Working with an online travel agency is a double-edged sword in the hospitality industry. On the one hand, an OTA can promote your hotels and resorts to potential guests, helping you attract more bookings. On the other hand, OTAs take a commission for every booking, which reduces your profits.
Are you interested in finding a more budget-friendly marketing solution? If so, consider partnering with a hotel digital marketing agency. Doing so could help you save money and boost profits for several reasons. They include:
A Hotel Digital Marketing Agency Helps You Stand Out
While an OTA can promote your hotel when guests look for places to stay, the promotional materials won’t be tailored to your brand. This makes it difficult to stand out among the competition. It also doesn’t allow you to demonstrate to your specific target audience precisely why they would choose to stay at your hotel over another.
A marketing agency, on the other hand, will help you develop content that’s more specific and representative of your hotels. That makes it easier to attract the right guests. Additionally, because your marketing content will be substantially different from that of other brands (which typically isn’t the case when an OTA promotes your resorts), you’ll be able to more effectively illustrate what separates your hotels from other options.
Marketing Agencies Cast a Wide Net
The marketing tactics an OTA will use to promote your hotels may not be that varied. Typically, they’ll consist of featuring your hotel as one of their “top picks” when users search for places to stay in a given area. This limits your potential.
Marketing agencies can help you develop strategies for a wide range of channels and media, including email, video, social media, blogs, and more. As a result, you’ll cast a wider net.
Additionally, it’s worth noting that marketing agencies are more likely to be familiar with new marketing tactics you may not have considered. For instance, some hospitality companies are now using virtual reality to give potential guests a dynamic way to “experience” a hotel before booking a room. Other travel companies are taking advantage of AMPs. A marketing agency can coordinate the development of these types of content, and then develop a plan for promoting it.
Marketing Agencies Help You Define Your Brand
You need to consider long-term profits when deciding whether it’s more affordable to work with an OTA or a hotel digital marketing agency. The initial fees don’t necessarily represent the true financial investment (and ROI) you’re going to make in the long run.
That’s because, again, OTAs tend to promote hotels in generic ways. Marketing agencies, on the other hand, develop unique content that reflects your individual brand. Over time, sharing this content with guests helps you establish a branded identity.
The value of this is immeasurable. When you have a consistent, defined brand, you can develop more recognition in the market. It’s impossible to calculate the long-term financial value of a well known brand, but it’s far more substantial than the value you’d get from working with an OTA.
Remember these points as you make adjustments to your marketing strategy and budget. You don’t need to rely solely on OTAs to help you reach guests. On the contrary, an agency may be the more affordable (and profitable) option.
