5 competitive advantages for hotels through marketing automation

The hospitality industry is a highly competitive sector. To ensure the success and economic sustainability of your hotel, you need an effective marketing strategy. However, building and maintaining such a strategy takes a lot of time and effort. To streamline this process, you need automated systems and marketing tools. We'll show you what a marketing automation is and how your hotel can benefit from it. 

• Marketing automation involves the use of software to automate repetitive marketing tasks and optimise communication with guests.
• Many hotel owners use marketing automation primarily for email and social media campaigns.
• One of the biggest benefits of marketing automation is its ability to collect guest data without human intervention.

A marketing automation refers to the use of a specialised software to optimise all communication with your existing, current and potential guests. It automates repetitive and time-consuming tasks through data capture and pre-defined workflows. Some examples of marketing automations are:

• Automated emails and newsletter campaigns to send personalised messages, offers and booking confirmations
• Scheduling social media posts to maintain an active online presence
• Creating dynamic pricing strategies to adjust room rates according to demand and market conditions
• Segmenting customers for customised marketing campaigns
• Utilising chatbots and virtual assistants to provide around-the-clock support and information to guests

A marketing automation offers hotels the following benefits:

1. Helps collect guest data:

Your visitors' data is your most important marketing tool. It reveals your hotel's weaknesses and strengths, so you know where to invest and what to change to improve the customer experience. It also allows you to understand different customer groups and optimise campaigns to appeal to these target groups.
With marketing automation, customer data is collected automatically and without your involvement. This means you can skip the tedious part of data collection and spend your time analysing the information provided by the algorithm.

2. Rationalises marketing processes:

Thanks to a marketing automation, tasks that normally take hours are completed in no time. With the help of AI, you can automate recurring email campaigns, send personalised messages and set up monthly or even weekly newsletters.

3. Recovers lost bookings:

A guest starts their hotel booking but doesn't complete it? With a marketing automation, an automatic reminder email can be sent to kindly ask the guest to complete the process. You can also include incentives such as discounts to significantly increase the chances of bookings.
Apart from this, a marketing automation is also useful for targeting guests who have not booked at your hotel for a long time. To attract them, you can include special offers and automate emails on specific occasions such as the anniversary of their last stay.

4. Provide 24/7 support:

Chatbots and virtual assistants help hotel owners to automate your sales funnels. They allow you to respond to guest enquiries instantly, which improves customer satisfaction and leads to more bookings. You can even communicate with guests in their preferred language, simplifying the booking process for international visitors.

5 Automate social media campaigns:

Marketing automations have become an essential tool for running successful campaigns on social media. For example, you can automate the timing and frequency of your posts on multiple platforms. In addition, you have the ability to track mentions of your hotel and target specific demographics with customised content.