Inspiring people to travel and stay in your hotel is no mean feat. You must find something unique about your hotel that makes them feel that they have to be there. Using outstanding hotel promotional videos can help you achieve that effect.
Quality videos naturally immerse guests into your unique stories and flaunt your amenities. Done well, video content can build your hotel brand and increase bookings.
But what are the best videos for marketing your hotel? We’ve discussed five hotel promotional video ideas in this post, each with an example.
Keep reading also to learn how you can create each of the ideas for your hotel.
Website Introductory Video of Your Hotel
Want to show prospective guests what to expect in your hotel? Make a short introductory video showcasing who you are and what you exactly do.
But most importantly, start with a strong introduction—you only have a few seconds to grab your guests' attention. You can highlight your hotel’s unique facilities, design, scenery, and more.
In short, your video should have a great hook. This is the first few seconds in your video that serves as an attention-grabber by using intrigue, suspense, or value. It can be an alluring visual, an intriguing personal question, your unique selling point, or stating a startling fact.
The idea is to snatch the viewer's attention and cause them to watch the rest of your hotel video.
In the rest of your video, reveal what staying at your hotel is like and what amenities you offer. If possible, demonstrate your staff’s hospitable culture and dedication to excellence so potential guests can anticipate a welcoming stay with top-notch services.
Additionally, highlight some of the landmarks and main attractions in your location that’ll entice travelers further.
This two-minute introductory video of the luxury Samanvaya Resort & Spa is an excellent example of a website introductory video.
It begins with an enchanting aerial view of the resort and highlights some amenities and main attractions in the location. The music further sets the tone for the video and makes the viewer imagine the relaxed feeling they’ll have while staying at the hotel.
This kind of video can boost your hotel’s awareness and drive bookings.
Short Guest Testimonials and Interviews
Asking guests to share their opinions about your hotel through a video testimonial can attract new customers. The video testimonials are an opportunity to show a first-hand account of your guests' experience and what future guests can expect.
But it's more than that.
Creating a video riddled with positive guest reviews is also ideal for speaking your customer’s language, building trust, and providing social proof. All these are essential for effective marketing and driving conversions from your promotional videos.
So, how do you get guests to give you video testimonials?
Upon checking out, ask them if they’d be willing to give a good word about their stay in your hotel through a short video.
Simple questions such as “Did you enjoy your stay?” or “How was your experience at our hotel?” will help score an excellent video testimonial.
Ask them to voice any suggestions and improvements so that it doesn't seem like the guests are made to only speak good about the hotel.
You can also ask them questions that get right to the heart of the benefits you're trying to communicate in your video. For example, “Which of our amenities did you enjoy the most?”
But first, take time to reassure guests who might be nervous about recording a video. Not everyone is ready to jump in front of the camera (with LED lights beaming on their face).
To steady their nerves, you can use your phone camera to capture the video. Most people online are willing to accept lower-quality videos nowadays for something raw and authentic. That’s why social videos get more shares than images and texts.
Try weaving together several video testimonials, then throw in some background music. You can also include B-roll footage to enhance the viewing experience.
Here’s an example of guest testimonials weaved into a video. It features guests talking about their stay in the hotel and how much better it is than other facilities they tried.
Such authentic guest testimonials can help drive new customers to your hotel since they get to hear about the fantastic experiences of other guests. Moreover, the use of video allows viewers to see and feel the joy and satisfaction of other guests, which is something written reviews cannot capture as effectively.
Engaging Room/ Property Tours
Alongside guest testimonials, provide short virtual tours of your hotel. There’s no better way to present prospective guests with a surreal and immersive experience.
Room or property tours help you connect with potential guests as they can see and explore your entire hotel on their devices’ screens from anywhere. It’s like providing a front-row seat to your hotel, revealing how all-rounded your amenities are — without the person having to be there physically.
Through virtual tours, you can increase interest in your hotel, especially when people can't travel due to certain restrictions (think the COVID-19 pandemic).
Potential guests can envision themselves staying in the room or being at your hotel, and over time this will be engrained in their minds. As a result, they are more likely to remember your hotel when it’s time to plan for their trip.
So flaunt anything that makes your hotel stand above the competition, including scenic beaches, pools, outdoor amenities, restaurants, lobby spaces, and individual rooms.
