9 Excellent Hotel Social Media Marketing Strategies for 2024 (2024)

With the vast number of users on various social media platforms, businesses have ample opportunities to engage with their audience.

For hotels, social media can not only help to promote the business, but it can also create a strong online presence.

97% of guests use social media to share pictures of their trips.

Meaning, hoteliers get the chance to showcase their property and attract more guests through a hotel social media marketing strategy.

So, if you are looking for a social media strategy for hotels that will effectively promote your business and establish a strong online presence, this article is for you.

In this article, I will explore some sure-shot ideas for using social media to promote your hotel and develop a successful hotel social media marketing strategy.

First and Foremost, Identify Your Audience

Before implementing any social media marketing strategies for hotels, you have to understand how do hotels use social media to attract customers.

The answer to this is really vast. However, there’s one aspect of it that you must know – knowing and understanding your target audience.

Meaning, that you as a hotelier should get fully acquainted with your audience.

For that, let me show you some real-world stats.

2 in 5 millennials admit that hotel and travel images on social media influence their booking.

This proves that millennials won’t select a hotel for their stay without ”social proof.”

Your credibility on social media plays an important role in your guest’s purchase decision. Basically, by carrying out your hotel’s social media marketing, you get a chance to impress your guests even before they visit your hotel.

The type of your audience certainly depends on the services you’re offering at your hotel. AND of course, your hotel location.

To understand them better, dig out some past data and find out which type of guests visit your hotel often. Are they couples, millennial travellers, corporates, families, or groups?

On the other hand, your target audience counts as well. Let’s say, at present, you are welcoming families and groups, but now you want to target corporates. So, you may definitely need to come up with some new hotel marketing ideas.

Here are some fresh hotel promotion ideas in that case.

All you need to do is define a precise database of your audience and strategize your hotel’s social media marketing accordingly.

Top-Notch Social Media Marketing Strategies for Hotels

Now that you have a better understanding of your target audience, it’s time to learn how to effectively promote your hotel on social media.

In this section, we will provide you with insightful hotel social media marketing tips to boost your marketing game.

From crafting a solid strategy to implementing it, these tips will help you make a difference in your hotel’s social media presence.

So, read on, learn, and start implementing these strategies to see the results for yourself.

1. Facebook – create a profile, go live, run ads!

When I talk about the best social media marketing strategies for hotels, Facebook always tops the list. And I don’t really need to mention the popularity of this mass media platform. Being the most accessed social media platform, it gives you a bunch of opportunities to advertise your hotel.

That goes without saying, Facebook is indeed an inevitable social media marketing approach for your hotel.

Create your business profile

First things first, create your property’s business profile. Make sure you add the required details and COMPLETE your profile. Once done, perform the following steps to get your Facebook page rolling:

1. Create a new Facebook page. Name it under your hotel’s brand.
2. Add a PROPER profile and cover photo for that page. You can also keep a video as a cover.
3. COMPLETE your page’s profile by adding information like description, category, address, phone number and everything else.
4. Keep your username such that people can identify you.

Some hoteliers neglect this feature, but it actually has a significant impact on your Facebook followers. An amazing cover photo as shown below can catch your audience’s attention. You should also keep changing your cover photo every now and then.

After having your profile built, the very next question that comes is:

As a hotel, what should I post on Facebook?

Facebook is the best medium to share your content.

Why? Because it has no barrier of word limits, links, or video size. Following are some types of posts that you can do:

1. Nearby scenic destinations and eye-catching pictures of your hotel’s interior and exterior.
2. Short videos.
3. Stories and live videos.
4. Special offers, promotions and deals.

But naturally, only posting is not sufficient, right? The next important aspect is engagement.

How can I increase engagement on my hotel’s Facebook page?

Here are a few ways through which your Facebook page can acquire higher engagement.

1. Encourage your guests to use check-ins or location tags on photos and videos. In return, you can offer some attractive rewards.
2. As things stand now, live videos have the highest engagement.
3. With Facebook, you can run interesting contests as well.

