Why You Should Hire a Top Hotel Copywriter (Here’s My Process)
When you’re a freelancer or self-employed, it can be a bit challenging to explain your business to others. I’m a hotel copywriter. And also a digital marketing consultant. And sometimes a freelance travel writer.
The truth is: I’m all of the above. But what does that actually mean?
For context, I recently spent a few weeks back home in Florida for the holiday season. My mom loves to tell her friends about her globe-trotting daughter, but the number one question I kept getting asked was, “What is it that you actually do?”
I thought it might be fun to walk you through my process as an independent hotel copywriter.
In case you’ve been on the fence about hiring a copywriter for your hotel, this should help explain what I can bring to the table.
Pardon me for tooting my own horn a bit here, by the way. But as a business owner, it’s important for me to share my process and my story — because I’m here to help you!
What makes me unique is that I spent several years working on-property at luxury hotels. When you choose to work with me, you’re getting someone with actual experience as a marketing manager for global hotel brands, building pre-opening marketing campaigns, defining regional digital marketing strategy, and more.
These are the exact steps I take with my freelance clients as I work on their hotel copywriting projects.
Who I work with and what I do as a top hotel copywriter
This blog post might be your very first introduction to me and my website so — welcome! I’m Jenn! 👋
True story: Someone once told me my website is so good they thought it was run by an outsourced “content farm” rather than an actual person…
I am but a humble freelance writer who happens to love small, boutique hotels and luxury brands something fierce.
You can learn a little bit more about me and my hotel marketing career here. Or feel free to stalk me on LinkedIn. (Disclaimer: That’s a joke… please don’t actually stalk me.)
You can also get a sense of who I work with and check out some of my favorite hotel copywriting projects over on my Portfolio page.
As a copywriter for hire, I work with big, global hotel brands like Hyatt and Marriott, as well as small, independently owned hotels, inns, villas, and resorts.
Do you want to freshen up your brand copywriting for luxury consumers after a multi-million dollar renovation? Been there, nailed that.
Are you opening a new property and need an end-to-end content strategy to get direct bookings? I’m your gal.
How about a new landing page for your Google ad campaign? Yep, can do!
What else have I worked on? Phew, it varies:
Hotel website copywriting
Email campaigns, like lead gen sequences or hotel newsletters
Lead magnets, like ebooks or guides
Travel blogs
Print magazine articles
Destination guides
Luxury brand copywriting
Landing pages
Third-party property listings, like for OTAs or Airbnb
Sales collateral
In-room compendiums
Micro copy for mobile apps
…and more!
Now, writing content and copy for hotels isn’t exactly like writing for a typical ecommerce website. There’s a very specific customer journey to consider — generic product descriptions don’t really cut it.
Your “product” isn’t just a room with four walls and a bed, it’s an entire experience.
BTW, bad content is a huge turn-off to your potential customers… Watch the video below for a quick run-down of the most common hospitality copywriting mistakes — and how to fix them. ⤵
Hotel copywriting starts with understanding the client and property
Before I write a single word, the very first step in my hotel copywriting process is a conversation with the client. In fact, I offer folks a free “discovery call” before a contract is even signed. (Psst… you can book one here!)
If I can’t get someone on the phone, I’ll send them a detailed survey instead. This is because copywriters always need to understand who their client is — as well as who their client is trying to reach.
Basically, I need to get as much information as I can about the hotel and its guests.
As for getting to know the property itself, I ask a ton of questions to learn about rooms, style, dining outlets, location, meeting space, and so on. Questions like:
What’s your typical business mix?
What services and amenities do you offer?
Who’s in your official comp set?
Who’s in your unofficial (aspirational) comp set?
What sets you apart from your competition?
Do you have any brand tone guidelines or examples of hotel copywriting you love?
When it comes to getting to know the property’s guests, a good hotel copywriter needs to dig a little deeper.
Why does someone want to visit your destination?
Who do they travel with — friends, colleagues, kids, a loved one?
What factors do they consider when making their decision?
What are their pain points?
All of this information is important. The answers to these and other questions asked during discovery help me pin down the tone and direction of your project.
Doing keyword research for hospitality copywriting
One quick caveat to this: Not every project I work on needs SEO!
Print-only articles, email campaigns, social media copy, and in-room collateral really don’t require keyword research. SEO is important but it doesn’t always have to be the objective for your content.
When it comes to copywriting for the web, however, SEO is critical.
This includes hotel website copywriting, an online destination guide, your OTA listings, and your hotel blog, if you have one.
Think of creating good web content as an investment. Search engine optimization is an important way to improve your return: Hotel SEO gives you a leg up to get more direct bookings, group business, events, or outlet reservations.
(By the way, I write about SEO a lot. Learn more about how to do hotel SEO right here.)
At this stage of a new copywriting project, I’ll fire up my favorite hotel SEO keyword research tool and start exploring. I use this step to gather intel about how folks are searching for this destination, what questions they’re asking, and what’s currently ranking on Page 1.
Since by now I’ve completed a deep-dive getting to know your hotel and your guests, I have a strong sense of how your audience is searching for you.
This applies equally to leisure guests who want to book a hotel room, meeting planners, engaged couples planning a wedding, and local folks just looking for their next dinner reservation.
What questions are they typing into that search bar?
Who are they comparing your property with?
What are their needs?
And in some cases, what is the problem they are trying to solve?
Keyword research helps me answer those questions and directs how I approach creating web content that provides the most value to your potential guests.
If you want to learn more about using keywords to attract the right guests, you might like this free hotel SEO checklist — grab your copy below! ⤵
The fun, creative side to travel copywriting
Not every marketer is a writer. Some of us love graphic design and visual mediums! Some of us nerd out over data and analytics! For me, writing is a blast — I love doing it, especially for clients who HATE it. 😂
Simply put, the best copywriters have a way with words.
