How to Build Your Hotel Marketing Plan, Step By Step (+ Free Template!)
Your hotel marketing plan is a critical piece of your business. If you want to drive your marketing strategy forward, you need a plan of action!
It’s like Ben Franklin says, “By failing to prepare, you’re preparing to fail.”
Whether it’s your first time creating one or your fiftieth, it doesn’t hurt to review the steps and structure.
If you’re new to marketing for a hotel, you might be asking: How do you create a marketing plan for a hotel? What are the main elements? What’s the best way to show my hotel GM all my brilliant search engine optimization tactics or social media marketing ideas?
I thought it might be helpful to detail a typical marketing planning process for hotels, step by step.
Then I thought: Wait, why not create a sample plan for readers to reference? Welp, that’s exactly what I did!
I went ahead and made you a free hotel marketing plan template!
Anyone can use it, whether you’re creating a marketing plan for a 5 star hotel, small bed and breakfast, or casual resort property.
It’s all yours for free, so hit the button below to grab the file — then, come back to this page and we’ll dig a little deeper into the process, together. 💪
Prefer to watch? Check out the video version below!
How do you create a marketing plan for a hotel?
Your hotel marketing plan needs these essential components:
Executive Summary
Vision & Mission Statements
Market Analysis
Pricing Strategy
SWOT Analysis
Historical Data
Guest Profile
Market Segmentation
Marketing Objectives
Marketing Channels
Marketing Metrics & S.M.A.R.T. Goals
Marketing Tactics by Channel
Marketing Budget
If some of these sound a bit confusing or you’re unfamiliar with the annual business planning process — don’t worry, I’m going to explain each piece of the puzzle below.
And by the way, you definitely don’t have to follow my free template exactly! 🤯
Every hotel is unique. Your marketing plan will evolve and change during the year as new challenges (and opportunities) arise.
Be adaptable, but keep your eyes on the prize: What’s your big-picture objective for the year — and how can marketing support that?
OK, with that out of the way, let’s get into the nitty-gritty!
1. Executive Summary
Opening your hotel sales and marketing plan with an executive summary sets the tone for your entire presentation.
Think of your executive summary as a broad overview of everything you’re about to present in your wider marketing plan.
In a few sentences, you’re using this space to introduce the “big idea” or “big objective” for the upcoming year. You might also need to mention a little context information driving your plan, like a major renovation.
You and your hotel business leaders have likely had some conversations already about the “big picture.” If not, it’s a good idea to get together and get on the same page.
Executive summaries are funny, though… It’s going to be the first thing in your marketing plan presentation, but most of the time, it’s the last thing you’ll write!
2. Vision & Mission Statements
While your executive summary may change year-to-year, your hotel’s vision and mission statements should stay pretty consistent. What is hotel marketing strategy worth if you don’t have a clear idea of who you are and what you’re all about?
If you’re part of a larger chain or brand, you might want to use what’s been given to you by head office.
If not, writing your own is a worthwhile exercise for your leadership committee and management team.
So, what’s the difference between a vision statement and a mission statement?
Your hotel vision statement looks ahead to the future, focusing on what your hotel wants to do or become long-term.
Your hotel mission statement is about who you are and what you do right now, today.
To write a hotel vision statement, you need to be clear on your company’s direction. Where do you want to be in 5, 10, 15 years? Vision statements are aspirational.
When you write a hotel mission statement, you’re thinking about your immediate objectives, instead. What do you do now? Who do you serve and how do you serve them?
Clear mission statements give your hotel a sense of purpose for the present, while a vision statement is your direction for the future.
Here are two examples from major hotel brands:
Hyatt Hotels Corporation
Mission: “To deliver distinctive experiences for our guests.”
Vision: “A world of understanding and care.”
Omni Hotels & Resorts
Mission: “We are a luxury brand whose incredible family of associates puts the soul in hospitality every day. The needs of our guests, associates and owners are in the forefront of everything we do. Through authenticity and innovation, we create unique memorable experiences.”
Vision: “Proudly opening doors to the true spirit of a destination.”
3. Market Analysis
Before delving deeper into the opportunities and challenges ahead, your hotel or resort marketing plan should include a top-level local market analysis.
What are the key variables impacting your hotel business?
The best way to break this down is to look at the 5 C’s of marketing:
Company - What’s happening at your hotel company which could impact your business? Are you changing up your product or service offering? Refreshing your hotel branding?
Competitors - Who are the key players and what are they up to? Opening a buzzy new restaurant? Starting or finishing a major renovation?
