Off-line Marketing for Your Hotel

Leverage print media, voice, and networking to market your hotel

Driving traffic to your hotel is by no means an easy feat.  There really is no one source of traffic that you can solely rely on to market your place to stay.  You have to attack marketing your hotel via multiple channels, multiple vehicles, and employ several strategies with different attack angles.

In addition to making sure your hotel website is Powered by INNsight so it is optimized for usability and search engine discoverability so lookers turn into bookers, you need to focus on ensuring your off-line or print marketing drives more eyeballs to your hotel website Powered by INNsight.

So how do you use off-line marketing for your hotel to drive traffic to your direct channel or website Powered by INNsight?

Having a memorable, marketable URL or website address for your property is key to making sure that your off-line marketing is effective so ensure that you register a perfect website address to begin with.

Make sure that you display your hotel website Powered by INNsight’s  website address or URL on all of your print media: business cards, brochures, advertising listings and classifieds.

Drive return customers back to your website by including your website address on your guest folio receipts with a kind note: Please book directly at www.yourhotel.com and find our lowest rates.  We look forward to hosting you again!

We recommend that you clip a Guest Review Card like below on your guest folio. Make sure your Guest Review Card has a link to your hotel website Powered by INNsight.

Coming soon on INNsight.com you will be able to create a Promotion Code for return guests and display it on such a publication where a return guest can go to your website

Reinforce your website URL everywhere possible: Tent signs, guest directories, notepads, pens in the guest room are great ways to broadcast the URL to your website Powered by INNsight.

Customize Pens, Matchbooks, T-shirts, and other swag and distribute them.  A simple 8 cent BIC pen with your property’s name and website can go a long way to imprinting your brand in the minds of your customers.

It’s not what you know, it’s who you know!

As that old adage goes, we recommend that you know your local business community and ensure that you build a solid network.  Hit the road with your business card as an INNkeeper and introduce yourself to the local restaurants, fellow hotels, and tourist attractions.  Take a box of chocolates with your business card taped to it.

1. It is important to build relationships with fellow hoteliers and promise to scratch one another’s backs.  For example, offer to send guests your competition’s way if you fill up and vice versa.  Don’t scorn with your completion, instead partner with your competition!
2. Your local visitor’s center is perhaps the one most important venue to establish a solid relationship and ensure your property is properly marketed.  We recommend calling your local visitor’s center periodically and letting them know your availability and rates so that they can communicate it to travelers—stay front and center in the minds of your local tourism board’s staff—it goes a long way!
3. Build relationships with local businesses such as restaurants and entertainment venues.  Meet the owners of such businesses and ask if you can post you brochure somewhere in their business in return for placing advertising or menus at your hotel’s lobby.