For example:

Win a 2D/3N couple package at Royal Beach Resort. Get a chance to enjoy the luxury by following three simple steps:
- Like our page
- Like this post
- Tag your three friends

Trust me this works like wonders! It increases engagement on your posts and will attract a pretty good number of guests.

Add-ons: Facebook ads for hotels

Facebook ads help to target fresh audiences or even existing audiences who have visited your website earlier but have not taken any action.

Running Facebook Ads can help you in a long way to:

1. Increase your direct bookings.
2. Promote attractive offers and discounts.
3. Target a large audience.

Here’s a complete guide to start Facebook Ads for your property.

You can also download FREE Facebook Ad templates to help you get started.

2. Instagram – reels are the new deal!

Instagram is the second most popular social media network followed by Facebook. Both of these social media networks are interlinked with each other. Everyone is aware that Instagram is primarily known for pictures and video sharing.

However, now there’s an upcoming trend of reels followed by live videos, stories, advertisem*nts, and boomerangs.

Currently, Instagram is the fastest growing media platform with 1 billion active users monthly.

Statista

Plus, millennials are the biggest consumer group on this platform.

And just to remind you, the human brain processes images 60K times faster than text.

Let’s proceed toward how to bring the best out of this most cherished social media for your hotel.

Create an Instagram Business Profile

Similar to Facebook, create your hotel’s Instagram business profile. Make sure you include all the required data in your business profile.

IMPORTANT: Do not miss out on adding your hotel website link in the bio!

You’ll be asked to connect your Instagram profile with your Facebook business page. DO THAT.

Plus Instagram now lets you experience cross messaging between Facebook and Instagram. Update it and you’ll be able to respond to all your queries from any of the applications you use.

As a hotel, what should I post on Instagram?

Since the platform is particularly for pictures and videos, consider posting high-resolution and interesting pictures of your hotel’s ambience, services, and amenities.

Naturally, the users desire to see the content that interests them, don’t they? It’s not really a tough cookie!

You see, travellers (and Instagram users) tend to like visually appealing posts. So you can share travel tips, local food tips, images of your surroundings, upcoming events, and discount offers.

Don’t forget to add these with the new trend of reels. You can capture and post short videos or a bunch of photos with enchanting music of 15-30 seconds.

Use the best suitable hashtags

Posting without hashtags on Instagram is equivalent to not posting (Yes, that’s absolutely true!)

In fact, images with hashtags see 12.6% more engagement.

In order to have more engagement, you need to first find the relevant and popular hashtags.

And you know what? There are many tricks in adding these hashtags too! Let me share with you the evergreen one.

In case you are not aware there are two types of hashtags:

1. Super-popular– #Instalike #likeforlike #followforfollow #igers #tagfortag and likewise
2. Less popular- #instatravel #hotels #luxuryhotels #boutiquehotel #besthostel #hoteldeals #hotellocation and likewise

My secret source says that it’s important that you use both. However, by using less popular hashtags, you can easily rank high and be found by targeted users. On the other hand, using the most popular hashtags can increase the impressions on your posts.

BONUS TIP: Including a location will help as well. Posts see 79% more engagement when a location is set. Plus, that helps travellers find your hotel when they look for images of your location.

Give a try to these tips and enjoy the surprises these hashtags bring for you!

How can I increase engagement on Instagram?

When it comes to increasing engagement, nothing can beat the stories and live videos. Let’s get ahead!

Post Instagram stories

Instagram launched stories way back in 2016. Since then, there hasn’t been looking back.

With Instagram Stories, you can click on the special moments of your day, ask questions or share any quick updates about your hotel. These stories last for 24 hours which is the primary reason for their engagement with Instagrammers (aka igers!)

If you want a story to stay for longer, add them as Highlights on your profile. 

You must be wondering that apart from posting regular content, adding stories would take a toll on you. Well, that’s not the case.

These stories are just meant to give a glimpse of what is going on in your business. Here are some examples that might be helpful to you in adding your stories.

