Maximize Your Digital Marketing Performance With Hotel Data Strategies

Digital marketing can feel like an elusive game. Just as you nail your strategy – something changes. By weaving data strategies into your digital marketing approach, you’ll facilitate short-term and long-term success with targeted high-value audiences. It’s a secure way to capture commercial growth at the Find, Book, and Grow stages of the customer journey. 

The power of data is keenly understood in most industries nowadays. For airlines, data-driven insights have enabled route planning based on customer demand, predictive maintenance to reduce unexpected delays, and demand forecasting to optimize capacity on-board each flight.  In retail, big data analysis looks at everything from weather patterns to localized shopping trends to optimize inventory levels in stores.

Whatever the industry, intelligent use of data will drive commercial and operational performance. A strategic data-driven approach generates the right demand, facilitates enhanced experiences, and builds customer loyalty. In fact, 82% of organizations with advanced data maturity benefit from positive year-on-year revenue growth.

The hotel industry challenge 

To keep up in a data-forward world, hotels must collect and analyze data on guest preferences, booking patterns, and satisfaction levels. This data feeds into digital marketing efforts, ensuring a brand intersects with prospective guests at key moments in their booking journeys.

Yet gathering and using data is a challenge for hotels, especially where systems and technology do not fully integrate. Data silos are difficult to draw meaningful insights from, and most hotels often don’t have the resources or skillsets to capture data at the right moment.

We see regional differences in how hotels use data for digital marketing too:

• North American hoteliers are generally advanced in their digital marketing thinking, increasingly harnessing first-party data feeding substantial digital marketing budgets (Cendyn’s US customers’ average annual budget is $84K) focusing investment in metasearch, SEM, paid social and programmatic campaigns.
• Asia-Pacific hoteliers – forced to diversify their markets post-pandemic with the reduction in Chinese travelers – know the importance of a dynamic and adaptable data-informed digital marketing strategy. Hoteliers are thinking more about growth-oriented strategies, with larger hotel groups considering long-funnel marketing.
• European hoteliers focus more on short-term revenue goals using lower-funnel tactics to deliver quick returns. Cendyn’s European customers invest heavily in SEM and metasearch to ensure visibility at key consumer decision points. These tactics do not always drive awareness and rely less on audience modeling, but when our customers leverage their first-party data within these channels, they maximize the efficiency of their digital campaigns.

Hotels require a mix of data from across the business, covering demand, booking patterns, competition, consumer preferences, and online behaviors – to create a data-informed digital marketing strategy.

We see four critical pillars to success:

1. The power of audiences (not demographics)

Demographics go some way towards describing target markets, but it’s not enough to build whole campaigns on. The future of digital marketing lies in data – deeply understanding the preferences and behaviors that drive the decisions of your valued guests. Basing digital marketing on audiences means you can pinpoint your specific high-value target market, deliver the most relevant content, and lead that consumer down the path to purchase.

This highly targeted marketing means you can find the right customer, drive bookings of the desired value, and grow both loyalty and revenue. Digital marketing driven by data-informed audience characteristics sparks demand by pinpointing your ‘best’ target customers. Modeling can identify lookalike audiences too – helping hotels extend their reach, find new customers, and achieve better ROI on prospecting strategies.

2. Understanding your unique digital roadmap

Every business is on a digital marketing journey, where strategies, practices and the use of technology and analytics are (usually) being gradually enhanced. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach – every hotelier should be working with channels suitable for their hotel, the type of product, and the wider commercial strategy.

The first step is to refine the strategic approach by using standard channels appropriately. For most hotels, these core channels are: Search, Meta, and Programmatic media buying (display, audio, video). Data analytics can highlight performance strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats on each of these – enabling hotels to develop a more focused approach and digital roadmap.

Next is looking towards opportunities for Paid Social, drawing on audience insights to define the ‘right’ channel(s), and tapping into the potential of Google’s PMAX across a range of channels. Analyzing performance and continually reviewing budgets needed to achieve digital marketing goals – measuring core ROI metrics – closes the digital marketing loop.

3. Developing short- AND long-term strategies 

Creating a full-funnel digital marketing strategy to drive immediate bookings and support future-thinking brand strategies is a critical element of digital marketing success. Most hotels need a short-term approach to get bookings quickly and achieve an immediate ROI. Data can support this, enabling the creation of time-sensitive offers that correlate with current events.

