This article focuses on key success factors of resorts and vacation packages marketing.  It is an effort to educate the readers to plan a decent competitive advantage both in terms of offerings for the customers as well as marketing it well. We’ll cover answers to questions:

• How resorts can retain old customers and attract new ones?
• How traditional and new marketing techniques are essential for resorts and vacation business and how they possibly can affect the business in positive or negative way?
• What are the key ingredients of Vacation Packages and Resorts Marketing strategy?

An effective resort and vacation packages marketing strategy is essential if you want your business to stand out in the increasingly competitive environment. Competition among resorts has increased enormously as customers are getting more educated and internet browser savvy. They love to search the vacation packages themselves. Also, they are demanding more luxurious services and products.

The right mix of efforts to respond to the changing customer buying behaviors is to focus both internal strengths of the company as well as the marketing distinctive competence effectively to the prospects.

Marketing Mix

The best practice for resorts and vacation packages marketing is to enrich your marketing tools to establish or reposition a marketplace presence, select the targeted audience, prepare your message, make contact with new customers, renew relationships with previous customers and continuously keep them in touch.

In a tech-savvy time, majority of your guests plan their vacations online and expect to have all the information they need right at their fingertips. The importance of perfecting your online presence cannot be overestimated.

The 9 Winning Marketing Ideas

Sadly, most hotels and resorts treat online marketing very much like they do traditional marketing – they set up a brochure website, and then forget about it. To truly engage an audience and sell more rooms, you need to look at web marketing as a living, breathing, entity.

As a specialist in the online development and marketing sector, our strategies are all focused on delivering innovative ideas to our clients. Our strategies supports the integrated and interdependent nature of the online platforms. Some of the key ingredients for a successful Vacation Package promotion online is given below.

1-  Get the Basics Right

You need to focus on your basics initially. No amount of marketing will make up for a poor product or service. If the rooms are dirty or checking in is problematic for visitors, don’t expect marketing to make up for it. Of all the things people talk about online, hotels top the list. Do yourself a favor, take 10% of your marketing every month, and use it to better the customer experience.

2 – Provide Tongue Candy

No, not mints at the front desk. But, stories that people will repeat when they go back home. Irresistible word of mouth is called tongue candy. Stories that people can’t help but share with others.

If you offer something extra for using any of your services at resort, it will help you to have a good word of mouth that people will love you share with their fellows.

3 – Start with a Website

Your website matters a lot! Beware of a generic website. If you truly want to stand out from the crowd, make sure your website tells your story. What’s the history of that place? What do people absolutely love about staying there?

Tell the story, and engage the imagination of future visitors. Just make sure the real thing backs it up. It must contain all the features of a good website and also it must be aligned with your needs and strategy. If your website is unable to attract a random visitor, you need some radical changes asap.

4 – Be Findable

Let’s say you have a fabulous resort in Miami. If someone searches for Miami getaways – does your resort come up? The easiest sale you can make is when someone is already looking for you. Search engine optimization is the best tool for driving qualified traffic to your website and customers through the door.

Rank your Website higher on Search engines like Google.

5 – Networking

Travel-related networking has proven to be an effective marketing strategy for resorts. Companies whose holdings include numerous resorts and hotels can schedule destination sales trips.  Favored or potential booking clients like tour operators, event planners or travel agencies can be treated with the resort’s specialized offerings. Resorts can also partner with local groups to sponsor area events.

6 – Encourage Reviews

Reviews can truly make or break a business or product. Make sure you encourage the positive ones, and deal with the negative ones in a professional and timely manner. The best way to encourage positive review is to get them before a guest leaves the premises.

For example, you can set up computers in the lobby and front desk, and ask guests to sign your Facebook fan page guest book. A little note on the side can say – “Enjoyed your stay? Please take a moment to share your thoughts online. Did we do something to disappoint? Please contact our manager at xyz so we may rectify this immediately.” This way you encourage positive reviews, and limit negative ones.

7 – Social Media Marketing

This is what everyone wants to jump right into! Once you have the above in place, set up a Facebook fan page. Encourage guests to leave comments and share their pictures. Use Twitter to find future guests, and provide customer service. Use online videos to showcase the resort, and to tape true testimonials from willing guests. Use LinkedIn to promote your company page among professionals. Pinterest is also beneficial for image gallery of your resort.

Don’t get intimidated with the work involved here. You don’t need to do it yourself. You can hire resources on lease from companies.

Related Article: Why Social Media Marketing?

8- Mobile App

Over one billion mobile devices are sold each year. Tablet devices are the fastest selling invention in technology history! Mobile marketing packages helps you to connect with your targeted audience 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.  There are multiple advantages of using mobile app e.g. 20% of all bookings now come from mobile devices, Mobile pay per click is affordable and effective, percentage of last minute reservations is very high and custom Google Analytics tracking and reporting.

Related Artcile: The Story untold – Breakthrough Sales Leads Using Mobile Apps

9 – Targeted E-mail Marketing

Resorts can effectively implement targeted email marketing strategies to boost communication with previous guests and encourage return visits, especially during the off season. Messages can be personalized with the help of specialized marketing software so that e-mail recipients feel valued that the company have remembered their last visit at their resort.

Learn From The Toppers – Vacation Packages / Resorts

Holiday Resorts

CLUBMED

A holiday resort website’s key ingredients are well covered by ClubMeD;

• Deals, last minute sales,
• online bookings,
• Galleries & Videos,
• Clubs,
• Registrations,
• Social media marketing
• Newsletter Subscription

But there is something that bothers a visitors in first look. It feels messy when you visit their homepage as they have provided lot of information in a very short space. If they are able to manage it anyway, this website will be the best in class for sure.

Cuba Resorts

Memories Resorts

Memories Resorts is doing their online marketing efficiently and they have focussed on key features like

• Availability Checker
• Group Occasions
• Premium Membership

There are few lackings in their online marketing that can be easily explored are

• Social Media Integration
• Bottom bar of website
• Reviews from customers
• Blog posts

Honeymoon Packages

Dream Vacations

There are some good points of Dream Vacations

• City wise integration
• Highlighting the official Blog
• Short but to the point content

Few improvements in their online presence like

• Social media integration
• An attractive Graphical user interface
• An effective bottom bar for website

Caribbean Vacations

Sandals

sandals have one the best website suitable for travel & tour industry. Salient features of their marketing are

• Attractive banners for business introduction
• Social Media Integration
• Get the latest deals
• Rates & Availability
• Awards & Achievements
• Quick Quote

Family Vacation

Travel Channel

Travel Channel has one of the best online presence. Some of the features are

• Good Pagerank
• Deals and Discount packages promotion
• Social Media Integration
• Videos of related category
• Travel Channel Family
• Mobile Apps

What VizTeams Can Do For You

A difficult aspect of marketing resorts is how to communicate all the different elements that make up the total resort experience. Not only do you have accommodations to fill but also dining, activities, wedding and group sales. Also people find it difficult to communicate with the right audience at the right time at the right place. So you have to follow a strategic plan to run your business at its best.

We, at VizTeams, are able to accomplish these all through through creative portal of your business, mobile applications, Search engine optimization, pay per click marketing, Mobile Marketing and search engine marketing across all the important keywords.

We are experienced to develop a fully featured website, customized booking engine, mobile application for android & iOS, community building and social media integration. Your website needs to have strong content, online image gallery, various sorting options and requisite fields and areas needed for online presence and optimization. Contact VizTeams today to find out how our marketing and development team can generate more bookings for your resort.

Drop Us A Note

[gravityform id=”2″ name=”Drop us a Note” title=”false” description=”false” ajax=”true”]