In hospitality marketing, our job is to use hotel website copywriting to transport the customer. Sometimes we’re transporting them to an aspirational destination, but more often than not, we’re simply showing them how our property has what they are looking for.
Marketing gets to the heart of that problem, want, need, or challenge — and provides the solution.
That’s why the next step in my process as a luxury travel copywriter is to flex my creativity muscle.
Hey, you need to warm up before a workout, right?
I open up a blank Google doc or a fresh page in my notebook and start writing whatever comes to mind. I call this a “word dump,” which is a less elegant way to say “brainstorming.” I like to fill the page with whatever phrases and words come to mind.
Real talk: Sometimes that means getting certain “bad” copy out of my system…
There are a lot of overused phrases and downright clichés in hospitality copywriting — so in this phase, I like to jot down a few as they come to mind if only to avoid using them in the final product.
When I do discovery calls with clients, I also listen closely to the way they describe their hotel.
There are often little hidden nuggets of creative copy gold buried within the natural way hoteliers talk about their property.
It’s my job as a hotel copywriter to capture that voice.
With my audience discovery, keyword research, and creative brainstorming complete, I have a solid foundation on which to build my project. Can you believe I haven’t actually started writing yet?
Writing content for hotels, and the editing process
If you’ve ever wondered what it’s really like to write for hotels, this satirical piece from McSweeney’s kind of sums it up perfectly: So You Want To Be a Boutique Hotel Copywriter?
Hotels are a funny business.
My creative copywriting projects run the gamut from the standard, like a hotel website, an email marketing sequence— to the very niche, like door tags or a puppy yoga class promotion.
Susan Greene, a fellow copywriter for resorts and hotels, reminds us that printed collateral like a sales brochure is also an important investment in attracting convention and meetings groups.
Whatever the nature of the project, a freelance travel copywriter is in it for a love of both writing and the hospitality industry itself.
Personally, I appreciate the breadth and depth of assignments — it keeps my workdays interesting, no doubt!
While there’s no “secret sauce” to share about the actual writing, if you’re doing it yourself you absolutely need to have some editing process in place. Editing is crucial to honing your skills as a writer.
But I won’t lie: self-editing is tough. You really do develop blinders to your own mistakes.
Two tools that every hotel marketer should know about are Grammarly and Hemingway.
Hemingway, in particular, helps me trim down excessive, run-on sentences (I’ve been known to ramble) while keeping my language accessible — I’m a word nerd and a sucker for convoluted vocab.
Yeah, Hemingway would hate that last sentence…
Grammarly is an easy-to-install extension for your Google Chrome browser. It’s basically like a powerful spell checker, with a few other fun editing features to help you improve your writing.
Editing is an important part of my own copywriting process because it helps me assess my work for areas of improvement. With a round of critical editing, I always feel confident in the product I’m delivering to my client.
The last step of my process? Receiving and implementing feedback
With most of my hotel copywriting services, I offer up to two rounds of revisions.
Receiving feedback from my client on their project is very important to me for a few reasons.
Obviously, I want them to be completely satisfied with the work. It’s awesome to hear a client say, “Wow, you nailed it, no edits!” (Does happy dance at desk.)
But I also welcome client feedback because it’s an opportunity to discuss certain copy choices together and explain the “why” behind them.
For example, let’s say during the keyword research phase, I found that the overwhelming majority of hotel searches for a destination included the word, “downtown.”
What if the client doesn’t want their hotel to be considered downtown? What if they insist it’s in a niche neighborhood nearby that no one is actually searching for hotels in?
Assuming the hotel is technically near the downtown area, I may still recommend optimizing their hotel website copywriting for “downtown” related keywords.
I’d show the client my keyword research, including search volume — that way, they understand the potential value of ranking for those keywords in terms of traffic and bookings.
Sometimes I’ll make a case for a certain line or turn of phrase and the client agrees. Sometimes I go back to the drawing board and offer an alternative.
Either way, the end product is the same: Another happy client with fresh hotel content for their website, blog, email campaign, etc. And me in a blissful, iced coffee-induced coma. :)
So, should you hire a freelance hotel copywriter?
I mean, you must know by now that I’m a bit biased — but if you’re reading this article, you might be interested in hiring a hotel copywriter! Should you?
Allow me to change up the question a little.
Why should you hire a freelancer over a copywriting company or big agency?
Tooting my own horn here, I know, but I’m a rare bird in hospitality content writing. I’ve actually worked on-property as a digital marketing manager for hotels!
I’ve sat in that same cubicle, managed the same marketing projects, worked with the same departments, and felt the same frustrations.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve worked with some AMAZING content agencies before. When you work with an agency, you get more heads on your project and more varied input from other industries.
You also get less of their attention.
And varied backgrounds sometimes means spending a LOT of time and energy explaining the jargon and intricacies of the hotel business…
When you work with a freelance travel copywriter like me, you get one-on-one attention from an industry insider and hotel marketing expert.
I also charge less than a bigger copywriting company. As a freelancer, I keep my business expenses low and lean, passing those savings on to my clients.
Before you even book my services, I invest a lot of time and energy into providing you with tons of free value. Take a look around this blog for all sorts of travel copywriting tips or get my free hotel marketing tips sent directly to your inbox every Tuesday!
And that’s all she wrote, friend. That was sort of a “day in the life” of a freelance hotel copywriter. I hope you found this little bit of insight into my writing process interesting.
If you’re thinking about hiring a travel and hospitality copywriter, well, now you know where to find one! Here’s how to work with me:
Take a look at my hotel copywriting packages or content marketing services
Contact me and tell me a little bit about yourself and what you’re looking for
I’ll be in touch shortly after to schedule a free discovery call, and we can go from there!