Marketing

📍 Know your hotel’s unique selling points like luxury or sustainability. Understand your ideal customer’s lifestyle to personalize marketing. Innovate by offering unique experiences. Build brand awareness months before opening through social media and PR. Use pre-opening offers to create urgency. These strategies help differentiate your hotel and attract the right guests for a successful launch.

🌏 Indian travelers show a robust appetite for travel in 2025, with 58% planning short domestic trips and 36% short international trips, surpassing the global average of 27%. Weddings drive major travel, with two-thirds attending related events. Influenced by social media, 67% use platforms like Instagram for travel ideas, compared to 43% globally. Budget-conscious yet experience-seeking, 66% prioritize scenery, 62% food, and 59% culture when choosing destinations. Over 90% of families value travel for educational exposure.

🏨 More than 300 partners attended loveholidays' inaugural Partner Appreciation Awards at the Marriott Hotel Grosvenor Square, London. The event unveiled the Most Loved Hotel Awards, based on 215,000 reviews over 12 months. Over 1,000 hotels in 40 destinations were honored as Most Loved in Destination, and 275 hotels received the Most Loved Worldwide accolade, achieving a 4.5/5 customer rating. Special Recognition Awards were presented to 38 partners. Enhanced visibility on loveholidays' platform will benefit award-winning properties.

💻 OpenAI integrated Tripadvisor into its App SDK, potentially amplifying intermediaries' influence on consumer channels. Hotels should reconsider reliance on these AI pipelines. The call is for the hospitality sector to cease this dependency, similar to halting paid reliance on Google, to reclaim control. There's a push to keep the trillion-dollar travel industry transparent and fair, as current trends resemble a facade where creators are sidelined, and the industry becomes commoditized.

💰 Every guest contact potentially represents $12 in value, but many inquiries don't convert into bookings due to lack of lead nurturing. Responding to inquiries within an hour increases conversion likelihood by seven times. Effective lead nurturing integrates CRM, marketing, and reservation systems. Revinate, a direct booking platform, aids in this process, supporting 12,500+ hotels to generate over $17.2 billion in direct revenue. Focus on lead scoring and optimizing inquiry-to-booking conversion rates to boost revenue.

💰 Expedia on November 7, 2025, forecasts a 6.5% revenue growth and 7% gross bookings increase for the year, exceeding previous estimates. In Q3, adjusted EPS hit $7.57 over the $6.94 forecast, with gross bookings rising 12% to $30.7 billion. B2B sales contributed a third of annual revenue. Room nights reached 108.2 million, surpassing expectations. Despite U.S. government shutdown concerns, travel trends remain strong. Expedia’s varied model shows resilience against sector volatility.

💰 Choice Hotels' enhanced rewards program rolls out in early 2026. Members gain rewards every five nights and achieve Elite status faster: Gold at 5 nights, Platinum at 15, Diamond at 35, and new Titanium at 55 nights or 110,000 credits. Titanium offers a seven-night stay at half points. Points never expire for Elite members. A "Return and Earn" feature gives 1,000 bonus points after two and three stays annually. Points sharing begins later in 2026.

🏨 Benchmark Global Sales, based in San Diego, CA, and Boulder, CO, partners with Lure Agency to enhance sales for over 50 independent hotels. The collaboration aims to boost direct group revenue using Lure's WINS Method™, focusing on generating quality leads and increasing conversions. This partnership strengthens Benchmark's competitive edge against branded competitors by leveraging modern sales strategies to provide measurable returns and attract new management contracts. Benchmark's properties span North America, offering personalized experiences.