Voucher marketing for hotels: reward & retain guests

Vouchers are an important marketing tool for hoteliers, with which they can both convince new guests to make a booking and encourage regular guests to return. Read here how you can design an efficient voucher strategy and what advantages it offers.

• Use hotel vouchers to market your hotel online and highlight specific offers.
• You can reward regular guests and attract new customers by offering added value and boosting your cash flow.
• To develop an effective strategy, first decide what the vouchers are for - for example, stays, room upgrades, wellness offers and restaurant visits.
• Then focus on specific occasions, such as holidays and birthdays, and promote the vouchers across multiple platforms.

Hotel vouchers offer your hotel, but also visitors, various advantages. These include

• Vouchers also help to market your hotel online. This is a good way to keep your presence consistent and attract new guests.
• You can add value and credit to your vouchers, which in turn contributes to your cash flow.
• You can put together unique packages and experiences and tailor them to your clientele.
• Your guests will feel valued if you give them a personalised voucher or discount for their birthday.
• You can focus on specific offers from your hotel that you want to emphasise.
• They allow you to market your hotel and the individual areas of your hotel - regardless of whether it is the wellness area, the hotel restaurant or other services.

1. Decide on a type of voucher

The first step is to agree on what the vouchers are to be used for. This will of course depend on what your accommodation offers. Possible options include:

• Hotel stay
• Specific rooms
• Dinner & Lunch
• Free Wifi
• Bike hire
• Wellness offers, such as spa and massages
• Sports facilities such as tennis and golf
• Events

Also consider which of your hotel's products and services can be combined as a gift voucher or experience package. Especially when it comes to birthday or Christmas presents, a romantic dinner with room and wellness offers, for example, is a particularly good idea.

2. Determine the right occasions for your hotel vouchers

Make sure you create an offer for each of the most important sales windows in the calendar year. These are Black Friday, Christmas, the turn of the year, Mother's Day and Father's Day. Of course, the individual birthdays of your potential guests are also suitable. The advantage: you only need to adjust your offer each year to take account of minor price or service changes - you can use your vouchers as templates and check which offers perform particularly well.

3. Create and promote the vouchers

Now that you know what you're going to sell and when, all you need to do is create your vouchers and set the promotion dates for each voucher. Then promote them via your website or your social media account.