How to reach out to international audiences directly

One of the fastest growing trends in the hospitality industry is the increased importance being placed on attracting international guests. We’ve found that more and more of our UK-based clients are turning to us for advice regarding international communications and help when it comes to broadening their international appeal. As a team that works with both national and international hotels, we’re experienced in developing strategies that will appeal to different markets.

When it comes to marketing your hotel abroad, a good place to start is to consider who your international customers are (or indeed who your ideal customers are). By analysing the source of your current international business (through your booking engine, Google Analytics), and identifying visitor trends to help pin-point key international markets to go after.

Once you’ve established the markets you’re looking to target, the next step (in an ideal world) is to hire PR/marketing agencies/experts in those key countries that can deliver your message. The reason for this is simple: employing a specialist communications agency/expert with a broad and comprehensive knowledge of their domestic market will lead to faster growth in bookings.

A quick example of this from abroad is the Altis Hotel Group, a Portuguese company that operates six luxury establishments in the city of Lisbon. Altis has recently brought us on board to direct its communications strategy in the UK. Where it is also looking to take on an agency in the US, and France. It has identified these markets as key in terms of improving international bookings, and wants comms experts based in these countries to help deliver its message.

If this route proves to be too expensive however – and it can be costly for both independent and smaller hotels – then it’s worth enquiring as to whether your current UK agency (or if looking to take on a UK based agency) has personnel that can help with the international part of the comms puzzle. For example, we have members of the Hospitality PR team here that speak both Spanish and Portuguese – enabling us to manage PR activity in other countries, in different languages – as well as employees with established contacts and connections in the US market. This allows us to reach out to an international audience, on behalf of our clients.

Digital PR is another way for UK hoteliers to attract international attention. There are numerous .com travel sites looking for content (a good number of which are actually based here in the UK). It’s a good way to promote your hotel, expand your brand and get your name out there. It’s also worth asking your agency if they can work up a hit-list of influential (and global) travel bloggers, invite some over to spend a night at the hotel or provide them with some exclusive content. It’s important to keep in mind that, when guests are travelling from overseas, they are likely to do quite a bit of research beforehand and will often look for reviews from sites and bloggers they trust, prior to booking.

In order to make sure your hotel is as attractive as possible to international guests you (or your comms agency) should be doing a number of other things.

Firstly, keep on top of yourTripAdvisor reviews, responding to both good and bad.

Secondly, your web and press content should be tailored so that it highlights both the amenities that your hotel has to offer and the local tourist attractions in the surrounding area. For example, if your hotel is situated in an idyllic setting, such as the Cotswolds, then the location should be a prominent part of your comms strategy, as the Cotswolds’ brand is a very strong brand in itself, especially with the US market. So play on that.

You should also be looking to maximise the reach of your social media platforms. Social media is a great way for hotels to reach out and engage with international audiences directly. So make sure content is constant, and make sure all platforms are being utilised as best they can be. For example, Facebook now allows hotels to include a booking function on their page, so that people can make reservations directly from within the app, and also includes both public and private options for responding to reviews and comments. Social media engagement and monitoring tools, such as Hootsuite, Tweet Deck and IFTTT (all free to use) have global “listening in” capabilities, so that you can monitor keywords and searches relevant to your business.

The power of video is not to be underestimated. There are times when things get lost in translation, especially when you’re dealing with an international client base or writing in a secondary language. However, where words can sometimes falter, visuals seldom do. Hoteliers should be investing in their video content. Video is the most in-demand content on the net, and hoteliers should be looking at producing promotional and seasonal content that can be uploaded and shared online.

The demand for video is a trend that is continuing to grow across all businesses and platforms. The Cisco VNI has forecast that, by 2020, video will account for 79 percent of all internet traffic – up from 63 percent in 2015. The current estimate is that by that time the internet will contain three trillion video minutes per month, or about one million video minutes every second. So video is a very powerful marketing tool – and perfect for getting your message across in an instant to an array of audiences.

Finally, a few other quick tips…

UK press reaches out to international audiences too. For example – inflight magazines such as High Life (British Airways’ inflight magazine) has a brilliant travel section and is always after new content about UK hotels. Inflight magazines are brilliant magazines to be in, as are the magazines that, more often than not, do get read and looked at (as people are after something to do to kill time on a plane). So, make sure you’re speaking to these magazines

‘The big guns’ are approachable - Major international press outlets such as The New York Times, Conde Nast Traveller etc etc, are all approachable, don’t be afraid to speak to them. And if you do have a PR agency onboard, make sure they are speaking to these top tier titles on a regular basis

Explore opportunities through foreign suppliers - are there any possible partnership opportunities with foreign suppliers? E.g. there are some brilliant booking engines around at the moment that are built abroad. Perhaps using their systems will also allow you to partner with similar hotels using the same system across the world providing opportunities for cross-selling and database sharing

Think about other influencers that can help you get closer to international audiences - e.g. private jet companies have strong databases - so perhaps putting together packages with operators like these would help

International Awards - when entering awards, think internationally too. Awards are a great PR tool.