HOW TO INCREASE HOTEL REVENUE
boutique hotel increases bookings through SEO
Overview
A boutique hotel wants to increase online bookings without increasing paid advertising costs.
The hotel and resort is located about 2 hours from the nearest major city, and was a popular place to visit 100 years ago during World War I. Now, the hotel owner wants to revive the charm that once existed at the property by attracting health seekers on a nationwide scale.
How do you drive health conscious thrill seekers to a small town 90 minutes from the nearest big city?
Challenge
The challenge in marketing a boutique hotel in a town with a population of 1,606 people is raising awareness of its existence.
Of course, everyone in the town of 1,606 people knows about the resort. But what about the 744,955 people living in Seattle, the closest major city? Or, what about the 8 million Americans living with psoriasis, a skin disease?
How can SEO create awareness around the healing powers of the hotel, and convert that awareness to revenue?
Solution
The solution to raising awareness was to make some noise online with content creation.
To make some noise successfully, we needed to identify the right customer for the hotel. Once the customer was identified, we needed to learn about what the customer found appealing about the hotel and resort. And then, we needed to match up those interests with keyword search volumes and create content targeting that keyword.
Through this process, we learned that there were opportunities to create content around:
- meditation retreats washington
- glamping washington
- natural treatment buerger’s disease
- family resorts in washington
- romantic getaways in washington state
- eastern washington wedding venues
And more. But you get the gist. From silent retreats to natural treatments for diseases, there was a wide net of content opportunities to target.
By creating this content, we believed we could increase revenue while avoiding paid ad costs.
Result
What were the results of our content focused, boutique hotel marketing campaign?
- First page Google search result for keywords like “glamping washington” and “wellness retreat washington state” and 200+ more keywords
- 10x growth in organic search visits within one year
- Generate record monthly revenue and sales through online and over the phone bookings
Here’s a graph that captures the growth of organic search traffic and the growth of organic search keywords in the campaign:
Paid ad costs were able to be avoided as a result of creating valuable search traffic. Here’s a graph that shows the value of organic search traffic:
Starting from nothing, now the hotel enjoys visitors from around the world who are seeking experiences ranging from a peaceful meditation retreat to a natural treatment for a skin disease.