For example, the luxurious Samanvaya Resort & Spa created a video walkthrough of one of the individual rooms in their resort. The short, comely video explores the room’s features, giving potential guests a feel of what to expect upon arrival.
Rather than bogging down guests with wordy descriptions of your hotel (that they hardly need), create a simple video tour that resonates with your would-be guests. That way, they’ll have a chance to “try before they buy.”
TikTok (and Other Social Media) Short-Form Videos
Want to reach more people, even those who may not have seen your website yet? Do it with short-form videos on social media platforms.
Explore TikTok. This popular social media platform can effectively market your hotel to people who want something short and quick.
Currently, few hotel brands explore TikTok, despite being among the most popular social platforms in the world and offering unique marketing opportunities. Still, it’s not too late to jump into the TikTok bus. The earlier, the better for your hotel’s marketing efforts.
But how exactly can exploring TikTok videos help in hotel marketing?
Displays the Hotel’s Excellence
TikTok is an ideal platform to present your hotel to potential guests.
Create short and snappy videos of your property. Unlike the virtual room tours discussed above, TikTok videos allow you to quickly highlight your best spots and amenities with each shot.
Boosts Hotel’s Awareness
Do you want more potential clients to watch your videos but don’t have that many followers? Your TikTok videos can garner millions of views even with a small following.
While other social platforms like YouTube and Instagram require you to have followers first, TikTok’s algorithm can make your videos get noticed quickly, even with a small following.
This is how it works. TikTok will present your video to users’ For You Page even if you have few or no followers. If the users engage positively, TikTok’s algorithm takes note and can go on to present that video to thousands or millions of other users. Your video can, therefore, go viral exceptionally quickly, boosting your hotel’s awareness.
Targets Specific Guests
TikTok displays relevant content based on viewing habits and likes. So use TikTok videos to target people who regularly watch travel and accommodation or location-based videos.
Do this by creating videos around a specific niche that’s in line with your services, for example, travel and leisure. Then use relevant hashtags to boost visibility.
Forges Strong Relationships
Most TikTok users globally are between 18 and 24 years old. Therefore, if your would-be guests include this age group, posting TikTok videos can help you forge a strong relationship with them.
Apart from just posting videos, you can also nurture a TikTok community for your brand via giveaways, campaigns, and contests.
Build your brand by leveraging hashtags
Adding hashtags to your TikTok videos has two benefits. Firstly, they help TikTok’s algorithm identify users interested in your content. And secondly, hashtags help categorize videos.
Therefore, apart from using popular hashtags like #smallluxuryhotels to increase your reach, add hashtags that describe the kind of services you want to be known for, e.g., #romantichotel. That way, you get to build your hotel brand.
Ads
Depending on where you upload and publish your hotel promotional videos, you’ll reach a certain number of viewers. However, creating ads enables your videos to be seen by even more people and in a targeted manner.
Even so, the success of your video ads depends on how well you make them. And the best way is to have videos that appeal to the emotions of your ideal client.
Research shows that the payoff can be huge when people connect emotionally with a specific brand. Customers trust them and are likely to buy their products or services.
Also, if you run ads that spark an emotion in viewers, you're likely to experience a spike of 23% in sales than when pushing purely rational ads — a sobering fact that speaks volumes.
Consider this ad by Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, for example. The YouTube video is only fifteen seconds long but exudes such exciting emotions of fun, play, and happiness. It’s perfect for promoting a family hotel because it easily attracts parents looking for a fun place to go with their kids.
Moreover, the ad’s stats prove how catchy it is—in a span of less than 2 months since going live on YouTube, the video ad has garnered 7.4 million views.
So what’s the best way to achieve this kind of emotional advertising in your hotel promotional video? Identify your potential guest’s pain points, make this the video’s main focus, and then zoom in on your services’ solutions.
For example, if your audience's main pain point is the hustle of traveling with children and wondering how to keep them entertained throughout, show a video ad that highlights your kid-friendly amenities. Create a fun video that produces feelings of joy and happiness as the family spends time together (like the Four Seasons video above).
Be as honest as possible and authentic in your promo videos, and more people will want to travel and stay at your hotel.
Increase Your Video Marketing Efforts Today!
Now that you know the five best hotel promotional videos, are you ready to take the plunge and begin or level up your hotel’s video marketing?
