcing a brand’s authority and reputation within a specific industry.
Therefore, KOLs can be an appropriate marketing strategy for strengthening a brand’s reputation within a particular industry. You can ask KOLs to create sponsored content on social media or hold events at your hotel to share their experiences. In addition, you can also collaborate with KOLs to create promotional content such as videos or photos.
Conclusion
It’s no longer debatable that influencer marketing can boost brand awareness, customer loyalty, and hotel bookings for hotel businesses. However, the key to success lies not only in starting but also in selecting an influencer who embodies authenticity, image, or an audience that aligns with the hotel’s target demographic.
Influencer marketing for hotels is definitely worth considering in today’s digital era. Boost your hotel business’s brand awareness and booking rate with accurate marketing strategies. SATUVISION has years of experience in the hospitality industry and has successfully provided the best digital solutions for hotel businesses. Create your digital presence for your hotel brand today with us!
