How Accommodation Providers Can Use Social to Drive Bookings

With only 48 days until Christmas, and with travellers spending an average of 53 days researching before making a booking (Nielsen), now is the key time for accommodation providers to drive bookings to fill hotels over Christmas and into the New Year.

With 57% of all travel reservations made on the internet (Statistic Brain), many brands will rely on an expensive PPC campaign to generate these bookings.

However, considering 70-80% of users ignore paid ads and focus on the organic results (imFORZA, 2017), a more creative and cost-effective option would be to invest in social advertising.

“…people spend five times more on Facebook than on other travel related sites.”

With 83% using social networking, video or photo sites for inspiration, it’s vital that you have a social media strategy in place to drive bookings. According to Facebook’s research, people spend five times more on the social platform than on other travel related sites.

Social advertising is better than any other platform for increasing brand awareness which can ultimately lead to attributed sales at a low ROI. Now with the introduction of dynamic ads for hotel advertisers, Facebook, which incorporates Instagram, allows you to optimise your adverts by consumer behaviour.

You can target users who are more likely to spend longer on a landing page or convert into a sale rather than those who are just likely to click through. As well as re-targeting users who have visited your website over a set period of time and are more likely to convert into a sale at a relatively low cost per acquisition.

This, therefore, makes it even easier for businesses to get in front of those who have not only visited their website or app but those who have shown interest in making a booking. With the use of rich media, social advertising is looking to compete against Google AdWords for driving hotel bookings.

You can then also target highly relevant audiences and drive customers directly to your brand website, where 65.4% of hotel bookings take place (Statistic Brain).

All this consumer data accumulated over the festive period can then be used again post-Christmas. It is an important time to target consumers as New Year’s resolutions drive significant consumer spending.

The first two weeks in January offer the best value CPMs to be found all year on Facebook and 9^th January is the biggest day for financial planning (Facebook – Last Minute Insights Report) making this a key holiday booking time.

If you’re looking for some expert guidance on how you can create generate bookings this festive season, please get in touch with us on 0117 440 0500 or email simon@digitalvisitor.com.