Video content offers significant benefits to your hotel business, including
- Increasing brand awareness,
- Growing revenue,
- Improving conversion rates,
- Boosting engagement with your target audience,
- Building trust
Digital experts reveal that most people spend a massive part of their time on the internet watching videos. So it’s a no-brainer that this should form a big part of your marketing strategy.
Lastly, always remember that you’re creating content for your guests. So, put yourself in their shoes, think about what they would like to see and what’ll entice them. That way, you have a clearer idea of what your video marketing strategy can be.
So, if you want to boost hotel awareness, be sure integrate your hotel videos on all your marketing channels.
Recent findings on video marketing is driving hotels, resorts, and all kinds of businesses to adopt videos as a major marketing tool for their campaigns. It is no exaggeration to say any hotel or resort that doesn’t advertise through video is missing out on the substantial revenue boost of video content and will likely suffer setbacks in the long term.
But with some 16% of marketers clueless about where to start video marketing, we want to help you get started on your hotel video marketing campaign. To that end, this is one of a series of articles on hotel marketing strategies to help owners and marketing managers do it right.
What’s Covered In This Piece
We'll dedicate a section of this article to showing you how to derive lessons from good and bad hotel videos. This will sharpen your creativity in choosing hotel features to shoot whenever you need a promo video. Then throughout the rest of the article, we'll watch different videos and pick some vital lessons from them. Watch the short video below to better grasp how important video marketing for hotels is.
How To Analyze Hotel Videos For Inspiration
But you'll need to know where you should take inspiration for your hotel video. Look out for those that hook you, intrigue and give off some kind of mood or emotion. Videos that look and feel great are the ones to try and analyze for ideas.
There's no end to the number of videos you can learn from. So, we won't include everything here. We'll just focus on learning how to analyze videos to help shape your campaigns. Then dissect enough examples to give you something to start with before studying others on your own.
Focus On the Selling Propositions
Every business would have a selling proposition, barring a total absence of competitors. Your selling proposition is the unique offer that will make consumers choose you over competitors. If possible, you alone should have that unique offer or only a handful of businesses in your industry. The hotel and resort trade is no different.
You ought to try and get this unique offer across in every marketing campaign. If you study the hotel and resort marketing videos that you like closely, you will notice something unique about most videos that all others don’t have. While this might not be their main and only unique offer, it’s likely to be among. So, when studying hotel videos, try to understand their unique offers. Observe the hotel’s features that are used to communicate such offers.
Your Unique Selling Proposition
If you have been in the hotel and resort business for a while, it’s hard to think your hotel or resort doesn’t have a unique selling proposition unless you don’t bother targeting customers online. If your offer effectively attracts customers from competitors, just focus on identifying or discovering the combination of hotel features that’ll best communicate that offer. That’s how hotel marketing with videos is done.
You may discover hotels online with a similar value proposition as yours, which may not be in your area. Watch their promo videos, and pay attention to how each hotel tries to present its offer. Note the ones you think are most successful at communicating their messages.
You'll probably need different types of videos because hotel video marketing tactics differ, and you ought to use what you find necessary. For example, a website video would be quite different from a testimonial or an ad video. However, all video types should manage to communicate your best value propositions.
Common Uses Of Hotel Videos
Hotels and resorts typically produce marketing videos to use for/on:
- Websites - COZUMEL HOTEL & RESORT
- Landing pages - MYMILLENIUM PAGE
- Social Media - Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube
- Press releases - Hilton new brand launch
- Email marketing - Hotel Bel Air
- Paid social advertising - Facebook, Instagram
- Blogs - BON HOTELS blog
- Review/Travel websites - Tripadvisor
- Room tours - Fullerton Hotel
- Testimonials - Cozumel Hotel
The length and approach of your video will depend on its purpose and content. For example, you would shoot a short video for TikTok and lengthy room tours for certain website pages. That’s how to promote a hotel business via a wide range of videos.
Let’s pick 4 from these major reasons for hotel videos and provide good examples of each to distinguish them. Most examples can be adapted to any purpose.
