So, you’re buying a hotel – congratulations! You may be an old hand at this game, or you could be experienced in another area and making an investment. One area you will need to consider to assure your investment is how you market it, and how you make the best of the marketing assets you’ve paid for – or at worst, understanding which ones had no worth and need quick remedies.
I may be preaching to the choir here – but marketing is something you need to factor in to make your investment successful. Many see this as the first cost-saving corner to cut – but marketing is a revenue generator. A hotel with no bookings makes no profit. That said, more marketing spend does not always equal more bookings – so you have to invest wisely and have an understanding of what needs to be done, and what areas and parties you need to hold to account.
Ownership & Purchase
First things first – what are you actually buying? We’re assuming you’re buying an existing hotel business and taking things over; if that’s not the case, most of this still applies. Ideally, make sure you legally own and practically have access to all digital marketing assets – it’s shocking how often this gets overlooked, where it represents a massive chunk of your potential income generation and future value of the business.
We’ll take a look at more specifics further on, but the vitals you need to have locked in contracts are:
- Domain name – have this transferred into your legal ownership
- Website – get full access to hosting and transfer to a good hosting provider where you have full access
- DNS – you have access and control of this (the records that direct your domain name to your website)
- Social media accounts – full ownership & access to all accounts
- Ad accounts – full ownership of accounts such as Google Ads or Meta
- Tracking & analytics tools – full ownership (Google Analytics and Search Console being key ones)
- Website CMS access
- Email marketing platforms or lists
- Review platforms
You may also want to consider:
- Any email accounts set up – or you might want to start afresh
- Booking engine/PMS – or you might want to start afresh
- Branding guidelines, assets, photography – or again, you might want to start afresh
Let’s dig into each of these with a bit more context.
Brand Identity & Assets
The first decision is around brand. Are you changing the name? Is it well known? Does it fit your intended target audience and your vision for the hotel?
This is core, and something you alone have to decide – but from a digital marketing perspective, if the name and domain name have strong SEO value, a positive history, and many mentions and citations online and in the press, that’s a strong item on your list of pros.
Next, are you keeping the same visual look to the brand, or are you ready for a makeover?
If you keep the same visual look, it’s important you get all the brand assets – it’s likely a professional designer was paid thousands for their work, not to mention professional photographers. It’s all too easy to overlook this and let that already-paid-for value slip through the cracks.
Ensure you have brand guidelines including logos, colour codes, and typefaces, plus assets such as vector copies of logos – in addition to any other creative assets, be that high-res photography or illustrations.
Hotel Domain Name and Its Value for SEO
Even if you’re starting over with a new name and look, you still need the domain name – it has massive value in terms of historic traffic and SEO clout.
Get full legal ownership – that means either having full access to the domain registrar account, or transferring the domain name to a new registrar. Be that directly with the registrar or your agency, either way ensure the legal contact on the domain is set to you.
- Keeping the name & domain name: Leave it as is.
- Moving to a new name: To maintain all traffic & SEO clout, you want the old domain up and running, redirecting all traffic to the new domain name using a search-engine-friendly 301 redirect – so all traffic hitting oldhotelandspa.com ends up at newhotelandspa.com, page for page. For example: oldhotelandspa.com/restaurant → newhotelandspa.com/restaurant.
Something to watch out for: you don’t want to end up with a copy of the site at oldhotelandspa.com and a copy at newhotelandspa.com – that will lead to duplicate content issues and your site being penalised in search engines like Google.A note on DNS: to the uninitiated, DNS is what points your domain name to your website hosting. This is often held with your website host, but can be with a separate third party such as Cloudflare. Again, ensure you have access and ownership of the DNS account – without this piece of the puzzle you do not own or control your site.
Website Hosting
Assuming you’re keeping the old site, what you need to do is: first, get access and ownership of where the site is hosted; secondly, assess what you have.
Getting access
There are a couple of types of hosting.
First, internally hosted systems like Squarespace. In these cases you will need to get access to the Squarespace account – taking it over entirely, or having it transferred to a new account under your ownership.
Second, full-access hosting – think of a WordPress site you own that sits with a hosting provider. What you’ll need here is access to the hosting provider’s account, or the site transferred to a new hosting provider at your discretion. You will either need access to the hosting control panel, which will give you all the details, or failing that, some form of FTP or SSH access, along with database access.
Assessing value
Personally, I think there’s less value in an internally hosted system. You do not own the site in this case. Yes, you own the branding and the content, but you don’t own the site in full – I would consider this to be of less value to you than a full system you legally own as an asset, and can adapt and market more easily moving forward.
The Website Itself: Should You Keep or Rebuild Your Hotel Website?
