In today’s competitive digital world, understanding your guests, their behaviours and their preferences is key to driving direct bookings and improving your hotel’s online presence.
One key way to do this is with some form of data analytics – an essential resource that every hotel can leverage to optimise their marketing efforts, whether you’re a small boutique or luxury resort, accessing and interpreting your data is vital.
In this post, we’ll explore how data analytics can help you make informed decisions and drive your hotel forward.
What is analytics and why is it important?
For hotels, data analytics means collecting and analysing various data from sources such as your website, booking engine, property management system, social media or guest reviews.
By accurately and efficiently collecting this data, you’ll be able to identify trends, measure marketing performance, learn more about your customers and therefore improve the performance of your marketing and digital communication.
Analytics provide you with factual information you need to make key decisions and take out the guesswork.
How can analytics improve your hotel marketing?
Understanding your guests
Data will allow you to understand your guests. Demographic information like age, location and interests will help guide your future marketing – knowing exactly who you need to reach.
For example, if your demographic data shows a large proportion of bookers are young professionals only staying for one night, you could create special “workation” packages to suit them.
Many platforms have demographic information readily available:
Google Analytics provides a Demographic Details report where you can dive deeper into your website users. This information will allow you to tailor marketing campaigns, optimise offers and personalise content to better align with your website visitors.
Head to Google Analytics > Reports > User > User Attributes > Demographic Details.
Most social media platforms will provide information on what kind of people are interacting with your profile and posts.
To access this in Meta Business Suite, head to Insights > Audience > Demographics.
It’s likely your booking engine will also provide demographic information of the people booking rooms. We’d recommend cross-referencing this data with your Google Analytics data and seeing if anything stands out. For example, do you have lots of traffic but no bookings from a certain demographic? Why could that be?
Optimising your website
Often, your hotel’s website is the first contact point for potential guests. This is why it’s crucial to understand your numbers here.
By analysing key data such as page views, bounce rates and conversion rates you can easily find some quick wins. You’ll be able to identify which traffic sources convert well, or where users may be dropping off in their journey through your website – identifying key areas for improvement.
Here’s an example: you could use Google Analytics to discover that your ‘Rooms’ page has a higher bounce rate than other pages. Once you look into it, there’s something on the page slowing it down and putting people off. If you fix this, conversion rates are bound to increase.
Enhancing search strategies
Both Paid Search (AKA PPC) and Organic Search (AKA SEO) are crucial components of any decent hotel marketing strategy. Staying on top of your analytics here will help ensure these channels are working hard for you.
Analysing information such as which keywords are driving the most traffic or conversions allows you to allocate your budgets better and improve your site to optimise for these keywords.
Here’s an example: Google Ads is driving a lot of clicks to your site for searches related to “weekend getaways in Sheffield”. However, you’re not targeting this keyword organically. From this information you know that creating a page to target this keyword could not only drive traffic but cut out some Paid Search costs.
Improving email campaigns
One of the most powerful marketing tools for driving repeat bookings is email marketing. And this channel comes with its very own set of data and analytics.
By analysing data such as open rates, click-throughs and conversions you can not only gauge the success of your campaigns but use this information to guide future campaigns.
Here, you could segment your customers based on the above data and past guest behaviour. You can then send them personalised emails, knowing exactly what kind of content they’d be interested in.
Predicting trends
One of the most powerful uses for data is to predict future trends.
By analysing historical data, you can spot patterns and make informed decisions and predictions about what may be around the corner.
This could be especially useful for seasonal promotions or the need to run discounts.
Let’s say analytics shows a consistent spike in last-minute bookings during the first week in January. You can then offer early-bird discounts for January stays in November and December to fill up that allocation quicker and rely less on last-minute bookings.
Getting started with data analytics
Everything here sounds great, right? Time to get started then. Don’t worry, it doesn’t have to be daunting. Here are a few steps to get started.
- Set clear goals
It’s important to initially identify what you want to achieve. Is it direct bookings? Guest satisfaction? Optimising your spending? Improving ROI? Set clear, actionable goals here that align with your broader business objectives. - Choose the right tools
The analytics tools you use must suit your needs! Each platform offers unique features that can help track performance and understand your audience better. But there’s a ‘starter pack’ we’d recommend:
We’d always recommend Google Analytics – a great place to start for tracking endless website data. Website traffic, user behaviour, bookings and product performance, device breakdowns, and content performance the things you can analyse here are endless.
Check out Hoosuite’s guide: How to Set Up Google Analytics: A Step-by-Step Guide
If you want to analyse and improve your SEO, and conduct keyword and competitor research, check out SEMrush or AHrefs.
Then it depends on the campaigns you’re running. Platforms like Google Ads and Facebook offer decent options for monitoring your campaigns. - Collect and analyse data regularly
Make sure data collection and analysis is a regular part of your routine. It’s important to review your reports frequently and use them to spot trends and guide your decisions.
In Conclusion
In this fast-paced, competitive landscape, leveraging analytics is no longer optional for hotels – it’s essential.
If you need any help tackling your data or a review of your tracking, get in touch with our expert team – we’d be happy to help!