1. Discounts, ongoing deals, and offers
2. Important announcements
3. A sneak peek into your work (a.k.a hotel) life
4. Running a poll for customer feedback
5. Asking questions
6. Upcoming events
7. Behind-the-scenes pictures and videos of your hotel (#BTS)

Create a unique hashtag just for your hotel brand and include them in all your posts. (Just like we have it for #eZeeTech.)

Ask your guests to tag your page in their photos, add the location, and use your hotel’s hashtag. In return, you should like those images, respond to their comments, and keep the engagement consistent.

Shoot an Instagram boomerang

You can do way more with Instagram than just publishing a picture, a story, or a video. Boomerang takes a burst of photos and stitches them together into a high-quality mini-video that plays forward and backwards.

It also lets you turn everyday moments into something fun and unexpected. With this, you could show some of your hotel highlights, exciting offers, discounts or anything unique you can think of.

Here’s a blog that explains Instagram marketing for hotels.

BONUS TIP: You can also re-post your guests' posts that star you using the Repost app. You can find this app on PlayStore and AppStore.

We’ve also got ready-to-use social media post templates at NO COST.

Get the templates, decide on the type of post you want to do, and get started with social media marketing for hotels.

Share reels

Instagram reels are the latest way to create and share short and entertaining videos about your hotel. They are the newest addition to this social channel.

Reels let you record and edit 15 to 30 seconds of multi-clip videos with audio, various background effects, and creative tools.

Having a business account (i.e. public account) helps your feed reach a wider Instagram community.

For all of these tips, your post content is the king. We’ve made some ready-to-use social media post templates free of cost for you.

Get the templates, decide on the type of post you want to do, and start with social media marketing for your hotel business.

3. LinkedIn – share the perfect post

If you’ve been ignoring LinkedIn because of its B2B focus, then think twice. LinkedIn is another most popular social media channel after Facebook and Instagram.

This platform has over 630 million users on board, from hotel owners to potential guests and even vendors. This untapped potential client base could work wonders for your property.

Create your hotel’s page

Prerequisite: LinkedIn allows you to create a page only if you have an account on it. So firstly create a business profile. (This can be of an owner, CEO, or any designated member of your hotel.)

The next step is to create a company page from your profile. Make sure you add all the required details (on both your profile and the page) to allow your audience to know the A-Z of your hotel business. Once done, ensure that:

1. The name matches your hotel’s brand.
2. You have an interesting and detailed description.
3. Upload a crisp and clean hotel image – Profile and cover picture.
4. Include a link to your website.

Keep a quarterly check on these in case there is anything to be updated or shared with your guests. You can also consider changing your profile and cover photo to maintain engagement.

After having your profile set, the next thing that comes to mind is:

As a hotel, what should I post on LinkedIn?

Social media itself says to share everything that is going in and around your business. But, to attract the right audiences you should post what they want you to post.

LinkedIn is not like any other social media platform. The audience is different, they are here to explore something that is really beneficial to them.

You can consider sharing posts about your hotel’s amenities, attractive deals, short videos, a virtual tour or so.

This will help them gain insights about your property and might as well excite them to book a stay.

Just like Facebook and Instagram, here you can add 3-5 hashtags along with your posts to gain higher engagement.

Now, talking about engagement let’s have a look on,

How to increase engagement on your hotel’s LinkedIn page?

Your social media marketing efforts can be considered fruitful only when you are able to gain maximum engagement on your posts.

Here are some ideas that might help:

1. Start connecting with the right people.
2. Take the proper steps to grow your followers.
3. Run polls, share carousels, post an engaging story, and try using all the marketing tools given.
4. Join (relevant) groups and share posts to attract more guests.
5. Give a timely response, be it a negative or a positive one. Make sure you acknowledge them with a pleasing reply.
6. Lastly, be ACTIVE, that’s all that matters!

The opportunities are endless, consider experimenting with this channel and share with me how it turned out for your property.

4. YouTube – capture and publish the best hotel videos

Videos have higher engagement than images and textual content (you will definitely agree with me here).

At present,

YouTube draws 2 billion monthly logged-in users on its platform.

YouTube

And why not?

To tell you the truth, videos on YouTube have a huge impact than television advertising.