But hotels need to rethink the role of digital marketing – as it’s more than just achieving bookings in the here and now. Thinking beyond the transactional, the long-term aims of digital marketing should be about creating lasting relationships achieved through creative and engaging brand awareness campaigns. Doing this well necessitates the use of data and marketing in a different way – focusing on stories, messaging, and loyalty programs that resonate with target audiences.

Playing the long game means you might not see ROI on digital marketing tactics now, but it creates a brand presence in the minds of future bookers. They will be an audience ripe for direct bookings, making this a cost-effective way of finding customers in the medium- and long-term.

4. Integrated technology to maximize data strategies 

The final pillar that defines success for hoteliers is taking the time to tackle the issues of disparate data and systems. Almost every hotel suffers from this to some extent. Data may sit partially in the property management system (PMS), in F&B systems, within on-site spa and leisure outlets, and on third-party ePOS and other supporting systems. Developing a tech stack solution is key for hotels. Carefully selecting an integrated technology solution that can match and merge data to create unified profiles of guests is absolutely critical for digital marketers.

This is the best way to maximize the potential of the data being captured and improve data analysis abilities. The insights gained make a huge difference to the level of targeting that can be achieved in digital marketing. Supported by a customer relationship management (CRM) system and a digital marketing platform (DMP), data-informed marketing can become the norm.

How hotels have used data and digital marketing 

HHM Hotels needed more immediate bookings, as well as to enhance brand awareness to secure a pipeline of future bookings. With Cyber Monday approaching – it presented a massive opportunity to run a multi-channel digital marketing campaign. By focusing on SEM and email marketing, capturing high-intent search traffic, and retargeting customer resource management lists, HHM Hotels experienced an 84.5% increase in room nights and a 100% revenue increase.

For Apex Hotels, boosting direct bookings and becoming more visible against competitors were its primary aims. By working with the Cendyn Digital Marketing Platform, Apex Hotels could build better visibility on metasearch and better manage its campaigns and bidding strategies, subsequently growing revenue by 30% and bookings by 23%.

While loyalty was the name of the game for the Sircle Collection as it sought to improve engagement with existing customers. Through leveraging guest data throughout the business within the Cendyn CRM, Circle created a unified data platform fully integrated with its PMS. This resulted in an impressive 95% increase in unique guest profiles, a surge in email open rates and direct bookings, and a 73% year-over-year growth in the ‘Sircle Club’ loyalty program.

Data + digital marketing = enhanced commercial performance 

Consolidating data and analyzing performance through data to glean key insights is critical to the digital marketing puzzle. This approach enables teams to be revenue-focused, using precise audience profiles to tailor campaigns, personalize offers, and positively contribute to the bottom line and brand buy-in throughout the funnel.

Investing in a data-led digital marketing approach – while training and aligning teams on best practices – is a methodical, process-driven, and proven strategy. It takes time, and progress is incremental, meaning its effect is long-lasting and sustainable. Ultimately, it’s a sure-fire route to commercial success – enabling hotels to Find customers and increase demand, facilitate the Book stage with a steady stream of high-value targets, and Grow revenue from each guest.

Tina Markowitz, Vice President, Global Digital Strategy, oversees the data-driven digital strategy of Cendyn’s hospitality customers. Markowitz provides clients with both holistic and innovative digital planning to achieve business goals and deliver results. With over 10 years in integrated digital marketing leadership positions, Markowitz previously held positions at Zimmerman Advertising, with former roles at SapientNitro, Media Storm and Time, Inc.

About Cendyn

Cendyn is a global hospitality cloud-based technology company that enables hotels to Find, Book, Grow – driving revenue, maximizing profitability, and creating deeper connections with guests through its integrated solutions.

Serving hoteliers for nearly 30 years, Cendyn has over 32,000 customers in more than 150 countries including brands Outrigger Hospitality, Hyatt, IHG, Aman Resorts & Hotels, Relais & Châteaux, Banyan Tree Hotels & Resorts, Coraltree Hospitality, and Onyx Hospitality Group – generating more than $20 billion in annual hotel revenue. The company supports its growing customer base with offices across the globe.

To find out more, visit cendyn.com.