Hospitality marketing strategy for the here and now, and the future | By Matt Greener

In many places, hospitality is back—and booming faster than expected.

Travel-centric brands face a "next normal" in a world where social media adoption and consumer expectations have increased exponentially. A study produced by travel research authority PhocusWire in partnership with TINT, the leading User-Generated Content platform trusted by over 5,000 global brands, stresses the importance of using authentic social media and marketing content for travel-related industries as they recover from the global impacts of COVID-19. Nine out of ten American travelers have made travel plans for the next 6 months, and weekly hotel demand across the U.S. increased by 1.2 million rooms in September 2021 – the largest weekly gain since July this year.

Revenge travel is here, and consumers are ready to pack their bags. This boom in travel has hospitality brands rushing to get themselves back to their pre-pandemic production rates. They’re not only trying to figure out how to nail their messaging for their customers, but employee recruitment as well.

This puts destination marketing organizations in an unprecedented predicament. A year and a half ago, they had to lay off staff to keep their doors open. Over 100 million jobs in the tourism industry were lost in 2020.

Now, those companies are having trouble finding and hiring talent. Airlines are openly telling their customers to expect canceled flights as they struggle with staffing shortages. 

Labor shortages are becoming a bigger problem by the day and there isn’t any time to waste in going live with your post-pandemic marketing strategy (for customers and employees).

Hospitality Brands Have a Rare Marketing Opportunity (And Time is Ticking)

Despite the delta-variant of COVID-19, revenge travel continues to rise. People are leaning into leisure travel, like traveling to National Parks that are experiencing huge surges in visitors.

Yellowstone National Park saw the most visitors it has ever recorded in 2021 - about an 11% increase from May 2019. Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming also experienced roughly 30% uptick in visits in May 2021 vs May 2019, setting a record for that month.

With travel on the rise, even to seemingly remote locations like Wyoming, brands might feel like they can relax on their marketing strategy. If people willingly come to them, isn’t this a great time to save their marketing budget for another rainy year?

That’s a terrible idea. If anything, now is the time to go all-in on your marketing strategy—especially the part that comes after someone swipes their credit card. This is an ideal time to create loyal customers, collect user-generated content for future marketing campaigns, and turn happy customers and guests into raving micro-influencers for your brand.

This is the part of your hospitality marketing strategy that your customers see. But, there’s another part of marketing that has to be focused on right now.

With labor shortages, employee recruitment is in full force. It’s time to show talent why your company is the place they want to dedicate their time and effort. Employee-generated content and employee advocacy play a big role not just in attracting, but also engaging and retaining the best talent, which we’ll show examples of in the next section.

Domestic air travel in the U.S. is expected to return to pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2021 or early 2022. If this is just the leisure travel spike, it’s time to buckle down and prepare for bigger travel numbers in the near future - especially as business travel picks up.

Here’s how brands are tapping into the proven power of UGC and EGC to build brand loyalty and find top talent.

User-Generated Content in Hospitality Marketing

Seventy percent of consumers trust online peer reviews and recommendations more than brand-created content and copy and 93% of marketers agree that consumers trust content created by real people rather than content created by brands.

And this is content that guests love to create. Take a look at a recent example from Airbnb that leverages UGC—they looked for 12 people to sponsor and travel the world on Airbnb’s dime, live in listings for free, and share their experiences online.

Hotels.com followed the same incentive strategy by offering a free month’s stay at 4 of their Las Vegas locations.

User-generated content can also be created without a huge budget like this. You can ask guests by:

• Putting copy at the bottom of your restaurant menus that incentivize UGC (with a discount code for sharing to their social platform of choice) or remind guests that this is a great time to take a photo for their memories
• Have your receptionist assure the guests that recording their experience is encouraged, and provide clear instructions and even a particular hashtag to use
• Creating selfie areas or aesthetic backgrounds for people to take photos in front of

More than half of consumers wish that brands would tell them what type of content to create and share—and hospitality brands can tap into that request from customers easily.

Employee-Generated Content in Recruitment

Employee-generated content can also be used to promote your brand, as consumer sentiment leans towards companies with positive impact. But with labor shortages across the hospitality industry, we also want to show you how to use it to recruit talent.

CNBC shared that, “Economists point to a host of other factors that may also be dampening a return of workers to the labor force. Child-care duties, ongoing health risks, health complications for Covid long-haulers, early retirements, career changes or reassessments, and a high historical share of workers who are furloughed and expect to be recalled to their prior workplace.”

Now is the time to show talent why working at your company is better than the competitors – and the best way to do that is by having your employees advocate for your brand:

• Brand messages are re-shared up to 24 times more when distributed by your employees instead of a brand
• Employee-shared content gets 8 times more engagement than content shared by brands
• Employees may get up to 10 times more followers than a brand’s corporate account, as well as get more organic social engagement

Just like user-generated content can speak to customers in a way that brand-created content can’t compare, EGC has the same impact on the talent you want (and need) to attract.

User-generated content and employee-generated content are hospitality brands' ticket to creating high-performing content that nails their messaging.

In summary, highlighting authentic guest stories helps hospitality brands build brand loyalty, and turn guests and employees into brand advocates that share the word about their great experience.