That being the case, YouTube marketing for your hotel can get you significant traffic as well as potential guests. Besides, the ‘in-motion’ videos of your hotel are more likely to drive the guests than the still pictures.

As a hotel, what type of videos should I publish?

1. A video tour of your hotel capturing the amenities and services. (Including such videos will excite your visitors to experience the stay at your hotel)
2. Video testimonials of your guests.
3. You can also shoot a time-lapse video of the nearby location covering from sunrise to sunset.
4. Not just an internal tour but also shoot a video of its exterior showing where your hotel is located.
5. Post videos of any events or concerts happening at your hotel.

Now you must be wondering how to manage shooting the video and the investments surrounding it.

Well, you can hire a freelancer to shoot and develop the videos. This will be a one-time investment with a consistent return.

What else can hotels do on YouTube?

After publishing videos, your next goal is to rank them on Google. For that, you have to be very precise in adding a title to your video. Take the help of Google Keyword Planner to determine what title works best for your videos.

Enrich your video by adding some additional tags such as the city, state, and engaging end screens.

Make your video descriptions as detailed as possible. The description should also include links to your website and social media channels, along with a phone number to call directly. Reply to comments left by customers as necessary, particularly negative ones.

5. X (formerly Twitter) – tweet, tweet, short & sweet!

To be honest, X is actually a less prominent social media platform in the hospitality industry. However, with the pace at which its popularity is growing, it would be a major miss if you don’t include it as a part of social media marketing for your hotel!

At present,

There are 368 million active X users worldwide.

Statista

If done correctly, it can actually bring you potential guests and also drive traffic to your hotel’s website.

X does come with the limitation of characters. However, recently it has increased its character limit from 140 characters to 280. I’m sure you would definitely agree that marketing or promoting your hotel in just 280 characters is a tough call to make.

In contrast to this – the character limit urges the millennial guest to use it more. They use it frequently for quick updates, instant feedback on the hotel service, their trip experiences and such likes.

In a nutshell, X is speedy and talky!

As a hotel, what should I tweet on X?

You can tweet about your special deals, offers or recent updates. Using X is really a no-brainer thing. Let me give you a few examples:

Royal Beach Resort is happy to announce 30% off on all the bookings from 6 March to 10 March celebrating Women’s day. Use code WOM30

Or you can do something like this.

The Royal Beach is all in the spree to welcome [person name] on 18th March. Book your room if you want to meet this youth sensation.

How can I increase engagementonX?

When it comes to responding, hotels generally fail to give a timely response (Agree?).

Be it your online reviews, comments on Facebook, tags, re-posts on Instagram or even mentions on X.

Do not miss responding to anyone who has mentioned your hotel page. Even if it is a good comment or a bad one. (If it’s a bad one, you must treat it with utmost priority.) Walk the extra mile to apologize and assure the guest of your high standards.

If you don’t want to leave your reviews unresponded download these FREE templates now!

X allows you to closely follow all the chattering going around within your audience. So keep an eye on those chats and take the optimum advantage of them.

For example: If any traveler has posted a bad experience about the hotel in your region, you can suggest your hotel replying to their tweet. 

Happy Tweeting!

6. Pinterest – create impressive boards

Pinterest is one of those social media platforms that receive less recognition but has been a salient player all along.

In case you aren’t aware, Pinterest is a visual platform for picture sharing.
But when you use Pinterest, it’s PINS, not images or pictures (be careful!).

So, when you upload an image (oops, Sorry a PIN); you can add a link to that PIN.

You can also link all the posts to a specific location. Let’s say you upload a photo of your property and 100 people re-pin it, all 100 pins will still link back to your website.

Set up a Pinterest profile

Set up an excellent Pinterest profile for your hotel. Your profile displays your profile photo, name, bio, and optionally, location. You can edit these details anytime.

Additionally, you can see who’s following you and the boards, topics, and people you follow.

Create your own boards

The pins on Pinterest are organized on the boards. Pinterest is all stacked with these boards. DIY, Quotes, and Fashion are some of the most popular ones. Basically, these boards are like your personal categories, using which you can classify your pins. Generally, Pinterest users follow specific boards or just your profile.

