On the upswing…finally.
Hotel marketing efforts pay off!
In the first two years of our hotel ownership, we really struggled with the hotel’s occupancy rates. They were very low! Much lower than what Gomer, the previous owner, had represented to us.
Now that the hotel was finally remodeled and reopened for business, we knew that to be financially successful and get out of our closure and remodel hole, we’d need to put a lot of effort into our marketing. We needed to find ways to get our name out and gain exposure.
Like the effort Mark and I put into the remodel, our effort was now focused on increasing our occupancy!
Although Mark and I didn’t have any hospitality background, we did have marketing backgrounds. So, off we went!
Shiny New Pictures and the Website
The first priority was our website. We knew that new photos of the hotel were a must! Prior to finishing our remodel, we scheduled a photographer to come take new professional photos and videos. When they were done, we populated our website, and other websites where travelers would find us and see the new updated photos of the hotel like Expedia, Booking, and other online travel sites. Everyone likes good pictures of shiny, new rooms and a pool with a great view, right?!
We worked closely with our website designer to improve our SEO with popular keywords. We decided to put more marketing dollars to Google Ads, so that we’d pop up in traveler’s searches.
TripAdvisor
We also felt that TripAdvisor was an important channel for travelers to find us. For our local area, we were trending as the #3 or #4 hotel in traveler rankings on TripAdvisor, which was driven by reviews. Because the hotel existed before we bought, we already had a lot of reviews there. Mostly positive ones, but there were some not so great ones also.
For those, Gomer had typically responded to the reviews in a defensive and derogatory tone –which wasn’t how we wanted to be represented. Mark discovered that he could change Gomer’s old responses to reviewers’ comments. We changed the responses to any negative review from before our ownership to say that since August 2017 the hotel was under new management, and this was an old review. We were confident that anything that a reviewer wasn’t happy with in the past we would have already fixed, and that visitors to our TripAdvisor site would ignore the old reviews and give us a try. We then set a goal to be #1 in traveler rankings on TripAdvisor in our area! From May of 2019 through the end of our ownership of the hotel, we didn’t receive a single review on TripAdvisor that was less than 5 stars! We quickly achieved our goal of a #1 ranking and never let it go.
Travel Advisors
In the beginning, we noticed we didn’t receive many bookings from travel agencies. When we asked around, we found out it was because Gomer had alienated nearly all the Costa Rica travel agencies, and no one wanted to work with us. Ugh, Gomer, not again-when will his crap stop haunting us?!
We knew a lot of business was generated in Costa Rica by travel advisors. Many travelers to foreign countries don’t want to plan a trip in a place they aren’t familiar with so using a travel advisor to plan not only the hotels, but moving around the country is very helpful.
Early on, we found out that one of the biggest Costa Rican travel agencies, Costa Rica Experts, was based out of Chicago! What luck- our home base! When we were back in Chicago we scheduled a local meeting with the office. They told us that they had worked with our hotel a time or 2 before, but that Gomer was a hassle to work with, so we were not recommended anymore! Ugh!
Meeting with this travel agency in Chicago was a game changer for us. They sent a travel advisor to come visit the hotel in early 2018, before our remodel. She went back to the Chicago office, reported good things, and they started sending travelers to us! Then the agency’s co-manager came to visit in late April 2018. We explained our remodel plans and he then knew we would be a great addition to their portfolio of hotels for their clients.
As luck would have it, we told him that we were headed back to the U.S. for our daughter’s college graduation. She was graduating with a degree in Spanish and Communication and did not yet have a job lined up. He said his office was looking for a new travel advisor, and someone who had been to Costa Rica multiple times and that spoke Spanish would be an asset. He recommended that she contact him. She did and got the job!
After the remodel, we knew it would be important to work with more travel agencies. We created a brochure to send to Costa Rican travel agents highlighting the new, improved changes, and that our hotel was under new ownership. We scheduled as many in-person meetings with travel agents as we could, and Mark and I drove to San Jose to meet with them hoping they’d start sending more clients to us. Many sent agents to do site visits of the hotel, and we slowly started seeing an uptick in travel agent reservations!
Social Media and Influencers
I posted our new photos on our social media sites as much as possible. I invited everyone I knew to ‘follow us’ on Facebook and Instagram. We tried a few, targeted, sponsored ads on both Facebook and Instagram to our traveler demographic.
