9 Unique Approaches to Increase International Bookings at Your Hotel

Having international guests in your hotel and providing them with exceptional service can help you achieve accolades worldwide (with reviews and referrals). 

Ever thought, how can you increase international bookings at your hotel? This blog will give you the perfect solution to this question.

How can Hotels Increase International Bookings?

In order to increase international bookings, you need to tweak your marketing strategies. Wondering how to do that? 

It’s simple. Just follow the steps I’ve mentioned below.

1. Invest in Area-specific Marketing

The first and foremost step in any marketing strategy is to identify your target audience and areas that can fetch you maximum bookings.

Start with shortlisting the regions from where you have a maximum inflow of guests. For instance, a majority of travellers prefer to visit Thailand because it offers visa-on-arrival, making it easy for tourists to make spontaneous vacation plans. 

This in turn helps hoteliers with an increased inflow of guests and last-minute bookings. In fact, a majority of travellers visiting Thailand are from South Asian countries and that’s why the hotels have special deals for guests from that region.

Similarly, you need to invest some time in analysing travellers from which countries can benefit you the most. Once you have a list of potential nations, focus on what needs to be marketed.

Let me explain about it in the next point.

2. Research on Preferences of International Guests

Before you start marketing your property amongst international guests, understand what they are looking for. It could be anything; hygienic environment, nearby attractions, doctor on call, or special food requirements (organic or gluten-free).

Once you understand guests’ preferences, you can start marketing those aspects among the shortlisted regions. Invest in amenities or facilities that are sought by international guests, but are missing from your property.

Trust me this will work wonders for your hotel, and you can promote them as USPs. However, do keep a check on your budget, or else this strategy might backfire.

3. Provide Experiences as Per International Standards

Guest experience is the pedestal of the hospitality industry. Either good or bad, it inflicts a major impact on hotels.

And when it comes to international guests, one bad experience can adversely affect your hotel’s reputation at a global level. 

I would suggest, don’t over promise and under deliver. Focus on delivering quality services without compromising on TAT. Moreover, this can help you in establishing your property as a brand.

You can use these steps to provide a better guest experience, as per the international standards:

• Set SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures)
• Train your staff
• Invest in technology
• Try sustainable practices

Additionally, you can check this blog for more steps to improve guests’ experience at your hotel:

17 ways to improve guest experience at your hotel

4. Optimise Your Website

It’s no secret that guests do visit your property’s website before booking their stay with you. And why not, after all your hotel’s website is the mirror reflection of your property.

Moreover it’s a reliable source of information. So, while you optimise your website for national guests, do the same to increase the traffic from international visitors as well.

Also, don’t forget to make your website multilingual. Basically, you’ve to install a plugin, which can translate the content on your website as per the audience preferences.

Another way is writing the content in different languages and then updating it. But that’s way too hectic, time consuming, and expensive.

I would recommend going with the 1st way by investing in a website builder that can provide you with such a feature.

5. Register on International OTAs

As per the statistics shared by Statista,

The market size of online booking industry is around 517.8 billion USD. From that, 432.14 billion USD is contributed by OTAs, which is roughly 65% of the total revenue generated by the global online tourism market

Considering these statistics, one cannot underestimate the importance of OTAs in the hospitality industry. And in order to increase international bookings at your property, you need to be listed on these platforms.

Here are some internationally acclaimed OTAs you can register your property on:

• Booking.com
• Agoda
• Expedia
• Go-MMT
• Hotels.com
• Hostelworld

6. Bring Social Media to Your Aid

Social media definitely plays a vital role in our lives and that too in a positive way. For instance, it has helped members of the travel community to explore the offbeat destinations around the world.

This in turn has helped hotels located in the remote areas to maximise their reach among the audience and offer their services to guests visiting that town.

Moreover, with relevant hashtags in trend, one can easily promote their property amongst tourists travelling to that location. 

Here’s a protip for you:

Use apps like tagify. Here’s how it works - you can insert upto 3 keywords based on which it generates a wide range of trending hashtags and sorts them as per their post count.

Let me explain with an example. I love travelling to offbeat destinations. Whenever I’m on a tour, I ensure that I promote the property I’m staying amongst my followers. 

In order to do that, I click a beautiful photo of the hotel or view from the property, and promote it on my Instagram account as well as Facebook. Here’s a post for your reference. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Siddharth Joshi (@sid_thesolivagant)

If you see, most likes are from foreign nationals. So, my profile has got visibility among global travellers, and the hotel got promotion among those potential international guests. 

You can take a cue from this and start promoting your hotel on social media platforms. 

7. Partner with Tour Operators

Tour operators are one of the important components of the hospitality industry. In fact, having a tie-up with them is one of the important marketing strategies for any hotel to source offline bookings.

Often these tour operators get queries from large groups of travellers from across the world, looking forward to exploring any destination in depth. Not only this, during famous events  such as La tomatina in Spain, Kumbh Mela in India, or Carnival in Venice, they receive business in bulk.

By partnering with your local tour operators you can increase the inflow of guests from other countries. However, as I mentioned above, do not compromise on experience or else you would be a victim of negative marketing.

8. Improve Your Online Reputation

Whenever I guide hotels on planning and marketing strategies, I always recommend them to improve their online reputation. 

According to TripAdvisor, around 81% of guests from around the world look at any property’s reviews before booking it.

I know, that’s a huge percentage. Now, imagine the impact on your bookings, if you have a bad online reputation. Moreover, international guests prefer checking reviews and photos, as they don’t want to ruin their experience and that too in a foreign country where language can be a probable barrier.

So, start focusing on capturing maximum positive reviews, and replying to the negative ones. If possible learn from your criticised points and resolve them, to never get similar feedback again.

Also, if you need some more tips to enhance your hotel’s online reputation, these blogs are a must-read for you:

eZee’s Master Guide to Hotel Reputation Management

9. Highlight Local Specialties and Experience

International travellers are always looking out to experience local activities and delights. And if your hotel can arrange such things for them, it would be like a cherry on the cake. 

You can partner with your local activity planner and arrange some excursions to famous spots in your town. Additionally, you can offer them as a package to your guests. 

This strategy will help in boosting international bookings as well as increase your domestic reservations.