10 Luxury Resort Marketing Strategies To Succeed In 2022 (2023)

In 2022, much of the travel industry has moved on from the COVID-19 pandemic. However, that does not mean that the lessons learned during the pandemic have been forgotten. As the travel industry comes roaring back, the evolutions the industry has made will continue in many ways, especially as travelers are looking for reassurance that their experience will be safe and comfortable. Luxury resort marketing that takes advantage of these learned lessons will be set up for success.

The lessons of the COVID era will carry over for years to come, and getting on the right foot with your resort marketing now will help you to be a leader in a changing world.

Why Do Luxury Resorts Need Marketing?

In a normal year, millions of travelers leave their homes in search of vacation or to go on a business trip. These travelers are in need of a place to stay during these trips, and many of them choose luxury resorts for all of the amenities and atmosphere they offer. The luxury hotel industry is competitive and in order to stand out a resort needs to show travelers what they have to offer. A great resort marketing strategy will focus on showing off the features that makes a resort stand apart from the others.

In this article, we are going to take a look at 10 techniques to make a successful resort marketing plan in 2022. From navigating the post-pandemic travel world to general hotel digital marketing techniques, these strategies lay a foundation for a lucrative future.

We will first take a look at some post-pandemic tourism marketing trends:

• Safety First
• Become A Staycation Destination
• Personalized And Private Experiences
• Contactless Is King
• Be Flexible With Booking Dates

We will then be looking into general luxury hotel marketing strategies that will keep you ahead of the curve:

• Go Mobile First
• Stand Out With An Outstanding App
• Get Social
• Advertise
• Use Video Marketing To Build Value

2022 Luxury Resort Marketing Strategies For Hotel Business Success In The Aftermath Of COVID-19

In 2022, the pandemic is less of a problem for the travel industry than it was for the last two years. However, with variants flaring up in places and other related issues such as airline staff shortages causing flight cancellations and delays, there are still effects being felt throughout the industry. On the plus side, in most ways the travel industry has become roaring back.

That said, people still want to feel safe and in many cases will still want to know that hotels are doing their best to protect them. Luxury resort marketing should take note of these issues and concerns to maximize the likelihood of a traveler choosing their resort to book for their vacation or business travel.

1. Safety First

Pandemic or no, guest safety should always be a top priority for any luxury hotel. According to a 2021 survey 78% of people said they have avoided staying at a resort, hotel, or casino due to COVID-19, and 90% say that it is extremely important that a hotel enforces a safety policy. While people are planning bigger and longer trips after not traveling for two years, they want to know the places they stay are working to keep them safe. This goes for more than just viruses, but in general people want to feel safe when they travel.

Making guests feel at ease by letting them know that there is a clear safety policy that is followed should be a top priority in any resort marketing strategies. The safer your potential guests feel, the more likely they are to book with you.

Present your resort as being a place that is safe, secure, and cares about their guests. Resort marketing that mentions security and safety features will help to give guests a sense that they are in good hands.

2. Become A Staycation Destination

Business travel is back, but when it comes to vacations some are still opting for places that are closer to home. While there is a boom for international travel, for more domestic travel the headaches of airline cancellations and delays will keep some people taking road trip vacations.

Marketing to locals or semi-locals as a staycation destination is still a winning choice for luxury hotel marketing. If you show your visitors that there are advantages to choosing your hotel for their vacation, then they will come and spend their time and money at your resort and its offerings.

For those who are still doing remote work, having a resort that has great high speed internet mentioned in their hotel marketing can give them confidence that they can come with their families and still get their work done too!

This trend of staycations at resorts is only going to increase in the future with more and more businesses switching to remote work.

3. Personalized And Private Experiences

Social distancing might be a thing of the past for many people, but personalized experiences are here to stay. Travelers have seen the benefits of smaller and more personalized experiences, and they are going to keep wanting more. Personalized experiences that cater to your individual guests’ needs are always a great hook for resort marketing, and the lessons learned during the pandemic can continue to help hotels take those experiences to a new level.

Resort marketing can show the benefits of turning a personalized experience into a private one. Market the intimacy of having amenities limited in capacity, turning a dinner in a restaurant into a private catered meal. Offer micro weddings for your guests to celebrate their occasion in an intimate ceremony with family. Or, for the higher ends of the luxury scale, offer experiences like having an entire floor or villa to yourself.

Personalized and private spa getaways can also be a great hotel marketing hook. Advertise how safe and sanitized your facilities are, while also offering relief from stress with spa services. A creative hotel marketing team can find some fantastic opportunities for taking advantage of distance to create an amazing guest experience.