Customers - What is your guests’ perception of your hotel? Are you seeing less interest from certain groups or more from an emerging niche? Are they communicating with you in a new way?
Collaborators - Who are your partners and what’s going on with them? This could be your local Convention & Visitors Bureau, your PR firm, a top-producing travel agency, or other service provider.
Climate - How is the economy doing? Are there any new laws or regulations that impact your business or the hospitality industry where you are? (If you’re working on your 2022 marketing plan right now, COVID-19 will definitely be mentioned here…)
4. Pricing Strategy
This part of your hotel marketing plan should be a collaborative process with your revenue management team or revenue manager. After all, setting hotel rates is a delicate art.
Hotel rate positioning strategies fall under four primary (broad) categories: Economy, penetration, skimming, and premium pricing.
Economy pricing strategy for hotels is about filling as many rooms as possible. That means selling rooms at the lowest rates, with the least amount of promotion necessary.
Penetration pricing strategy for a hotel means selling high quality rooms and services at prices lower than your competitors. This is how many new hotels increase their slice of market share.
Skimming pricing strategy for hotels is the opposite of penetration. Hotels offer their product at a higher price level than their competitors, usually to signal exclusiveness or quality to customers.
Premium pricing strategy for a hotel means charging high prices for a room and/or service product that’s already perceived as high value or excellent quality. This can include “abstract” benefits like the sense of status that comes from staying at a Four Seasons hotel, for example.
Personally, I think it’s helpful to visualize your positioning in comparison to competitors.
Any time I’ve worked on a luxury hotel marketing plan, the team comes together to plot out our positioning on a pricing matrix grid — and determine where we want to move in the year ahead.
You’ll find the customizable pricing matrix grid below included in my free hotel marketing plan sample template.
Sharing is caring! If you’d like to use this hotel rate positioning grid graphic, feel free to share it with credit and/or a link back to this article. Please don’t copy!
5. SWOT Analysis
The SWOT Analysis is a tried-and-true tool for business planning and decision making.
You might already be familiar with it. I don’t know about you, but I’ve definitely done my lion’s share of SWOT-ting over the years. 😅
Quick refresher, though: SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.
Here’s what you might want to consider when doing a SWOT Analysis for your hotel:
Strengths - What are your unique selling points (USPs)? Strengths could be anything from an excellent location, wonderful employees and service, to strong brand-name recognition.
Weaknesses - Maybe your location isn’t so great, after all. Be honest about what could be hindering your hotel’s growth, whether its poor online reviews, lack of F&B or gym facilities, or budget. Maybe your hotel website is long overdue for an update?
Opportunities - Two areas to look for opportunities are market trends and guest feedback. Do a little research to get ideas for new markets to engage or revenue-driving products to launch.
Threats - What external factors could negatively impact your hotel? This could mean changes to OTAs or a sudden boom in Airbnb listings nearby. Other potential threats include new hotel openings, negative press coverage, even a recruitment or staffing shortage. Anticipating these threats early gives you more time to take action!
No two hotels are exactly alike.
Your city-center boutique hotel marketing plan won’t be the same as someone else’s island resort marketing strategy. Heck, you could have a collection of multiple boutique hotels all in the same destination — and each business plan will still be totally different.
When you’re creating hotel marketing plans, doing a thorough SWOT Analysis helps reinforce each property’s unique competitive advantages, areas of improvement, and opportunities for growth.
6. Historical Data
To get where you’re going, you need to know where you’ve been.
That’s why it’s important to pull some historical data for your hotel — not only to track changes but to make projections and business goals for the upcoming year.
Here’s what should be reviewed. Include at least 2-3 years (ideally more!) of this data in your marketing plan presentation:
Rooms Available/Sold
Market Share
Average Rate
RevPAR
Occupancy
You might want to sync up again with your favorite revenue manager to pull these numbers!
7. Guest Profile
For all this talk of SWOTs and skimming, vision statements and RevPAR, there’s a pretty important topic we haven’t really covered yet — your guests.
As in, who are they?
Pretty much all of my marketing and hotel copywriting advice starts with something like this: Know your audience and write for — or sell to — only them.
You want to craft one (or more) unique guest personas that really speak to your hotel’s typical customer.
Use any data sources you have available and start pulling insights. Your booking engine, Google Analytics, and even Facebook can tell you a lot about your guests: Where do they come from? How old are they? What was their reason for traveling? Have they stayed with you before?
Survey your various hotel departments to gather more anecdotal information. This will help you hone in on your guests’ interests, motivations, and other relevant behaviors.
When you know what really motivates people to choose your hotel, you can speak to them directly in your marketing plan.