Core questions to ask yourself are: am I keeping the website itself or starting over, is what I’ve bought of value, and what are the lead times involved?
As I say – if it’s internally hosted such as Squarespace, my advice would be to start over and build an asset you truly own and can adapt, perhaps keeping the existing site as a stopgap.
What does have value is the content and structure – from an SEO perspective in particular – so when migrating to a new site, ensure the rough outline of the content and structure maps well to the new one.
If it is a fully ownable site you’re buying, great! It’s also worth asking yourself: is this of value, or are you buying a dud – or something that can be fixed up? The two core things I recommend looking at are:
- Is it outdated? If it looks dated, hasn’t been maintained or refreshed in many years, or isn’t mobile friendly, it’s probably not worth keeping and you should consider a new site.
- Is it adaptable? Is it on a common system like WordPress that you can maintain, and that most agencies and marketers would be knowledgeable in and able to leverage its ecosystem?
You should also consider whether it is fast and secure – run a speed test; if it runs like a snail carrying a brick, can it be remedied? Is it secure – does it protect customer data, comply with GDPR, is it SSL certified? These are lesser concerns though, as they can be remedied with some work as long as the problems aren’t too severe and the other factors are strong.
Starting Over? Here’s What You Need to Plan For
If you are starting over, how long does a new website design and build take, and when do you need to start taking bookings?
We’d recommend, if you’re wanting a good, intentional, well-thought-through job done, allow 6 months for the project as a minimum. Consider all that has to be done (design, development, content creation, photography, SEO fundamentals and migration) and you’ll quickly see that may even be a bit tight. This doesn’t mean it’s the wrong choice – but if you need to get up and running and taking bookings quickly, you have a few options:
- Create a stopgap site using a site builder like Elementor, or rely on a system like Squarespace
- Have your agency put together a one-page landing page that gives people the basics, shows off the brand and some photos – and crucially, takes bookings
- Redirect your domain to your booking system as a temporary measure
These can tide you over, allowing you to market and take bookings and generate revenue, until the proper job is completed and you can take things up a notch.
Search Engine Marketing Can Drive Hotel Bookings From Day One
Search marketing is a core booking driver – using SEO and PPC to get eyes on your site from high-intent potential customers. Without this visibility, you’re unseen and unfound.
What you need to access, besides the site and domain itself, we recommend as a minimum:
- Google Analytics – sure, you can start over with a fresh account, but the history of statistics gives you insights, power, and a good yardstick to measure against.
- Google Ads – again, you can start over with a fresh account, but you’re likely missing out. Google Ads in particular favours accounts with history; it takes time for them to get established, as every new account and campaign goes through a learning phase. Plus, if a great agency or internal marketing team has managed and optimised those ads well over the years, make the most of their hard work.
Other search and ad platforms are available – if they have metasearch accounts set up, Bing Ads, Pinterest Ads, Reddit Ads, or any other such platforms, get access and ownership of those accounts too.
A major concern with new hotel purchases is how to get bookings and revenue in ASAP. It depends on your starting point as to whether you lean towards PPC or SEO initially.
SEO is longer burn, but very effective. If the previous owners have invested in this consistently, don’t drop the ball – keep it going. If starting from scratch, it can take time to see really tangible results – think green shoots in the first 3 months, and don’t judge it truly until 6 months plus.
So if your budget is limited, maybe don’t start here – go for PPC instead. Why? With a reasonable budget, setup and optimisation, you’ll see results in the first month and beyond. Use PPC to get started, then loop back to organic SEO when you have traction and revenue, in order to take your revenue to the next level.
Hotel Social Media
Do the old social accounts have thousands of relevant followers? That’s something to ensure you own.
You need to make sure you have not just partial access, but full ownership of all hotel social media accounts – Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok are non-negotiables for hotels. However, if there are relevant X, LinkedIn, or Pinterest profiles, they’re worth getting access to as well.
Similarly, if the old hotel has a mailing list on a platform like Mailchimp with thousands of relevant subscribers – that’s gold dust too. Ensure you get access and keep it maintained.
Unless you’re going for a major shift in look and audience, don’t start over with new accounts. You’ll get much more value and continuity from renaming and rebranding the old accounts once you own them.
When to start pushing out content on these platforms: if you’re taking over existing, well-managed accounts, don’t drop the ball on your watch – keep the continuity and consistency going.
If you’re starting afresh it’s not much different – even if you’re not ready to take bookings. The best time to start building an audience is yesterday. Consider building anticipation with a pre-launch campaign.
In Summary
Know what you’re buying, and squeeze the full value from it. Marketing isn’t something you should ignore until opening day – or you won’t be open long. It quickly affects how profitable your venture is and how much control you as the owner have over bookings.
