As a result of the pandemic, expansive, open-air wedding venues overtook the wedding market as a coveted location. Sitting in an urban market that relied heavily on special event and group business, The Ritz-Carlton, Cleveland leveraged social media to position themselves as a top wedding venue among couples.
The business travel industry is expected to rebound in 2023, inching closer to the once $1.4T industry size. There are a number of trends and insights that luxury hotels should be aware of when planning for the future of business travel. These include capitalizing on two intertwined and profit-enhancing opportunities: remote working and bleisure trips. Be ready for these new hybrid travelers, and you’ll enjoy increased bookings while ensuring your luxury property remains competitive in the post-pandemic world.
The pandemic caused a dramatic decrease in business travel volume, however, 72% of business leaders surveyed said that this would not change the number of business trips taken by employees. Many companies have already figured out how to accommodate a blend of remote and in-person work. Now, the workers are also figuring out how to get the most out of their new hybrid reality. The opportunity to work remotely coupled with a return to business travel has created a huge opportunity for bleisure bookings throughout 2023 and beyond.
Blended travel isn’t going anywhere. Many business travelers are determined to explore the city or region deeper before and/or after their business engagements. In fact, 38% of business trips contained a weekend in 2022. Another part of the trend involves families and couples, who represent the largest group of those extending their trips. Thanks to an increasingly remote world, many spouses or partners are working remotely. There are also ongoing remote schooling programs for children. When it is so easy for partners, families and couples to tag along with their significant other taking a bleisure trip makes sense. This often adds 3-6 travel days and multiple guests to what used to be an overnight.
Anticipate the needs of the non-business travelers by providing ideas, outings and programming specific to their situation. For example, create itineraries for tag-along passengers while employees are in business meetings. Include itineraries for all ages and relationships (family, spouse, friends), and don’t forget that some tag-along members will also be working – or schooling.
Be the local expert by creatively curating experiences. View local attractions, restaurants, and activities within your area that can be included in a business traveler’s itinerary. This shows the destination’s unique culture, scenery, and attractions and encourages the traveler to explore beyond the scope of their business trip. Definitely showcase local businesses such as restaurants.
Also remember to focus on convenience and proximity to the property to allow business travelers to make the most of their limited time in the city and make their experience stress-free. Promote the walkability of your location and offer guides to using subways, bike or car rentals if applicable.
By celebrating bleisure travelers in your ads and social, you’ll be putting good ideas in travelers’ heads. BCV saw increased engagement on boosted posts with copy reading “Work from [Property Name]” paired with imagery of amenities conducive to working remotely, efficiently, and without distraction while traveling. Help travelers separate work from play by outlining work/life balance opportunities on-site and showcasing imagery and video of a “day in the life” working from your property. It is also a good idea to enhance their stay and their total expenditure by providing guests with posts that highlight early morning and late night dining options to ensure your offerings align with their schedules.
More than a marketing trend, the extended travel movement is a positive outgrowth of a shifting workforce. After the hassle of the planes, trains and Ubers involved in getting to a location, it makes sense to get more out of each trip. When the destination is a luxury hotel, resort or spa, the question really becomes, ‘Why not tack on a few extra days’?
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Instagram reels are the hottest feature on the platform and allow users to create short, engaging videos set to music. There are a few key advantages of using Instagram reels for hotel social media marketing. They’re short and sweet. Reels are only 15 seconds long, so they’re perfect for busy social media users who need more time to watch a long video. And they’re easy to make. With Instagram’s simple editing tools, anyone can create a reel without any prior video editing experience, including adding filters, stickers, and text.
A considerable part of social media involves connecting through storytelling. We all understand it’s much easier to allow glimpses into a brand’s story with a video than a static image. You can take followers through a unique aspect of a property so that users feel like they see the property firsthand. They are not only reading the story but feel like they’re part of it. Video creates space for guests to see through a more personal lens. Static images trying to convey a story have to rely on lengthy captions that most followers won’t read, whereas a video can get that same message across and hold the user’s attention. It also allows brands to try a more creative approach that they may not be used to – it’s easier to test the waters for different strategies with video.
Instagram Reels are a bit different than TikTok because the trends don’t change as quickly. Typically a trend that has been on TikTok will show up on Reels two weeks later, giving us more time to go without posting. This time lets us approach video concepts by looking at the target demographic a property is trying to reach at that time, looking at what types of content are trending for that age group, and building concepts out from there.
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Knowing your audience and what they like to see makes coming up with creative concepts much easier. I like to use BCV’s trend decks to see how I can implement them into video concepts. I will also spend a lot of hours looking at TikToks, commercials, reels, and YouTube videos to try and understand how I can turn those into short clips that may fit a hotel. Trends are incredibly ever-changing, but you can usually pick out something similar between all of them, whether that be an emotion they’re trying to convey, the way they tell a story, the transitions between video clips, etc. After you watch enough trending videos, you start to see a template and how you can mirror that for your own properties and goals.