I’d also occasionally get a travel influencer reach out for a collaboration with us. If you aren’t familiar, a collaboration usually means a free stay at a hotel for a few days with all meals included. Some ask for more - like spa services, or activities or transportation. In exchange, the influencers guarantee posts on their social media sites while they are visiting, some live feeds and maybe some photos that the hotel could use after their stay.
Initially, I was reluctant to agree to a collaboration. I was trying to fill the hotel with paying clients, not freebies! Some ‘influencers’ had only a small number of followers, or I felt that the ‘influencer’ just wanted a free place to stay for their travels. Or when I’d review their social media for previous collaborations, it seemed that you couldn’t even tell where they were because all their photos were zoomed in on their face or closeups of body parts with no real pictures of the hotel or area they were supposedly ‘collaborating’ with! Most requests also came from people whose following didn’t seem to align with our traveler demographic, so I would always decline.
As a previous market researcher, I like data! I couldn’t see a way that I could track an influencer’s reach and if their collaboration with us would convert to any reservations!
But we needed our name out as much as possible. So finally, I agreed to host an influencer.
A woman from England reached out for a collaboration. She had a strong following, she was health and nature conscious, and she was coming to Costa Rica for yoga teacher training. I felt that she aligned best with our hotel vision and her travel photos were beautiful! She and her sister came to the hotel for a 3 day visit in late June 2019. They took great photos and videos and shared to their social media accounts during their visit. Afterward, she shared all her photos with us for our hotel use which we continued to use often!
In all, I was pleased with how it turned out. They were lovely people and easy to work with. Although they continued to tag the hotel in their photos over the years, I’m pretty sure we didn’t get an actual conversion (a hotel visitor from their visit), but we did get more followers to our social media accounts.
Awards and Accolades
In 2019, we received an email that we were nominated for a Boutique Hotel Award. The Boutique Hotel Awards are exclusively dedicated to showcasing the finest luxury boutique hotels to travel lovers via their publication. Wow, that would really get our name out there!
Hotels are nominated by travel industry experts and luxury travel journalists and then are evaluated by independent reviewers who look for the character and feel of a unique experience. The email stated that we were to call to schedule a reviewer to visit for a few days. (Oh great…another free stay!)
The reviewer came to stay and had interviews with me and Mark and spent a few days experiencing the hotel and all we had to offer. She would then submit her review to the awards panel for the vote.
As it turned out, the reviewer loved her stay with us and she called a few months later to tell us that we had been selected as the regional winner (Central America) for the Most Romantic Hotel!
She asked us if we could attend the black-tie award ceremony that would be held in London in November 2019 to announce the regional winners in all categories. And one of the regional winners would be named the World’s Best!
Um, yes! I’d never been to London! We’d get a trip out of this AND maybe win a big award!
We asked our travel agent daughter to come with us and went to London for a long weekend in early November 2019 for the event. We sat with other boutique hotel owners from around the world. I remember our table had owners from hotels in Africa and Asia. We shared stories and exchanged hotel names for any upcoming travel swaps!
When they got to our category, each regional winner was announced. Then to our surprise, our hotel was named the World’s Most Romantic Hotel beating out other regional winners in our category! We were called to stage to accept our award, and our daughter took photos. We called the hotel staff immediately to share the good news with them!
After much effort, steadily, steadily, our reservation calendar began to fill. Good for us and good for our hotel team!
After all this time, we finally seemed to be on the upswing!
I’d love to know:
Do you leave hotel reviews?
Do you use a travel agent to help plan your trips?
Do you follow travel influencers and have you ever visited a hotel that they reviewed?
What an honor, Marlo! To be named the world's most romantic hotel! Simply wonderful. And the build-up, how you just worked it--you put in the time to figure it out, put in the hours to do all that marketing, and FIND out how to market it--a true learning curve that you guys mastered. Very impressive. And what a wonderful trip you got too, to London! Cheers!
Reading this made me feel so happy for you guys!!! What a transformation 👏
I can pipe in here and tell you that I have been the travel influencer and it can make a huge difference. I spent a decade receiving comp stays of the most unique and lesser known spots in Jamaica based on my dedication to the destination. I know for a fact that the reviews on my destination blog and socials brought more traffic and new clients to those spots because they were my followers. I watched them do it after I did. Destination lovers are pretty hardcore people lol.