There was once a time when celebrities were used as influencers for major brands of hotels and restaurants and during the Pandemic, social influencers became all the rage. Influencers in hospitality marketing isn’t some new concept; however, with the digital landscape rapidly changing the reach and effectiveness of influencers has dwindled. And that raises the questions, “Does your hotel or restaurant brand need influencers in your hospitality marketing?” To be honest, the trend of using influencers in hospitality might have already peaked and brands have been looking elsewhere to spend their marketing budget.
The Role of Influencers in Hospitality
The role of influencers in hospitality whether you’re a hotel chain, boutique hotel or restaurant is the same, to help drive sales. Sales from bookings, dining experience etc. The job of the influencer is to show your brand in a positive light that brings customers and sales to your establishment. Their role is to bring brand awareness to their followers. An influencer can create content that brings the guest experience of your establishment to life, such as capturing a seasonal amenity, new menu launch, or room renovation.
How to Choose the Right Influencer
With the vast amount of “influencers” out there these days, it can be hard to wade through the ones that are legit and the ones just looking for a free meal or weekend getaway. Anyone on social media can have millions of followers and for the right price they can be bought to overinflate the audience or reach of some influencers.
While the more popular influencers can be hard to book with some of their demands, local micro-influencers with a dedicated following might work just as well. You have to make sure that the demographic of followers an influencer has is the demographic of people your brand is trying to target. You also want an influencer who has a genuine interest in your brand and not just because you’re paying for their meal or comping them a suite. The more authentic and genuine content the influencer produces to better chance you have of expanding your brand awareness and increasing sales.
What about the quality of the content produced by the influencer? Are they just using their phone or are they using a high quality camera capable of producing stunning 4k videos? What is the typical turnaround time for delivering content? Will they be going “live” at certain points and if so, what do you need to do as a brand to make sure everything goes smoothly? These are all questions that need to be answered when looking for an influencer.
What is the ROI of an Influencer?
Every hotel or restaurant has different ROI expectations from using an influencer. There isn’t a one size fits all when measuring ROI for your brand. Are you using an influencer to measure your short term ROI or are you playing for the long game? You have to make sure you quantitative KPIs are matching against what you’re measuring for with the influencer ROI.
Are you using influencers to book more rooms or to bring traffic to a new and upcoming restaurant? Are they driving new bookings or sales? Is engagement up on your social media accounts and are you noticing more brand awareness? These are some of the questions you have to be asking yourself when using an influencer in hospitality marketing when looking at the ROI metrics.
Algorithms and Bots
If we’re to be truly honest the reach of an influencer in the hospitality industry has been severely crippled by constant algorithm changes and by the increase of bots. The landscape of social media has changed and so too has the ability for influencers to have their photos and videos seen. And in some cases if they’re not doing some weird TikTok dance, their content may never been seen at all. While that was written in jest, it may be actually true.
There was a more simpler time when a user’s feed wasn’t muddied and sullied by the plethora of ads, suggested posts and posts from people you didn’t follow. Now the feeds of your potential customers looks like a toddle dropped a huge box of Legos on the ground and nothing goes together. If you like a post with a cute, fuzzy dog then all you will see in your feed are cute, fuzzy dogs.
The problem with these social media algorithms is that they’re trying too hard to be predicative on what they users want to see and 9 times out of 10, the users only want to see are the posts from the people they follow. Not an ad every other post or a litany of suggested people to follow.
The other thing plaguing the reach of influencers are bots. These bots gravitate to posts like locust. Every comment is some political reply by a user with an alphanumeric name or it’s some titillating comment about clicking the link to see more of a model’s “private photos.”
It’s hard for your potential guests to wade through the unwanted posts, ads and comments as they try to see what others have to say about your brand’s hotel or restaurant from an influencer they follow
Using Local Photographers and Videographers
If the use of influencers in your hospitality marketing isn’t working out as you hoped there are cheaper alternatives that actually may be more beneficial to your bottom line and those are your local photographers and videographers. They’re services are definitely cheaper than comping everything for an influencer. You get the photos and videos you wanted that show the hotel or restaurant in a way that makes it more desirable.
You can work with local photographers and videographers more directly and collaborate on the vision for your hotel property or restaurant. Some times with influencers the message you want isn’t the one they’re telling their followers. The content from the shoots can be used for your website, social media, print and any other medium. In fact, it may have a better ROI than hiring an influencer for a weekend or a night.
If you’re a hotel or a restaurant with an event space, these local photographer and videographers may also provide you with referrals for weddings and any other events they cover. Which brings me to my next point:
Partnering with Local Businesses
Another avenue to pursue if influencer marketing hasn’t generated the return you had hoped for is to partner with local businesses. Cross promoting doesn’t costs all that much and at the same time you’re networking with other businesses in the area. People and businesses are more apt to refer other businesses, like yours, if they know who you are.
You can have a hotel on the beach and cross promote with fishing tours in the area. Your restaurant can benefit from getting to know the major companies in the area that need places for power lunch meetings or to take a client to impress them.
While the reach of the internet is vast, some times it’s the things that are closer in reach that are more profitable.
At the end of the day you have to ask yourself, “Are influencers in hospitality right for your brand?” Are you getting the ROI from them that you’re expecting or wanting? If the answer is no, then it’s time to evolve your hospitality marketing and invest where you have the greater ROI.