For larger hotels, you may want to craft a guest persona for each unique segment of your business. That brings us to the next piece of your hotel marketing plan presentation…
8. Market Segmentation (or Business Mix)
For smaller hotels and some BnBs, your business mix might not be too varied. Still, when marketing a hotel, it’s smart to approach different segments of your business with their own laser-focused strategy.
In general, hotel market segmentation covers a few key business segments, usually categorized by specific rates or additional amenities:
Public/Best Available Rate - BAR via your website, BAR direct (phone or email), or commissionable public rates (like OTAs)
Discount/Promotions - Opaque (hidden discount programs), promotional rates and packages
Negotiated - Corporate rates (either dynamic or flat discounts), government, airline crews
Wholesale - Tour operators, FIT (Free Independent Travelers)
Groups - Business, leisure, conferences/meetings, weddings, social events, and incentive rates
Not every booking falls into the above categories, though.
Depending on your unique situation, you might also see a fair amount of walk-ins or even “walks” — as in, when another hotel overbooks and “walks” their guest(s) over to you, covering the cost difference.
Many hotels also do some complimentary bookings or barter stays. This could include relocation of new hires, media visits, or offering a free stay in exchange for some other business purpose.
9. Marketing Objectives
At this point, we’ve laid a LOT of important ground work. Now it’s time to get into the “plan” portion of your hotel marketing plan. Start by identifying your marketing objectives for the upcoming year.
Think back to the “big picture” hotel-wide objective… what can marketing achieve to help get you there?
To keep this simple and straightforward, let’s say your “big picture” objective this year is to grow occupancy.
How do you do that?
Here are few sample hotel marketing plan objectives you might consider:
Brand awareness - reach more people!
Service/reputation - get more 5-star reviews!
Event business - book more weddings or social events!
Retention/loyalty - get more guests to book repeat stays!
That’s a pretty broad example, of course.
But once you’ve identified your marketing objectives, it becomes much easier to pinpoint which offline and online marketing channels you should prioritize.
10. Marketing Channels
One quick note: Hotels have a lot of different distribution channels at their disposal. You have the Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) selling your rooms, but taking a sizable commission. You also have a Global Distribution System (GDS), connecting your rooms to travel agents and consortia like BCD or American Express.
Some hotels need or want to put specific marketing strategies in place for those distribution channels.
That’s perfectly OK, but I’m going to focus on another channel here: YOUR OWN.
Driving direct bookings should always be a top hotel marketing priority.
Focusing on your own website is THE most cost-effective means of marketing your hotel. Full stop.
Thankfully, you have a wide range of digital marketing channels to support your direct booking strategy, like:
Content Marketing - What kind of content do you create for your hotel? Images and videos? A podcast for meeting planners? Does your hotel website need a blog?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - “Natural search” aka “organic search” is another strategy hotels can use to drive traffic to their own website. (Here are some simple hotel SEO tips to get you started.)
Social Media - Social sites like Facebook and Instagram can really boost your brand awareness by getting your message in front of more potential guests. This include reputation management and reviews, too.
Public Relations - Some PR strategies for hotels focus on developing relationships with journalists and traditional media outlets. Nowadays, digital PR has grown to include online influencers and bloggers.
Paid Advertising - There are lots of paid media channels hotels should consider, including the main search engines, social media platforms, and even display ads.
Email Marketing - Unlike the above channels, your email list is the one thing you and you alone own. How are you engaging with past customers and growing your hotel email list? Are you sending a hotel newsletter?
Now, I want to be clear that you don’t need to DO ALL THE THINGS to have a successful hotel marketing strategy.
These channels do overlap, though, and many feed into another: For example, blogging is valuable for SEO and provides content for social media and email marketing.
By now, you’ve already identified your target guest profile, so think about what channels will be most effective at reaching them. Where do they “hang out” online? What really influences their buying decisions?
Remember that you can’t be everything to everyone, and it’s pretty hard to be everywhere all at once.
Marketing requires time, budget, resources, and perhaps most critically, a wide range of skills.
Psst… I can help you with that last one. Check out my online hotel marketing courses on SEO and social media strategy or subscribe to my YouTube channel for weekly tips and tutorials.
11. Marketing Metrics & S.M.A.R.T. Goals
From housekeeping and sales to the front desk and behind the bar, everyone in your building has targets to hit — either individually or as a team/department — and all of these smaller goals add up to help move the business forward.
So how do you show the impact of your marketing efforts?
You need to measure results and set goals. Not just any goals, of course: S.M.A.R.T. goals!
SMART goals are:
Specific: What exactly do I want to accomplish here?