The chosen uses for our examples
We have come up with a wide range of ideas for hotel video production. So, let’s look at the kind of videos to shoot for the following purposes:
- Hotel Website
- Room Tours
- Social Media such as TikTok
- Short Testimonials & Interviews
Potential customers would love to see videos about the above-listed activities upon discovering your hotel or resort online. You need to try and not disappoint guests in order for them not to reciprocate it. So, let’s see what ideas there are for hotel website videos.
Hotel Video Production for Websites
Most people visit your site from smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktops of different screen sizes. Consequently, any promo videos hosted on your website must be suitable for these devices and screen sizes. Your hotel videos, designed to make first contact with viewers, should fulfill the immediate goal of grabbing their attention and persuading them to view more. That's the main job of homepage videos and others on your high-ranking pages.
So, you want to showcase as much as possible in less than 2 minutes. If viewers like your brief advert, they are more likely to watch others with a relaxed mind. Let’s study some features of good videos for a hotel website.
Features of a hotel website video
A hotel website video is also called a banner video, and it should be within 30 - 90 seconds long, though some good ones can reach nearly 3 minutes long. However, longer videos have low watch-through rates. People aren't on your website to watch a movie about your hotel. What they want is easy-to-digest info asap. So make it brief and info-rich.
Whenever potential guests watch your promo video, they want it to load fast. You'd find many videos online that obviously aren't long but load slowly. Sometimes this is caused by the platform to which the video is uploaded, but the video's features can also cause it.
You want to capture the best of all critical amenities of your hotel, especially since the video displays on your homepage. The first video that guests would love to see about your hotel or resort is that which shows their desired amenities at your facility. They won't seek the granite details of each amenity, but they'd want to see enough to be able to get an idea and decide.
Ideas for a hotel website video
Peeking at different hotel videos online will reveal some attractive features about certain hotels that might give you an idea of what to film in your own hotel.
Luxury, Calm, and Comfort
Every luxury hotel or resort would claim to be calm and comforting. But when compared to others, some hotels are less comforting, less calm, or even chaotic. If your hotel is a luxury establishment isolated from the city and has a calm atmosphere within and around it, then focusing on advertising these values in some of your videos will likely pay off. See examples of such videos below:
The video opens with an aerial view of the hotel and its surrounding areas. As it progresses, you get the impression of how living at the hotel feels like. Apart from the interior luxury and caring staff, there’s lots of places worth sightseeing. One unique thing about this video is how it communicates the seclusion of this resort. By capturing plenty of the environs far beyond the resort, this video adds an element of seclusion, privacy, and an escape from the hubbub of city life. It’ll appeal to guests looking for an isolated and luxurious resort.
This one also focuses on what your experience would be like living at the hotel - without featuring external attraction centers. However, the video captures a great deal of the internal luxury of the hotel, the friendly tradition of the staff, food, and comfort zones. So, our impression of Lloyd's Inn is that of luxury, calm, and total satisfaction.
The tradition of your hotel or resort
You can focus on your hotel’s tradition when shooting advert videos, just like the Aman Summer Palace does perfectly with the video below. Watch the video and read our analysis of it to better understand the lessons therein.
This video begins by showing the frontage of the Aman Summer Hotel in Beijing, China. The background sound is simple and low, and the video focuses on the traditional aspect of the hotel, such as its Chinese architecture and furniture, instead of its amenities. This makes for a great hotel marketing strategy that only focuses on a handful of aspects.
While many stationaries are modern, several aspects of the hotel depict old-school Chinese lodging practices, such as the kettle & teacups and the rickshaw driver picking up a departing guest.
What is understandable from this video is the hotel trying to appeal to customers’ curiosity or desire to experience traditional Chinese lodging. Of course, such a video is aimed at both Chinese and foreign guests since most hotels in Chinese cities use modern designs and equipment. It showcases two things for the guest:
- Comfortable lodging
- Experiencing Chinese culture
If your hotel is designed to mimic some ancient lodging culture, then that culture is naturally one of your strongest selling points. You can capture shots that display the cultural setting and experience of your hotel or resort. To have built such a hotel implies that your hospitality market research confirmed the availability of customers and hotel culture videos are among the best hotel promotion ideas to reach potential guests.
Using the traditional approach
The traditional hotel video marketing shoots still work, but not like before. Traditional shoots typically open with a hotel staff guiding you from the entrance through the reception, hallway, rooms, and all other amenities. It’s one of the top hotel marketing ideas despite being around for a long time.