You can post your hotel’s picture with content and link it to your website by listing it on some trending boards. (Or you can simply create your own board.)

A few examples of the boards that you can create are:

1. Boutique hotels
2. Traveller tips
3. Food and drinks
4. Scenic destinations

As a hotel, what should I post on Pinterest?

To talk about Pinterest as a part of social media marketing for hotels, here’s what you can do:

1. Showcase your hotel’s best features viz. your rooms, and amenities.
2. Post photos of everything that makes your local area unique, from scenic destinations, beaches, walking tracks, and mountain views to restaurants.
3. Highlight what people can do near your hotel. (Tip: Create a separate board for family/guest activities.)
4. If your hotel has a restaurant, showcase some attractive images of your toothsome delicacies (#foodp*rn). And if you don’t, post photos of cafés or food joints nearby.
5. Try giving some helpful advice or information to visitors if you have time.

7. WhatsApp – reach out to 10x audience

I’m sure you must be well-versed with what WhatsApp is and how it works. So let me just help you out with some core features that can be beneficial for your business.

When we talk about active users for WhatsApp this channel beats all the social platforms. It has 2 billion users worldwide. Which is a lot of clients – potential and current to grow your hotel business.

WhatsApp marketing, though does not allow you to post or upload photos, its messaging lets you reach all your audiences in a fraction of second.

Besides, you can now post stories on WhatsApp that help you to share all the updates about what’s happening at your property.

For business owners, you can consider downloading the WhatsApp Business app. It allows you to register and display your business as a recognized brand for your target audience.

We have a complete guide for hotels to make the utmost use of WhatsApp’s potential. Do check it out.

WhatsApp Business includes:

Business Profile: You can create a profile for your brand to help your guests find valuable information like a website, location, and contact information along with a complimentary profile picture. It also allows you to create a business catalogue sharing multiple images, product or service names, prices, descriptions, links, and product or service codes.

Business messaging tools: Make use of the away message feature to respond to all your messages. This lets you send a prompt reply to anyone sending a message on your registered number. You can set an away responder, a greeting message, or an introductory message (in case they message you for the first time).

WhatsApp Web: You can track all your messages more efficiently and respond to your customers right from your desktop or laptop.

It goes without saying, that this app enables you to share files, images and supports free voice and video calls. (Which helps you to stay connected to all your guests at any time and hour of the day.)

The best thing that WhatsApp offers is, that you can send multiple or bulk messages to as many potential guests as you wish to. All you have to do is create a broadcast group!

Nowadays your guests are barely away from their phones. This makes it a great opportunity for you to use mobile messaging platforms to communicate with them.

8. Influencers – connect and enhance marketing!

The core idea behind influencer marketing for hotels is nothing but the “Word of mouth”.

For that reason, influencer marketing is an important aspect of social media marketing for hotels.

Who are influencers?

An influencer (aka blogger) is an individual who has the power to affect people’s purchase decisions because of his/her authority, knowledge, position or relationship with his/her audience. They have built a reputation for their knowledge and expertise on a particular topic.

They make regular posts about that topic on their preferred social media channels. That’s how they generate large followings of engaged people who pay close attention to their views.

Influencer marketing for hotels includes reaching out to influencers who are related to the travel and hospitality industry.

How to do influencer marketing for my hotel?

To start with, find a hospitality industry influencer in your region. Try connecting with them to stay and promote your property. In return, offer them attractive deals, offers, or a free stay. (Tip: Doing this in weak seasons can really benefit you!)

Ask the influencer to take maximum photos and videos when they are staying at your hotel.

Devise a thorough marketing plan once you have confirmed any influencer. This plan should include pre-marketing and post-marketing ideas too.

Later on, use it thoroughly in your social media posts.

Zostel recently did a video with Shivya Nath (The Shooting Star), a famous travel blogger from India who has been on the road for almost a decade.

9. TripAdvisor – enhance hotel reviews

It isn’t a hidden fact that TripAdvisor gives ample benefits to hotels and has become the most popular travel website over the years. Adding on, it’s a no-brainer to consider this travel giant as a part of social media marketing for hotels.