4. Contactless Is King

It should not come as a big surprise that even after the pandemic, people do not want to touch things that other people might be touching. Because of this, contactless options are always preferred whenever they can be offered. Resorts can take advantage of this by offering contactless check-ins and payments, as well as contactless access to rooms and amenities. There are a lot of options for this, but integrating contactless check-ins and payments into an app is an opportunity you do not want to miss out on. We will discuss apps in greater detail later, but the data they provide along with the convenience to the guest make them a top pick.

A full cycle resort marketing company such as ComboApp can help you develop an app that will have your guests feeling safe and satisfied.

5. Be Flexible With Booking Dates

As we have mentioned in the previous sections, while things are improving globally, there is still some uncertainty. With airline delays and cancellations, flare ups of COVID variants, and even just the general problems that always accompany planning to travel, travelers want to limit their financial risk as much as possible.

Flexible booking options and clear cancellation policies are an important part of hotel digital marketing in 2022. Flexible booking can take the form of allowing the changing of dates up to 24hrs before a booking, or allowing for hassle free reschedules, or even a form of booking insurance to protect against the traveler losing their hard earned money due to situations that are out of their control.

Making travel easy for resort visitors should be at the forefront of hospitality marketing, as it inspires confidence in travelers in their choice to visit your resort.

Luxury Resort Marketing Tips For 2022

Over the past few years, the marketing strategy of hotels and resorts has changed a few times. First to accommodate the pandemic, and now for the new reality that exists in the post pandemic era. While we have now covered that part of our discussion, let's look at some digital marketing strategies for hotels that are universal with or without the influence of world events. These tourism marketing stalwarts will get your efforts off on the right foot.

6. Go Mobile First

We used to talk a lot about developing “mobile-friendly” websites, but in 2022 the landscape has changed and now the focus should be “mobile-first“. This is with good reason, as mobile devices are quickly becoming the way people interact with the internet the most. This change is even reflected in Google’s algorithm and how it now ranks sites in a “mobile-first” fashion. This means that a site that does not provide a great mobile experience will not have a high spot in Google search rankings.

You need to reach your guests where they are, and where they are is increasingly on their phones or other mobile devices. US adults spend roughly 3 hours a day using their smartphone, which is a perfect time for you to reach them. Your site should be fast too, because if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load you will not just lose Google ranking but visitors as well.

Just like any website, you need to make sure your on-site SEO is on point and optimized too. ComboApp offers a great checklist for getting your SEO on track. The key things to always remember are:

• Optimized content for the keywords you are looking to rank highly on
• Having strong technical SEO
• Have a good backlink strategy
• Content, content, content
• Competitor analysis

A resort internet marketing agency such as ComboApp can help you develop a website that is optimized for mobile as well as for getting the top search spots!

Create Content With Value

We all know the adage that “content is king”, and when it comes to marketing a resort the content needs to be as engaging as the location itself. A good tip is to create content that highlights the things that make a resort and its surrounding location special. Cuisine, sightseeing locales, tours, and the country or city the resort is located in are all great subjects for your content as it will help you rank on those keywords and attract more guests!

7. Stand Out With An Outstanding App

Having a resort app is a tool that resorts should take full advantage of. Not only can you use an app in the current world situation to help with contactless payments and check-ins, but it is a great tool to get people engaged in general. An example of a possible use would be putting your resort menus in the app, and even allowing the ordering of room service.

An app can even make a good booking portal. Allowing people to book nights and the options they want to add on all in one place. The resort app can also be used to get guests to rate their experiences and give feedback too.

A great example is the Four Seasons mobile app. Their app allows guests to plan and book their trips, see the different resort destinations, book activities, set room preferences, chat with staff, as well as seeing menus and ordering your in-room dining. The app does all of this while showing off the beauty of their resorts.

Luxury resort app development might seem like a daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be that way. As a full cycle resort marketing company, ComboApp can handle the app development work to get your resort an app built that will fit both the hotel and your guests' needs.

8. Get Social

We have already discussed the fact that people spend a lot of time on their phones, what they spend time doing is another part of this equation. The average person spends over 144 minutes a day using social media, making it a prime way to reach new potential guests. While making a resort visible to those who are looking for what you offer is great, social media allows you to put the seed of thought into an audience who might not have been considering a trip before.

Of course, simply having a social media presence is not enough. What you need to do is make engaging and interactive content that will capture the imagination of those who see it. You can combine that with the challenges of our current world by showing off your safety measures and letting potential guests know that your resort is a place they can come and leave their worries behind.

Source: Facebook for Business

A well curated social media feed can help introduce new potential guests to the experiences your resort offers. This gets these new potential guests planning a get-away they had not previously thought of. Having a team that knows how to craft social media marketing for resorts properly is an essential tool for success. Which means a marketing agency such as ComboApp is essential to your luxury hotel marketing strategies.