However, the playbook is getting old-fashioned amidst a plethora of creative approaches ushering in much-needed change in guests viewing experiences. In the second video, the hotel shows some behind-the-scenes activity. You can use either of these approaches for your hotel video.
Integrating a background story
A mythical story like that of the example below might actually exist, and perhaps you'll learn more about it upon reaching the hotel. This story evokes emotions and may remind some viewers of their heartbreaks. It's presented in a fashion that implies the princess journeyed into a cloud forest to heal from her emotional pain. That begs the question of whether it targets heartbroken guests.
So, if there’s some interesting history or myth about the vicinity of your hotel in Singapore, see whether you can weave it into the video or even base your advertising video entirely on the story and position your hotel as a continuation of that story, like Inkaterra Hotels successfully did.
Display your hotel’s unique culture
FOUR SEASON’S hotel video demonstrates the hotel's culture of pleasant surprises and exceptional hospitality. How does your hotel treat guests? Do you have any unique surprises or experiences for them? You can use these to craft viral hotel promo videos for your website.
The hotel video below blends culture with luxury in a manner almost certain to appeal to foreigners.
Leverage your hotel’s location history
You’d find many online hotel videos that attempt to inform viewers of their location's historical significance - something likely to be unique to that hotel or resort. Is there anything about your hotel or resort that no other or few have? That unique feature must offer some wonderful experience or evoke powerful emotions; otherwise, it will have no marketing value. If there is, it could be among your strong selling points.
Show off the environment of your hotel.
This video leverages the uniqueness of the hotel's environment as opposed to showcasing its amenities. It's the kind of video that works for all marketing channels: social media, websites, blogs, paid ads, etc.
Here’s another video that leverages the hotel’s environment and culture. It’s a good example of how to promote a hotel business online via its culture and surroundings.
From a guest’s viewpoint
Certain videos try to convince you within seconds by presenting the hotel from a guest’s viewpoint. Sometimes the guest would stand looking around the hotel, their faces showing pleasant surprise at what they see, even if the video viewer doesn't see them. This could be a great marketing tactic for a hotel or resort in Singapore that hasn't any unique qualities that no other has. For example, the hotel in this video has a heated pool.
No matter how you design a swimming pool, it's unlikely to be 100% unique because other hotels may have a similar or even better swimming pool. They can copy your design, improve on it, or even outstrip you completely with a different one. This is why it’s hard to stand out on amenities or qualities that any resort or hotel can have.
Room Tour Video Ideas
Room tours shouldn't be the first video visitors see on your website because visitors want to see more than just your rooms before deciding whether or not to seek more detailed videos. They want to know what the experience will be like. It's not as if you shouldn't have room tour videos on your homepage, but they shouldn’t be the main focus in your video.
The moment visitors land on your website, they'll start watching any available videos after reading a few texts. And they are highly likely to start with videos they see first. You can have a separate webpage dedicated to advertising your rooms.
But room tours are great to compliment images and text on the page displaying the different rooms you have. So guests have a better idea on the room they’ll likely be staying in.
There are endless ways to advertise hotel rooms in videos. The approaches are similar to website hotel videos, but these can display much more detail. Some examples here demonstrate how to showcase your hotel rooms online using videos.
Ideas on room tour videos
You don't know which features of your hotel room would tilt a viewer's decision in your favor against competitors. Features as simple as overhead lights or a table's mirror element might be the last deciding factors to earn you a booking after the guest might have viewed a dozen other hotel promo videos.
When making a room tour hotel video, you can start from the hallway or any part of the room that you consider the most attractive. Starting with a room's best features increases the chances of hooking the viewer. Introduce room amenities according to their importance - which means a chronological arrangement from best to good. See the examples below:
TikTok Room Tour video
You may choose to shoot videos of certain areas in your hotel to emphasize the depth of experience using them. It’s a good example of how to market hotels with videos.
