Local Marketing video

How to Promote Hotel and Hospitality Industry Sites - with Benu Aggarwal (7:58) Dr. Ralph F. Wilson , Web Marketing Today - Oct 11, 2011

In this video interview hotel and loging industry marketing expert Benu Aggarwal gives some basic tips on how a hotel can best promote itself on the Internet.

The first step, says Aggarwal, is to define your marketing goals clearly, as well as your target audience and your competition.

Next, you need to determine the reasons people are coming to your area. To do this, search for your community's place name plus the words "tourism" or "travel." Create a list of the top five reasons.

Now begin to write content for your hotel website describing the tourist and travel attractions of your area. You are building a search friendly website -- and make sure to follow Google's guidelines.

You're ready to promote. The first place is Google Places, where you need to claim your listing and populate your page with descriptions and photos. Especially for smaller hotels, Aggarwal has seen as many as 20% to 40% of guests come through Google Places, since visitors won't know to search for your hotel by name, but for location.

Benu Aggarwal is the founder and president of Milestone Internet Marketing, a full service agency that specializes in helping hotels promote their properties on the Internet. She is also the author of From Hotels to HTMLs (3rd edition; American Hotel and Motel Association, 2010). This video interview was recorded on August 17, 2011 at the SES Conference in San Francisco.