Enhance Your Social Presence With Influencers

80% of marketers find Influencers to be an effective form of marketing. Influencers can be an essential part of social media marketing for resorts due to the more visual and experiential nature of them. Teaming up with the right Influencer can be a huge boon for your resort, as you get the opportunity to have your resort presented to an audience that trusts the influencer and looks to them when making purchasing or travel decisions. Look to partner with influencers for a variety of campaign types including blogs, social media, video content, and more. A full service digital marketing agency such as ComboApp can help connect you with influencers and develop campaigns that will benefit your resort the most.

9. Advertise

Advertising is essential to all businesses, and in 2022 things are more complex than they used to be. No longer is advertising relegated to just print and television. Nor are ads only a passive experience for the viewer. We now have a new and expanding digital advertising frontier to explore, so let’s look at some of the available choices.

Pay Per Click

For resort property marketing, pay-per-click advertising is a necessary tool. You can use it to target potential guests who are searching for everything from a resort getaway, to maybe just the city around it. This kind of targeting is ideal for reaching the guests most likely to visit a specific resort location.

A PPC campaign for resort marketing will likely stretch across multiple ad platforms including Facebook Ads, Instagram, Google Ads, and others. Mobile ads also are able to be targeted based on locations that users frequent or even have visited in the past.

There are 5 main types of paid ads that can be part of your resorts marketing strategy:

1. Display Ads – The traditional and classic banner ad that is one of the original forms of internet advertising.
2. Social Media – Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok, and other social media sites all feature options for paid advertisements. You can boost individual posts or set up marketing campaigns including interactive ads.
3. Native Ads – These are ads that are targeted to users based on their behaviors and interests.
4. Search – Ads that show up on search engine results pages. Usually based around the keywords users search.
5. Video Ads – This is a form of advertising that allows for the richest content. Video gives a viewer a chance to see and form an emotional connection with the audio and visuals an advertiser presents.

Source: Google Hotel Ads

Google also offers a specific type of Hotel advertising that allows users to book right from their Google search results, and Facebook also offers a similar option.

Interactive Advertising

Interactive advertising is a growing form of marketing that allows hotels and resorts to really engage potential guests. With this type of ad a potential guest can be engaged in the advertising in a way that allows them to form a connection with it. Taking advantage of interactive advertising now will give you an advantage over those who have not dipped their toes into the water yet.

Some examples of interactive ads would be a video that gives viewers the option to control the action. Maybe a video that takes a tour of a resort as a guest and gives the viewer the ability to decide what the guest does or offers 360 degree views of the resort.

An interactive game is another option for this form of advertising, or a quiz that asks people about resort vacations. All of these also allow for advertisers to harvest information like emails or social credentials that make it easier to directly market to these potential guests in the future.

There are a growing number of ways for a resort to spend its advertising budget, and resort marketing companies like ComboApp will help you to develop a hotel and resorts marketing strategy that will get you the most bang for your buck.

10. Use Video Marketing To Build Value

Travelers want to know where they are going. With so much great video content on the internet if you aren’t taking advantage of showing off your resort on video, you risk falling behind your competitors. You know your resort looks fantastic, but just showing still photos in your luxury hotel advertising is not enough anymore. A still image cannot build the emotion in a viewer as much as a gorgeous video showing off your resort in high definition.

Resort advertising video content doesn't just have to consist of those high end productions. Those productions are important and should be a part of any marketing strategy of hotel and resorts, but don’t forget the more personal content as well. Short form videos like on Tik Tok, Instagram Reels, or YouTube Shorts, can show off your resort and staff in small and entertaining clips. Short form content can show off food offerings, spas, staff, rooms, and even comments from happy guests.

Presentation is important on both long form and short form video. For long form videos are the ultimate in tourism marketing, they need to be well produced and give viewers a mind-blowing look at your resort. Short form content should be quick, informative, and fun.

A resort marketing company such as ComboApp will help you to produce the best video content for your resort. As experts in hospitality marketing, they will put a plan in place to make your resort a top destination for travelers.

Conclusion

In 2022, we have come through the challenges of the pandemic era and have entered an era that has new challenges ahead. With new challenges come new opportunities though, and for those who are prepared to rise to the occasion there will be rewards to reap. A resorts marketing strategy that lets potential guests know you are focused on their continued safety and comfort. Along with that, tourism marketing experts also need to keep the rest of their digital marketing plan strong and focused on engaging with guests in exciting ways.

Partnering with a resort marketing company such as ComboApp will ensure you have the right luxury resort marketing plan. As a full cycle marketing agency we will make sure that your resort is using every possible tool for success. Contact us to make certain your resort is on the right track for success in 2022 and beyond.