Hospitality Social Media Marketing Trends for 2020

In the ever-changing social media landscape, staying abreast of the latest marketing trends is crucial to the success of any hospitality and tourism business. With the click of a feed update, a new hashtag appears, a news story has popped up, or a meme has become outdated. Being at the forefront of what is new enables your business to keep its content fresh, keep your followers entertained, and hopefully, encourage engagement.

While trends in social media are constantly evolving, a few of the continuing trends to some of the latest are:

Video Content

Video content consistently performs well across all online channels. Think about it: would you rather read a long post about a place you’d like to travel to -or watch an enticing video?

Creating content that your potential guests may find engaging can mean simply taking videos of what is happening on-site, like creating a new drink or a short tour of the hotel pool and other fun amenities. Additionally, if you do not have the resources to create your own content, you can share relevant content that you find from local area attractions, Tourism organizations and even recent guests to keep up with this continuing trend.

Instagram Removes Likes

In an effort to keep the community positive, Instagram is slowly rolling out the removal of Likes from their platform. You may have experienced this already, but instead of seeing a number of Likes under your posts, you will simply be able to see WHO liked your posts instead of a number. Instead of comparing how many Likes one post received to another, you can view content without the competitive factor.

How does this affect businesses? Social media is growing even more into a pay-to-play landscape, and running paid ads on Instagram will ensure that your posts are seen even when you are not able to quantify the number of likes a post receives. On the organic end, you can strategically include hashtags within your posts to ensure that they are receiving maximum reach regardless of whether you can see how many likes they earn.

Influencer Marketing

Beyond ads, another way to promote your business is through partnering with an influencer. Influencers will have a much wider united reach than your business alone, and can use this to encourage visitors, promote initiatives, and so much more. Not only can you partner with influencers to promote your business and help it increase its exposure, you can work with as many or as few as you like depending on budget to better suit your needs.

Working with influencers can be simple: ask a past guest of yours who has high engagement if you may share a post of theirs mentioning your hotel with your audience. Or, conduct your own research to discover relevant influencers in your local area who would be a good pairing with the typical guest that you receive.

Demand for Speedy Customer Service

Customer service is not a new trend, but the way we engage online is constantly changing. Guests expect a shorter response time than ever, and in 2020, it will be as important as ever to be on top of comments and reviews. Keeping up with each negative comment by responding to them as soon as possible can show future guests how quickly they are likely to experience customer service on-site. In the coming decade, guests are likely to expect even shorter response times than usual with continuing technology improvements and AI.

Be sure to check in on each social media and review channel that you manage at least once a day, so that you have time to formulate a fitting response. Ensure that responses are said in a manner that reflects how you would want to be treated as a guest: make them feel heard, respected, and make them want to come back to your business again for a better experience.

User Generated Content

A trend that is definitely carrying over to the new decade is finding and using User Generated Content, or UGC. UGC includes images and videos that have been shared to various social networks by their users, and can be found a few ways. You can look at your notifications to see whether there are new photos that have been shared, check the geotag for your business on Instagram, or even prompt your guests to share images from their visit with an enticing caption, like “What is your favorite view in our hotel?” or “What is your favorite dessert at our restaurant?” Just be sure to credit the original poster in your content.

To 2020, and Beyond

Wondering what other trends to look out for, or want to know about one that we covered? Just reach out, and we are happy to help. Info@caymeragroup.com or visit caymeragroup.com.