Luxury Hotel Social Media Marketing: Best Tips for 2024

With an estimated 4.48 billion active users globally, social media is a must for almost any online marketing strategy. These platforms will allow your luxury hotel brand to reach a larger audience. It also provides ample opportunities for you to interact with existing and potential guests and build lasting relationships.

The luxury travel industry is highly saturated, so standing out above the noise can be challenging. Fortunately, having a well-executed social media marketing strategy can give you a competitive advantage in the market.

For more on how you can leverage platforms like Facebook, Instagram, etc. – here is everything you need to know about luxury hotel social media marketing.

What Is Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing is the process of creating tailored content for various social media sites to promote your business and drive engagement. It also involves connecting with your customers and helping them understand your luxury hotel’s brand better.

Hotel social media marketing can take many different forms. It can be posting photos and videos or linking to external websites and content. It also includes paid advertising through different online platforms. Popular online platforms are Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and more.

Why Is Social Media Marketing for Hotels Important?

Social media platforms provide hotels with an opportunity to strengthen their online reputation. It helps to establish lasting relationships with their guests. Along with search engines and online reviews, social media plays a vital role in guests’ decision-making and booking process.

In fact, research shows that around 36.5% of people use social media for hotel and travel inspiration or ideas.60% of these users use these platforms to share their experiences online. As such, social media marketing is a must for hotel businesses.

Social Media Strategy Tips for Luxury Hotels

A well-executed social media strategy is important if you want to experience long-term success online. Below are some useful tips to keep in mind when developing a social media marketing campaign for your luxury hotel brand.

Know Your Target Audience

An advantage of using social media marketing for your hotel is that it’s easier for you to reach your target market. For example, luxury travellers can be challenging and expensive to win over, so it is important to know and understand your target audience.

Social media marketing allows you to target users with your posts based on various factors. Some of these include age, demographics, geographic location, income, and social circles. With this information, you can get very detailed with how you tailor your content. For example, you could create social media campaigns targeting couples who are seeking luxury hotels.

Time Your Hotel Social Media Marketing Campaigns

Seasonality is another important factor to consider when developing a social media marketing campaign for your luxury hotel business.

It is best to focus your luxury hotel marketing efforts around the high season. For luxury travel, this tends to be in the summer or spring.  This is because there is a wider variety of things to do in warm, clear weather.

This is also an ideal time to promote your property as it will likely be full of guests having a great time. Other travellers may see this on social media platforms and be inspired to book a stay at your hotel during their next vacation.

Focus on Visuals in Your Social Media Campaigns

We live in an information age where online users scroll through a large number of posts each day. As such, online advertisements comprising mostly text generally receive less engagement. Potential hotel guests are more likely to engage with your content if it involves a simple and attractive visual aid.

This also holds true for aspiring travellers. While they might not click right away, if they see your content multiple times, they may recall your hotel when looking for accommodation later on.

Keep Your Social Media Hotel Marketing Consistent

One thing to note about social media marketing is that it is not about posting a few images over a period of one or two months. It requires consistency. Once people become a fan or follower of your hotel brand, they will want to see regular content.

Frequently messaging and engaging with your followers is also important.It helps you establish a relationship with your audience. This way, your luxury guests feel like they are a part of a prestigious club or community that always gets the best.

More Luxury Hotel Social Media Strategies

In addition to the guidelines mentioned above, there are many more tips you could implement to ensure your luxury hotel succeeds on social media:

• Aim to achieve five-star reviews as this will attract new customers
• Establish lasting relationships and provide a more personalised service
• Highlight what makes your luxury hotel unique
• Make the most of user-generated content

Best Social Media Platforms for Hotels

Some of the biggest social media channels include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest. These receive 3 billion, 1 billion, 340 million, and 38 million daily active users, respectively. As such, there is a larger audience for your hotel business to reach, influence, and potentially acquire as guests.

