The Key to Growing Your Business Is Knowing Your Guests

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Know your guests

How well do you know your guests? What about the travelers who could potentially become your guests?

To optimise your hotel profile so it gets more visitors and drives more bookings, you need to know your audience—where they come from, why they’re traveling, how many nights they typically book. Because in the hotel industry, metasearch marketing is like fishing: you have to use the right bait. The Visitors’ Profile feature on the PRO package can tell you exactly what types of travelers are looking at your profile—so you know exactly what content will attract them most.

If you already have access to this feature, you’ll want to read on to find out how you can use it to lure and reel in more guests. If this is the first you’ve heard of the Visitors’ Profile, get ready to find out what it’s all about.

Grab their attention

Travelers are visual beings. When they search for hotels online, it’s the images that immediately attract them to certain hotel profiles—and deter them from even considering others. But having high-quality images is only half the battle. The other half is having the right images.

Should your image library showcase photos of your conference center? Or is it better to feature your swimming pool? Only your Visitors’ Profile can tell you whether it’s mostly business travelers or vacationers who are perusing your profile, and therefore, which aspects of your property to put on display.
Different types of travelers searching for the ideal hotel on various mobile devices

Want to give your profile more chances of being promoted in search results? Check off every one of your amenities, services, and facilities you know your guests will appreciate—because they’re checking them off to filter their ideal-hotel search results. Your hotel details, along with quality, relevant images and attractive rates, ensure that you appear—and appear ideal—to your target audience.

Takeaway: Your profile is your bait—make it relevant for your audience, and make it shine.

Speak their language

Having grabbed their attention, you need to deepen the travelers’ interest in your hotel. The next step of their journey is gathering more information about their options, and here the right hotel description can make all the difference. It’s your chance to tell your hotel’s story, highlight its unique features, and inspire travelers to book. It’s almost like speaking to your potential guests directly about your hotel and offerings—and that’s what makes it so effective.

…But only if it’s in a language they understand. Discover what languages your potential guests speak by looking at your Visitors’ Profile. Then have your hotel description translated into those languages so you can reach out to a greater global audience and turn curious international travelers into confirmed guests.

The Visitors’ Profile map reveals that most travelers interested in this hotel come from North American or Europe
Keep in mind that not having your description translated is as detrimental to your profile’s international success as having it translated is beneficial. The description only appears on localized websites if it’s been translated into those languages. 79% of all clicks on trivago go to hotel profiles with descriptions—that’s a lot of traffic you don’t want to miss out on.

Takeaway: Your description is your net — cast a wide one by having it in multiple languages.

Give them an added incentive

All travelers appreciate an extra benefit or added perk. It’s often the deal-making factor for identifying the ideal hotel—and at this stage, they’re comparing a few top-choice hotels and getting ready to make a final booking decision. The trick is figuring out which incentive your potential guests will appreciate most.

A business traveler is probably more interested in free access to your business center than to your new spa facility; the reverse is true of the weekend traveler. Someone looking to book just a night or two won’t care about extended-stay discounts. . . But that very perk could easily convince a different traveler to book their ten-night stay with you.

Know your guests, know what they want, know how to incentivize them. It’ll help you land more guests and quite possibly more direct bookings. How? Promote these perks right on your hotel profile with Special Offers (another PRO-exclusive feature) and mention that guests can enjoy them by booking your hotel. You can find insights here on how Special Offers can attract you more guest.

Takeaway: Your added incentives are your hook—offer direct benefits to increase direct bookings.

Grow your audience

Now that you’ve identified the types of travelers visiting your profile, perhaps you’re curious to know what sorts of potential guests your competitors’ profiles are attracting. After all, your competition’s guests could very well be your guests.

Expanding your audience to include theirs can help you grow your business. So how do you do it? With the Visitors’ Profile, you also have access to traveler data for your competitors’ profiles—leverage it.

Take a good a look at your competitors’ traveler types, and then at their profiles. Do you see that one of your main competitors is generating a lot of interest from vacationers, for example, while you are not? Perhaps that’s because their description depicts your location as an ideal vacation spot. Perhaps yours should too. Are they attracting business travelers by checking off that they have free Wi-Fi? Do the same. Do they have high-quality images of luxury suites that resonate with weekend travelers?  Upload images of your own most luxurious rooms.

And if you want an easy way to ensure your rates are just as attractive as your competitors’, if not more so, use the rate shopper feature on your PRO account to this very end.

Takeaway: Data is your tackle for taking on the competition—grow your audience to include theirs.

Show them you’re their ideal hotel

Knowledge is power, and knowledge about your guests is a powerful asset in establishing and executing a successful marketing strategy. If you have a PRO account, you already have access to in-depth data on and clear insights into the types of travelers who are drawn to your profile. You can use this data to target your audience, and these insights to make your profile truly magnetic. That’s the beauty of the Visitors’ Profile, and the secret to securing more bookings. Know your guests, and you’ll know how to draw them to your profile and sell them on your hotel. Hook, line, and sinker.

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