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February 11, 2020
Before Covid-19, the wider tourism industry in Thailand generated over THB 3.01 trillion, accounting for approximately 18% of the country’s GDP. Instead the contribution to the economy of the hotel business only (which includes hotels, resorts and guesthouses) accounted for 6.1% of Thai gross domestic product (GDP), with an estimated value of THB 1.03 trillion.
The Covid-19 pandemic arrived, and the tourism industry collapsed, which had a severe impact on the interconnected sector, such as the hotel business, as well as other hospitality services like restaurants, bars, theme parks, and so on, resulting in a sudden drop in tourists and a loss of approximately THB 2.20 trillion in 2020.
Even more unfortunate, Thailand’s hospitality and tourism industry has only 35 million tourists (source: Ministry of Tourism & Sports) by the first half of 2021. If the situation weren’t to get better, the amount of income from the sector is expected to drop down to THB 600 million.
In this time of crisis, social media has proven to be one of the most important integrated marketing platforms for optimizing hospitality and tourism business, going beyond the concept of chat boxes and online reservations.
Adopting the right social media management can become a critical solution for hospitality and tourism players to survive to Covid-19.
There are numerous social media channels available today, such as Facebook, Instagram, LINE, X (ex Twitter) and YouTube. It all depends on the approach you take to create the most engaged and user-friendly personalization that also improves the hotel’s brand image.
Ever wonder what went wrong when the promotion doesn’t seem to increase any sales or attract any customers? Many hotels may have offered workation or staycation services, promotional packages, limited-time discounts but nothing would work if customers aren’t able to SEE the contents.
Social Media both organic and paid can help boost up brand visibility and hotel business can ensure that customers are aware of what you are doing. The Social Media tools can give you insight into the audiences that allow you to make reach and impressions to those potential customers.
You have to tell a story, the one that can highlight your brand identity and uniqueness while also attracting an audience at the same time. There are so many contents that people see daily on the internet and the question is how would you be able to stand out among all of them.
One way to make effective and engaging content is using KOL Marketing (read our article How to create an effective campaign with influencer marketing); celebrities, bloggers, content creators, idols and many more. The value of the Global KOLs business has risen so much compared to five years ago, the value of $1.7 was forecasted to grow up to $13.8 billion this year.
This kind of marketing is much more useful due to the rise of streaming platforms like TikTok and live sales (Shopee, Lazada) where KOLs can attract more people to your service.
61% of marketers being surveyed by Hubspot said that lead generation and driving traffic is considered to be the hardest challenges to manage for the company but with just the right headline it can increase up to 500% of leads.
Every hotel has its own landing pages whether a big chain website or an individual one, Social Media not just only help guests acknowledge the existence of these web pages but also helps increase the traffic by using the right headline and content in order to find the potential customers, but remember not all of them will be converted to sales. Here comes the strategy of retargeting clickable ads to those who already have visited your sites is also considered to be one of the very powerful tools as it results in a 10x better click-through rate and 70% of those will be more likely the conversion you are trying to look for.
Social media is not irrelevant anymore in today’s business especially in the hospitality & tourism industry, it’s rather a game-changer when it is being managed well. You can go beyond social media especially during Covid-19 (which knows when it is going to end) by making sure you still exist when guests browse through their social media and making sure you have something to attract them to stay longer. Visit us for more information on how we can help you optimize your social media account.
A post written by Petch Jeerarunagrong, Strategic Planner Manager at MOST 2414
Petch Jeeraruangrong
1015/29 Sukhumvit 71 Road,
Watthana, Bangkok 10110
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