5 Mistakes to avoid when marketing your guesthouse online

You’ve got a beautifully designed, responsive, user-friendly and organically SEO-optimised website for your guesthouse. However nobody seems to be making bookings online…

What are you doing wrong?

Here are five mistakes to avoid when marketing your guesthouse online:

Keeping it to yourself

The biggest mistake that accommodation business owners make is not to tell the world that they have a website. There are more than 1 billion websites on the internet. How lucky are you when someone stumbles upon yours? Marketing your website is essential to drive traffic and ultimately bookings to fill up your empty rooms.

Wanting it all now

When you start marketing your guesthouse online, do not expect a flood of visitors immediately. Instant gratification is what we all want these days, but in reality, it’s not what we get. Set realistic goals, market your site and be patient when you enter the world of online advertising.

Paid advertising is not enough

Pay per Click and other paid campaigns could get you faster results, but these are not lasting. It is important to have a solid and varied marketing mix. Search Engine Optimisation, social media engagement and e-mail journeys produce long-term results and a constant flow of visitors.

Marketing to the world

Often owners want to market their guesthouse to everyone everywhere. Traffic to your website is not enough to get people to book. You want the “right” guests to stay in your hotel. Decide who your target market is, for example, travellers from China, and promote your website to the Chinese, not forgetting their culture.

Sticking to your language, and that’s it

Visitors finally get to your site online but cannot make heads or tails of the content. They see the appealing pictures, consider staying at your establishment but decide not to as they do not understand the language in which your content is written. To avoid empty rooms, it will be worth your while to invest in either a translator or copywriter to help you attract your target market by speaking to them in a language they understand.

When you need help marketing your guesthouse online, turn to a company that can turn your pretty pictures into believable and persuasive content, which in turn means more bookings.

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