You have the concepts. You have your talent, crew, and locations. Now it’s time to get as much great footage as possible. When on a shoot, we tend to try and build out at least 6 reel concepts before we go. The key is to capture content that can overlap with concepts and isn’t tied to just one. We try and capture vertical videos from each area of a property. With photos, you can capture 50 images of one scene in a matter of seconds. With video, the important thing to remember is to shoot the same scene from various angles so the content can be repurposed for different concepts throughout the year. We try to think of social media holidays and quarterly campaigns ahead of a shoot to ensure we’re getting videos that can be used for those as well.
Here are a few examples of how luxury hotels are using Instagram reels. I hope they inspire you to swipe through these and other reels in search of great ideas that can be used to promote your property and attract new guests.
This reel celebrates the property being nominated for Conde Nast Traveler–with a strategy of encouraging votes. To showcase the location, we used footage from multiple shoots to differentiate the angles and models. To amp up the prestige, we included shots of previous awards. Having amazing amenities like the private infinity pool inspired a creative drone shot that literally put this production over the top!
We created this First-Anniversary reel by jumping on a TikTok trend to showcase the property. Just because a brand is luxury doesn’t mean it is “above” trends happening in the now. The concept here pulls together drone and close-up footage from shoots and edits them to a trending soundscape. We wanted more engagement and we knew that the sound, paired with the quality image, would get that.
While Mugen has its own page, we highlighted the restaurant on ESPACIO’s Instagram. The strategy was to highlight each unique aspect of the restaurant in a chronological format. We wanted users to feel like they were seeing an up close and personal, first-hand look at what goes into a dining experience at Mugen before they click book on their reservation.
The Jewel, located in the heart of Manhattan, is an urban adventurers’ dream. Designed for the explorer, The Jewel offers an opportunity for travelers to immerse themselves in the culture and excitement of New York City with the comfort of knowing there’s a safe haven to rest at the end of a long day. In an effort to drum up consideration and drive conversion, The Jewel worked with BCV on a content strategy that would illicit reactions from the social media community.
Effective Audience Targeting Optimizations
Approach for Driving a 49:1 ROAS
Maximizing Return Based on Ad Objective
A/B Test Strategies
In conjunction with the 2022 summer season, Cambria Hotels launched “Taste the Destination,” an initiative that emphasized Cambria’s bar-forward hallmark experience.
Cambria’s Certified Cicerone & Mixologist, Zach O’Haire, was tasked with curating unique, destination-focused interpretations of the Cambria Margarita, inspired by six gem properties and their surrounding cities.
These popular destinations spanned coast to coast and included: Austin, New Orleans, For Lauderdale, Los Angeles, Washington DC, and Louisville.
Brand connectivity through different mediums
Creative ways to customize content for higher engagement
The benefit of using motion in social media design
Utilizing social media as a PR extension
The impact of COVID-19 has fundamentally changed consumer behaviors and expectations as it relates to travel and hospitality.
Recognizing this, the Four Seasons Resort & Residences Jackson Hole pivoted their marketing efforts away from their hotel guest rooms to instead promote their private residences as an option that offered less person-to-person contact and thus a more protected stay.
These unique spaces no only offer seclusion paired with Four Seasons services and amenities, but most importantly a safe change of scenery for the new landscape of remote working and e-learning.
In an effort to garner awareness and drive bookings of the Hotel’s private residences, BCV launched an advertising campaign on behalf of Four Seasons Resort & Residences Jackson Hole. The ad included the “Book Now” CTA and was featured on both Facebook and Instagram.
The campaign ran for 19 days and specifically targeted individuals who had visited the hotel’s website in the past 30 days, along with an audience of individuals who shared similar demographics and interest to those website visitors.
Strategic audience targeting provided exposure to those who were already in the consideration phase of staying at the hotel.
The Ritz-Carlton, Dove Mountain is tucked away in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert, a coveted outdoor escape for luxury travelers. Offering a mix of restorative experiences and amenities, the property knew social media was a critical avenue to build consideration. With goals aimed at achieving a stronger brand presence and driving social community growth, The Ritz-Carlton, Dove Mountain tapped BCV to craft their social media strategy.
BCV recommended a video ad with the objective of driving clicks to The Ritz-Carlton, Dove Mountain’s Instagram page.
To provoke emotion and stop users from their scroll, captivating video content of the property and surrounding area was utilized as a means of creating the desire to travel the Sonoran Desert.
The ad was supported with demographic, interest, and behavior based targeting alongside qualifiers such a geographic location, age, net worth, travel interests and digital activity.
As the pandemic continued throughout 2021, hospitality was still impacted by lagging travel and tourism. In an effort to drive domestic tourism, boost occupancy, and increase foot traffic at their restaurants, Grand Hyatt Baha Mar pivoted its social strategy and ad spend to motivate locals.
With these goals in mind, Grand Hyatt Baha Mar created a discounted room rate alongside F&B specials that locals could enjoy during their visit. In order to strategically market these on social media, Grand Hyatt Baha Mar Partnered with BCV.
BCV approached each of Grand Hyatt Baha Mar’s two offers with a different paid strategy for each objective.
With the F&B specials, BCV launched reach ads to maximize visibility among individuals with a 25-mile radius.
To successfully secure direct revenue, our team also deployed conversion ads with advanced audience segmenting to target only individuals living in the Bahamas.
Over the course of 8 months, both the creative and ad targeting were optimized to yield the strongest results.