‘Influence’ is a key term here as many people use social media to inform their travel choices. This includes where to go, where to stay, and what to purchase. To follow, we will highlight how you can leverage some of these platforms to benefit your luxury hotel business.

Facebook

Comprising 2 out of 3 of the world’s active social media users, Facebook is undoubtedly one of the best social media networks for hotels.

To make the most out of Facebook, you will need to create a business profile for your hotel. Be sure to add all the required details and ensure your profile is complete. Below are some things you should include:

• Name the Facebook page your hotel’s brand name (example: Marriott Hotels)
• A username or handle that users can identify your brand (example: @marriott)
• Your business information (hotel description, address, contact number, website, etc.)
• Add a high-quality profile and cover photo to your page

Hoteliers often neglect these features. However, they can have a significant impact on your followers’ perception of your brand. A good cover photo, as shown below, can catch your audience’s attention. Changing your cover photo every now and then is also worthwhile.

On Marriott’s Facebook page, the brand shows off an image of what appears to be a luxury hotel suite. This is likely to attract luxury travellers seeking a more elegant and modern room.

Once you have created a Facebook page for your hotel brand, look at what you will be posting on the platform. Below are some recommendations:

• High-quality photos of your hotel’s interior, exterior, and nearby attractions
• Short videos showcasing your hotel and what people can expect after booking a stay
• Regular updates using stories
• Live videos
• Special offers, promotions, and deals

An additional tool you can leverage is Facebook Ads. It allows you to tailor your hotel advertising to a specific target audience, defined by location, demographics, interests, and more. If your goal is to exclusively reach luxury travellers, this paid media tool is a good option.

Instagram

Following Facebook, Instagram is the world’s second most popular social media platform. As Instagram is owned by Facebook, the networks have incredible synergy with one another. So using both can be beneficial to your social media strategy.

Instagram is primarily known for photo and video sharing. However, the platform offers many more opportunities to reach potential guests. This includes stories, live videos, paid advertisements, and the newly added reels. Below is how you can leverage some of these features to benefit your luxury hotel business.

Feed

The most commonly used feature on Instagram is your feed. This refers to your main profile page and the photos and videos you post there. There are many ways that you can leverage your feed to increase engagement and establish a stronger online presence. Some of these include:

• Finding what your best time is to post
• Posting photos and videos of your hotel’s ambience, services, and amenities
• Hosting contests or asking questions
• Writing longer captions and being transparent about your business or brand
• Creating “saveable” content, like lists, helpful tips, travel itineraries or guides, and motivational quotes
• Creating content that people will want to share with others

Another useful tip to increase engagement is to make the most of hashtags. Studies find that images with hashtags receive 12.6% more engagement. Focus on using popular and relevant hashtags like #luxurytravel, #luxuryhotel, etc.

It is also useful to include hashtags that are specific to your hotel brand. The image above shows Emerald Maldives Spa & Resort’s Instagram Profile. In their bio, they have included the hashtags #NaturalElegance, #emeraldmaldivesresortspa, and #emeraldmaldives.

These are used in all of their social media posts too. This way, when users search these hashtags, they will find a stunning gallery comprising both user-generated content and content posted by the brand.

Stories

Instagram Stories allow you to pin content to your profile. This content disappears after 24 hours, which might be the reason for the feature’s high level of engagement.

Below are examples of how you can use stories to increase user engagement with your luxury hotel brand:

• Post photos and videos (example: a sneak peek into a day at your hotel or resort)
• Provide discounts, promotions, and other special offers
• Ask questions to gain insights
• Run a poll for customer feedback
• Post important announcements pertaining to your business
• Highlight upcoming events
• Embed links to your hotel website

Reels

Instagram Reels is a new in-app feature where you can create 15 to 30-second videos with music, audio effects, and filters. Instagram’s algorithm is currently favouring the feature as it is new and fresh, so getting in on the trend is a must for your hotel business.