TikTok Facilities video
Detailed description of facilities & experience
Your room tour videos can be long, but try not to exceed 5 minutes unless you have interesting and unique things to show. Shooting a long room tour will work if your hotel rooms pack many wonderful amenities. But if you have just a few facilities that a 1-minute video can detailly cover, extending the length will only decrease viewer retention and trigger viewer drop-offs. See a good example of a long hotel room video below:
Short room tour videos
Short room tour videos are typically less than 2 minutes long and don't attempt to present the nit gritty of your room’s amenities. But it captures enough to demonstrate the experience of living in the room. It can focus on the most important amenities or cover an entire picture of the room and its immediate environs. Here’s one example:
Detailed description of hotel or resort
This presentation style better fits large hotels or resorts with enough staff and amenities. A video like this is better suited to a homepage or landing page. Because it gives plenty of details about the hotel which Ad videos cannot due its nature of being short.
This is an example of how to market hotels via a more traditional approach. The video shows the staff, amenities, surrounding scenery, and what experience to expect.
Do you have any special stationaries in your hotel that you are proud of? Such things need to feature in your promos because not many hotels may have them, and they raise your hotel's status in the eyes of your customers.
Some hotels have such a diverse collection of smart tech amenities that they can make a promotional video entirely on the smartness of their hospitality. Things like temperature-regulated mattresses, ultra-comfortable beds, dim-out blinds, etc., should be covered in your videos since many customers might not even know they exist.
Is there anything special about the mixologists of your bar? Many luxury hotels create wonderful videos about their staff meticulously creating cocktails. Another feature that might attract attention and excite viewers is the odd location of certain facilities, such as a bar on the roof.
Short Testimonials & Interviews
How can a potential customer believe that what's been said in such videos isn't biased? Testimonial videos are for customers to talk, not for the hotel staff to line up and keep praising your hotel's features and services. It's like a video version of reviews where people can just watch and not need to read through.
Here's an example of a powerful testimonial video made for a co-working space . You can see that it features several customers talking about their positive experiences with Found8. We can help you to market your hotel or resort online by shooting these testimonial videos.
Testimonial videos are powerful to visitors who come to your website or watch your hotel videos on social media and other platforms. No other video about your hotel can convince customers, like testimonials. This is the same for every single industry out there, not just hotels and resorts in Asia. 95% of customers check online reviews before paying for a product or service, and video reviews are more credible than their textual counterparts.
This is a powerful hotel testimonial video. It begins with an actual customer talking, which convinces viewers that it’s genuine. The hotel took it to the next level by displaying its mansions and amenities as the reviewing customer talks in the background. Splendid.
This marketing masterpiece features several customers heaping praises on the hotel’s services. They don’t show off the hotel’s amenities as the first video does, but the advert is still good.
To wrap up on testimonials, get your customers to talk positively about your hotel’s features that help communicate your unique offer.
Final Thoughts
You can find thousands of hotel video marketing ideas out there, any of which can inspire you. If you hadn’t bothered to invest in video marketing before, it’s better to take it more seriously now because the industry is rapidly employing it plus the millions of views and reviews of customers show its popularity among guests. We’ve seen that hotel videos differ based on which amenity is being covered and how. Thankfully, examples abound on any type of video you want to shoot. You can even figure out what works and what doesn’t by analyzing the engagement about videos.
It’s clear from the article that the one central factor common in all great hotel marketing videos is the selling proposition. Without preparing an attractive and preferably unique offer for clients, it would be hard to produce a highly impactful video. Create your unique offer while taking into account that of your competitors (within the same town or city). You don’t want close similarities between your unique selling proposition and a competitor’s, especially if yours seem inferior.
Having a unique selling proposition (USP) is essential for any hotel or resort that wants to stand out from the crowd and attract more guests. Without a USP, it’s harder for hotel owners to differentiate their hotel from the competition, making it difficult to create an effective video marketing campaign.
Fortunately, hotel owners can use different strategies when creating videos to showcase their hotel's unique features and sell potential customers on why they should choose them over other establishments. And hotel videos are one of the best ways for hotels and resorts to showcase their USPs and attract more customers.
What is my USP?
When crafting your hotel’s USP, think about what makes your hotel special compared with its competitors:
- Is it the location?
- The service?
- The amenities?
You can use hotel videos to show off the hotel's best features. Make sure you focus on the key elements that will make people choose your hotel over others. And that your hotel video features the hotel’s top USPs and why customers should stay in your hotel instead of another.
Every business would have a selling proposition, barring a total absence of competitors. Your selling proposition is the unique offer that will make consumers choose you over competitors. If possible, you alone should have that unique offer or only a handful of businesses in your industry. The hotel and resort trade is no different.