Here’s why:

1. The site receives approximately 463 million unique visitors every month.
2. TripAdvisor users have contributed over 859 million reviews and opinions.

TripAdvisor Media Centre

Today, travellers use it to a great extent to determine where to go, who to stay with, what sites to visit. If your hotel’s presence is NOT on this mega travel website, then you are surely missing out.

How to do marketing on Tripadvisor?

Every hotel can write its description, the amenities offered, and everything that makes it unique. You just need to do that with great pictures.

Figure out which category is suitable for you in two ways:

1. As per accommodation type viz. B&Bs, boutique hotels, resorts and such likes.
2. As per the audience or your services viz. best value, romantic, family-friendly, business accommodation or luxurious.

Get the most reviews on TripAdvisor

The number of reviews on your TripAdvisor account is directly proportional to the bookings you are going to receive.

In simple words,

More reviews = More bookings = More revenue.

TripAdvisor bestows hoteliers with the two surefire mediums to grab more reviews in their bags.

1. TripAdvisor review express program

TripAdvisor is running a TripAdvisor Review Express Program, which helps hotels collect more reviews on the site for free. In this program, TripAdvisor approaches your recently checked-out guests to leave a review for your hotel.

However, you can only enrol in this program if your hotel technology provider is a TripAdvisor Connectivity Partner.

If you want to know how this program works, you can explore that in detail here:

In addition to this, you can also set automatic emails after the guest checks out to collect reviews on TripAdvisor and other online platforms.

2. TripAdvisor traveller reviews app

You can add the very interesting TripAdvisor Traveller Reviews App to your hotel’s Facebook business page (which is free).

Integrating this app will allow your guests to give you reviews on TripAdvisor FROM your Facebook page. Believe it or not, it’s easier for guests to leave you a review on Facebook instead of any other platform.

Key Takeaways

Now that we talked about what should be considered and done in social media marketing for hotels, let’s bring it all together.

By now, you are fully familiar with the entirety of how to carry out your hotel’s social media marketing. Right?

But what next?

Only KNOWING the strategies is not important. Their execution holds a major significance.

So here are some of the essential things to consider for the long-term and fruitful benefits of these social media strategies.

1. Define strong goals

Let me ask you a question here – Why should you start social media marketing for your hotel?

Definitely, you must have some solid reason to do so. But my point is – convert that answer or reason into your GOAL.

Practising these strategies randomly might not give you the desired results. So set goals to achieve them.

If you are new to social media marketing, your initial goal can be to increase your followers to 10K.

Whereas, if you are an old player, then your goal can be like – Increase the lead conversion ratio through these platforms.

2. Interlink your social media pages

Interlinking your different social media platforms is really important. This will help you have a balanced audience and traffic.

Most importantly, your profile picture and the link to your hotel website should be the same and added to every social media handle.

You should also see if all the corporate information is listed correctly on each and every social media platform.

3. Do cross-posting

Cross-posting is the act of creating a great piece of content and posting it across multiple social media platforms. Eventually, this would help you to streamline your social media strategy across all platforms.

Additionally, it would also invest less time and effort in keeping your social media accounts active and healthy. It can help you to retain your existing audience, broaden your reach and attract new followers.

Active social media channels will help you to grow rapidly and gain more followers.

4. Be consistent on social media

Now, it is not necessary that you have to post every day. But the frequency at which you are posting should be constant.

Let’s say if you are posting every alternate day, then it should remain consistent throughout.

It’s okay to miss sometimes but don’t let that turn into a habit (Because we’re experts at procrastinating!)

You can reach more people by posting content regularly on all platforms. Besides, you’ll easily be able to grow your online presence and drive website traffic.

5. Take advantage of paid advertising

Most of the social media platforms are offering paid ads. In social media marketing for hotels, this is a BOON.

You can get a considerable budget and try advertising on different social media platforms.

I’ve got some great content to help you get started with Facebook and Google Ads for your hotel.

And I’m not asking you to run ads for years at a stretch. Give them a try for a couple of months or so, perform experiments and then decide after you see the results.