From hotel marketing to technology to general operations, we’ve discussed a lot of topics on the WebRezPro blog over the year and we hope you’ve found our posts useful and relevant to your property.
To wrap up the year on our blog, we thought we’d highlight our five most popular posts of 2016. It’s not surprising that these top five posts address some of the most pertinent current topics and trends in hotel management, namely online marketing, guest data and direct bookings.
Listed in order of the most-read, here are our top 5 posts of the year — did you catch them all?
1. Hotel Website Design Trends for 2016
Originally published on our company’s web design blog (World Web Technologies Inc.), our #1 post looks at 2016 website design trends that are particularly relevant to the hospitality and tourism industries.
A clean, simple, user-oriented design, eye-catching hero images, video headers and backgrounds, subtle animations, cool typography and a personal touch are highlighted as important design elements to consider for lodging operators thinking about redesigning their property’s website in 2016. >> Read blog post
2. Innovative Hotel Digital Marketing Campaigns to Inspire Us
In our digitally saturated world, innovation is key to standing out. In this blog post, we look at ways some of the big hotel brands have cut through the noise to grab attention and engage customers. Transcending traditional promotional techniques that simply aim to create awareness, these stand-out digital campaigns — including short films, social media campaigns, and virtual reality — all focus on winning customers through interactive digital experiences.
While big-brand budgets lie behind these specific campaigns, these examples are meant to inspire independent hoteliers to come up with their own innovative digital marketing efforts that engage customers with compelling, interactive content rooted in real experiences. >> Read blog post
3. Getting to Know Your Guests: How to Gather Guest Data
A hot topic the past couple of years, guest data is crucial to personalizing the customer experience and building stronger guest relationships. This blog post provides useful tips on how to use your property management system to build and use rich guest profiles to elevate the guest experience. >> Read blog post
4. 11 Practical Ways to Increase Direct Bookings
Increasing direct bookings is another hot topic among independent lodging operators and big brands alike. While OTAs play an important role in online distribution, too much dependency on them can hurt a hotel’s bottom line.
This post offers actionable tips on how to tip the scales in favor of direct bookings, including offering value-added packages and book-direct perks, using social media to drive traffic to your website, implementing a loyalty program, and trying out remarketing. >> Read blog post
5. The Power of Post-Stay Emails: Top Tips for Independent Hoteliers
Post-stay emails are a powerful customer retention tool, yet many lodging operators are still not taking advantage of this tactic. With a property management system and/or CRM that automates the process of sending guest emails, every property should be checking in with their guests post-stay.
In this post we provide a guide for developing an effective post-stay email campaign, including tips on timing, content and how to stay relevant. >> Read blog post
Thank you for reading! We look forward to continuing the discussion of topics and trends that matter to independent lodging operators in the New Year. In the meantime, we wish our readers a very happy and profitable holiday season and the very best success for 2017!