When creating hotel videos, think of a hook that will grab attention right away. A great hotel video should present a unique selling proposition (USP) in the beginning that makes guests want to stay at the hotel over competitors. Your USP should be clear, concise, easy to understand, and most importantly relevant to potential customers.
Take some time to explore other hotel videos and see how they present their USPs in order to get inspired for your own hotel videos. Consider different types of hotel videos that could be helpful: website videos, promotional videos, customer testimonials, etc.
You ought to try and get this unique offer across in every marketing campaign. If you study the hotel and resort marketing videos that you like closely, you will notice something unique about most videos that all others don’t have. While this might not be their main and only unique offer, it’s likely to be among. So, when studying hotel videos, try to understand their unique offers. Observe the hotel’s features that are used to communicate such offers.
I’ve identified my USP, now what?
Once you have a clear idea of the USP you want to convey in your video, it is important to create content that makes viewers take action after watching it.
It’s also helpful to watch other hotel videos to get an idea of what works and how hotel owners are presenting their offers in a creative way. Depending on your hotel’s goals, there are different types of videos that may be necessary such as website videos, promotional videos or even customer testimonials.
When creating the video for your hotel, focus on highlighting its unique selling points and make sure it stands out from the competition – both visually and through content. Use interesting visuals, catchy music and combine these with snippets of conversation to engage potential customers as they watch your hotel's video.
Also, keep in mind the hotel’s target audience and make sure that your hotel video speaks to them. Be sure to include information such as room types, amenities, availability of activities, discounts or promotions and other services that are relevant to your hotel’s USP.
Craft your video with intention
Creating an effective hotel video needs careful planning including a good understanding of the features the hotel has to offer along with the message it aims to convey through its USP. When done properly, a great hotel video can increase customer recognition and result in more bookings. Follow these tips when creating a hotel video for your hotel to ensure you have a successful outcome:
- Purpose: Start by defining the purpose of the hotel video and what message you want it to convey. Whether it is highlighting a certain feature, discount or promotion, make sure the video reflects why customers should choose your hotel over others. If there are any special deals available, make sure to include them in the hotel video as well.
- Target Audience: When creating hotel videos, it is important to keep in mind who you want to target. Are you trying to attract families, solo travellers or business travellers? Once you have identified your target audience, use that information to tailor your USP message specifically towards them. For example, if you are targeting families then highlight features that appeal to kids such as a pool or other activities they would enjoy while on vacation.
- USP: remember to showcase your USP and communicate it in a clear and concise manner. This will help inform viewers about why your hotel stands out compared to competitors. Additionally, consider how you want viewers to feel when they watch the hotel video; this could range from nostalgic feelings if you are highlighting certain hotel features like its history or more exciting emotions if you are advertising specific activities available at your hotel such as golfing or other outdoor activities.
- Type: Determine which type of video would best fit this information. Website videos are commonly used in hotel marketing campaigns as they can be easily shared online with potential customers and give an overall impression of the hotel’s USP before guests even arrive. You may also consider creating room tours, social media videos and even short form TikToks.
- Visuals: Don’t forget to include key visuals in your hotel videos! Potential customers will want to get an idea of what they can expect from your hotel; this could include footage of the hotel's exterior, interior design and common places such as lobbies and reception areas. If you are offering services like spa treatments or restaurants, it is helpful to show those in the hotel video as well.
Creating an effective hotel video does not have to be complicated or time-consuming. You can hire an external production house, or just pick up your phone and film some Instagram stories and TikToks. You can use existing hotel footage and photos, but it is also important to include information regarding your USP that will help you stand out from the competition. Consider how to make your hotel video memorable and interesting so viewers take action after watching it.
Finally, it is important to include a call-to-action at the end of the hotel video in order to ensure that viewers know how to make a reservation after watching. Make sure you include information about how to book online or contact the hotel directly so they can easily make reservations.
Creating an effective hotel video with a unique selling proposition is essential for getting customers excited about staying at your hotel or resort. By taking some time to identify what makes your hotel stand out from others and creating engaging content that shows off its features, you can create a hotel video that will draw in customers and capture their attention. With the right hotel video, you can make sure potential guests remember your hotel and keep coming back for more.