While it can feel overwhelming at times to keep up with new social media features, doing so gives your business the opportunity to grow and increase ROI. To make things easier, here are a few suggestions of what you could include in your hotel’s reels:

• Introduce the team
• Educational or ‘How to” posts
• Day in the life posts
• Behind the scenes clips of your hotel
• Trendy challenges
• Frequently asked questions

Twitter

While Twitter may be a less prominent social media platform in the hotel industry, its popularity is rapidly growing. As such, it should not be excluded from your social media marketing strategy.

Twitter has a 280 character limit placed on each post or tweet. Many hoteliers can agree that promoting your property in so few characters is no easy task. However, there are advantages to this limitation. It urges users to post more often, making it an ideal platform for real-time engagement.

Twitter provides your luxury hotel business with an easy and timely way to interact with your existing and potential customers. It enables you to hear what people are saying about your business and brand. Following this, you will be able to answer their questions and solve any problems they are having.

Twitter is a powerful customer relationship management (CRM) tool that will allow you to build brand loyalty. In addition to CRM, hotels can also use Twitter to provide information on special deals, offers, and recent updates. The example above shows Hilton Hotels advertising on Twitter by promoting an ongoing competition.

YouTube

YouTube is a website that allows users to create, share, and watch videos online. Videos generate higher engagement than images and text, so including this platform in your social media marketing strategy is most certainly worthwhile.

But how can you use your YouTube social media channel to benefit your hotel business? Below are some tips on the types of videos you can publish to generate traffic and engagement:

• A tour of your hotel, capturing the amenities and services
• Testimonials of your guests
• Popular attractions near your hotel
• Events or concerts happening at your hotel
• Influencers capturing their experience at your property with ‘day in the life’ videos

When publishing a YouTube video, you want it to rank high, both on YouTube and Google. To do so, ensure the title of your video contains a strong target keyword. You can use various tools like Ahrefs and Google Keyword Planner to find what keyword or title will be best for your videos.

You can also enrich your videos by adding relevant tags, such as the city your hotel is located in. Having a detailed description, engaging end screen, including links, and replying to comments left by viewers is also beneficial. These best practices can be seen in the video of the Ritz-Carlton’s hotel in Abu Dhabi.

YouTube videos can also improve your hotel SEO. Having a good, well-ranked video on your website can help improve your rankings on search engine result pages (SERPs). A well-done video can also entice people to click over to your hotel website, indirectly helping your SERP rankings.

Pinterest

Another powerful social media site that you should include in your hotel social media marketing strategy is Pinterest. Like Instagram, this platform is used to share images. Note that these are called “pins” and not images or pictures.

Pinterest is great for increasing traffic to your hotel’s website as you can embed links on each of the pins you upload. So if 200 people were to re-pin your post, all 200 pins would include a link leading back to your hotel website.

The first step to promoting your luxury hotel brand on Pinterest is setting up a good profile. This should include your profile photo, name, bio, and location. Following this, you can begin to upload your pins.

Your pins can include a variety of photos, from rooms and amenities to everything that makes your hotel unique. For example, if your property is a beach resort, you may include images of the sandy beachfront, too. You could also include nearby attractions that people can enjoy, the food your hotel serves, and plenty more.

When uploading a variety of different images, it is best to organise them by creating boards. These boards allow you to classify your pins into different categories. Examples of categories include travel tips, luxury hotels, food and drink, etc.

Pinterest also allows you to post your pins to other trending boards (below is an example of a board for luxury resorts). Just be sure to add your link so that anyone viewing it is redirected to your hotel’s website or social media platforms.

For more on how you can leverage this platform, check out our blog on Pinterest marketing for travel websites.

Footnote on Luxury Hotels Social Media Marketing Strategies

Social media is a powerful tool that luxury and boutique hotels can leverage to improve brand awareness and increase ROI. It allows you to easily engage with your target audience and inspire real-life conversions.

Through various platforms like the ones mentioned above, you can ensure that your hotel brand is talked about, liked, and shared. As long as you know and understand your audience, post good quality content, and remain consistent, your hotel brand is sure to see success online.