Measurable: How will I know when I’ve achieved this goal?
Achievable: Do I know how to accomplish this goal or can I learn how?
Realistic: Is this goal really possible, or even worthwhile?
Time-Bound: Can I accomplish this goal within one year?
For example, if getting more direct bookings at your hotel is a top priority, website traffic and conversion rate will be important metrics for you. Set some specific (but realistic!) business goals against each.
To measure something like brand awareness, you could look at metrics like mentions in the press or follower growth across your social media accounts.
If you’ve identified reputation as a weakness, think about measuring customer service interactions over social or average review rating on sites on like TripAdvisor.
No matter what your overall, big-picture objective is, it’s super important to hone in on the right supporting metrics and set (S.M.A.R.T.) goals to measure marketing success.
Once you know WHAT you want to achieve, you can go deeper into HOW. Which brings us to…
12. Marketing Tactics By Channel
Hang in there, dear reader, we’re nearly done with your hotel marketing plan!
You’ve pinpointed your market positioning and guest profile, identified your objectives and you have some idea which marketing channels to prioritize.
Now that you know where you want to market your hotel, it’s time to talk about the specific tactics you’ll use.
I’ve already mentioned a few tactics back in #10, like blog posts and a good online reputation management system.
There’s something else you should consider, though. I’m talking about the actual buyer journey, aka my fave topic, the online booking funnel. It generally looks a little something like this:
Sharing is caring! If you’d like to use this path-to-purchase graphic, feel free to share it with credit and/or a link back to this article. Please don’t copy!
This funnel comes straight out of my free example of a marketing plan for a hotel and illustrates the online buyer journey for travelers.
There are sooo many touch points along the way from awareness to consideration, to booking and retention.
It’s important to understand The Funnel so you can visualize how and where you need to show up along each stage.
When marketers like me harp on about “filling the funnel,” we’re mainly talking about simple math:
More people in your funnel = More people converting/booking.
So what are some different tactics and marketing channels you might want to try at each stage?
Top of Funnel marketing strategy for hotels could mean brand awareness via your social media and press coverage.
In the Middle of the Funnel, you have your Interest and Consideration stages. Your SEO and content marketing is key here, as that’s how you get found by potential guests who have started to research a trip.
Finally, at the Bottom of the Funnel, you have your conversion (Booking) and the Experience or “retention” stage. Your paid advertising channels and email marketing are usually most effective at tipping the scale from Consideration to Booking.
Many hotel marketers make the mistake of neglecting the Experience or “retention” stage.
Keep in mind, if you deliver a positive experience or exceed expectations, chances are good that your guests will return — and tell other people to book, too.
13. Marketing Budget
It’s time to talk numbers. 🤑
What do you need, budget-wise, to accomplish the marketing objectives you’ve laid out? Was a lack of budget was one of the “Weaknesses” you identified in your earlier SWOT analysis?
I wrote a much longer article on your hotel budget, but here’s what you may want to include under marketing:
Advertising spend on Google or Facebook
New photography
Upgrading or building new hotel websites (Here’s what you need to have on your hotel website.)
Hiring a PR agency
Outsourcing work to specialist contractors
Purchasing software for SEO and keyword-tracking
Other equipment needs, like a high-quality DSLR camera or photo-editing program
Educational courses or training (Here’s a bunch of free online hotel management courses.)
If you’re feeling stuck on what you need, or constrained by a tight budget, check out my recommendations for the best hotel marketing tools — most of the ones in that article are free, or budget-friendly!
It’s up to you to determine exactly what you need to execute the strategies you’ve outlined.
Remember: You’ve already determined that these tactics will help your hotel achieve its wider business goal for the year.
The best hotel marketing campaigns don’t necessarily require a huge budget. Keep your target audience in mind and focus on the projects and resources you need to reach them.
Finally, you’ll need to set a time to meet with the decision makers and present your hotel marketing plan ideas.
At the end of the day, GMs and senior stakeholders need to see that you understand the business, have realistic goals, and of course, that you have a plan of action to achieve them.
Final Thoughts
Phew, that was a lot… Thanks for sticking with me.
I hope you enjoyed this deep dive into hotel business planning and accommodation marketing strategies.
Even during “normal” times, every property is unique. Whether you’re running an intimate bed and breakfast in the Swiss Alps or a big boutique hotel in a major metro area, no example marketing strategy is one-size-fits-all.
Build on my sample marketing plan to create your own!
If you have any questions at all, case studies to share, or insights to add, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment below.
Oh and, of course, don’t forget to download your free hotel marketing plan PPT — you’re ready to crush it!