Image: Gatlinburg, Tennessee Hotel
The hospitality industry is a very lucrative market. In this specific industry, the short-term residences built under the luxury umbrella get grander and more state of the art. With new competition arising in AirBnB, the market is trending up. Luxury hotel marketing materials are in demand as a way to help these fabulous rooms sell.
For hotels on the luxury side, using marketing materials you can attract hospitality clients and bring increased visibility and awareness. As a hotel, hostel, or residency, you can reach a wide array of your target audience by bringing both digital and traditional marketing into cohesion. Having curated and highly specialized marketing for the luxury properties you are selling elevates the whole renting experience and will attract the buyers that you are looking for.
Photo by Lissete Laverde
Luxury hotel marketing materials are essential because it helps sell the rooms and elevate the renting experience to a top-tier level. In selling luxury experiences, image and brand are important because this will help the property stand out from the rest.
You have to think about the property as the product that you want to sell. You want to highlight the special amenities and features of the residence but at the same time sell the lifestyle that comes with it. Marketing for high-end buyers can be highly specialized which is why a lot of hotels spend a lot of money on it.
Digital marketing has increased visibility for luxury brands. In 2013, fashion brand Burberry launched their Kiss campaign promoting their new line of lipsticks.
With an interactive email, users were able to choose a color of the luxury brand’s new lipstick and then pucker up for their smartphone. Burberry took a digital imprint of users’ mouths in the color lipstick they chose, allowing them to send this virtual kiss to anyone they wanted via email.
Interactive and immersive campaigns are attractive to a good portion of the luxury brand target audience. The most visually driven social media platforms are YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat.
Screenshot of Burberry Kiss Campaign
Luxury hospitality marketing materials have to invoke emotion and create an experience for the target to entice them into renting a room at your luxury hotel.
Custom website
Hotel landing pages
Luxury blog
Welcome cards
Towels & Apparel
Front desk branding
Amenity cards
Signage
Lifestyle video content
Virtual video tours
Event hosting brochures
Menu design
Photo by Drew Beamer
Photo by Renan Bomtempo
Custom website
When thinking about luxury hotel marketing materials, the number one thing that hotels and properties gravitate to is a custom website. A specialized and designated website that only highlights one luxury property is slowly becoming the norm and is expected when you are selling mega-mansions and expensive properties. Luxury hotels can take this trend with their own rooms, offering any background history on the location or even the property’s story while showcasing the different photos, angles, and videos of the rooms. Having a personalized website will truly elevate your marketing style to another level.
Hotel landing pages
A hotel landing page is where users are taken to when they click on your ads. You can showcase your high-end branding and enable potential investors to get more information about the hotel.
Your hotel landing pages should be clean and professional. If it’s too cluttered you will lose the interest of your viewers because there’s too much going on. The images should show the rooms in the best light with professional photography and a great design.
Disregard anything that looks too cheap, silly, or gimmicky. Stick to neutral colors, no bright colors. And don’t forget to use beautiful photography to highlight the best features of the rooms and hotel amenities.
It is key to include a call-to-action for any successful landing page. By including contact forms to your landing pages, visitors can provide their information. (Freebies can be leveraged to entice some people.) Be mindful to not make the contact form too long, since it turns most away.
Luxury blog
Besides hotel landing pages and your website, you can also curate your luxury blog. Blogs can contain information that describes the current state of the market. Your blogs can be about specific rooms that you are renting, this provides an informal view on the luxury rooms and is more candid which makes it more relatable.
Luxury blogs can also be monetized or promote high visibility for your hotel brand. You can use blogs to increase relatability and showcase your perspective and personality with your audience. With a blog that shows your character, it attracts more clients who relate to you and appreciate what you are doing.
Welcome cards
The use of business and welcome cards can elevate your content to the next level because it offers something different to your audience. For hotels in a busier city, including a map with their business card ensures their visitors will have a value-added experience. It is a way that you can pass relevant information to them and at the same time generate leads. For welcome cards, adding a touch of embossing can elevate simple communications into a photo-worthy experience that can attract more customers.
Towel embroidery & Housekeeping apparel
Custom branded apparel and products are utilized by business models to separate their marketing materials from other brands’ and help identify inventory. Luxurious touches such as embroidery delivers the intrinsic message that renters will be treated as well as your hotel and staff.
Front desk branding
It is imperative that luxury hotels market themselves with a brand identity strategized from the ground up. With customers making their final decisions via their phones, quality photography showing a high end atmosphere can be effective in attracting travelers seeking a luxury experience.
Amenity cards
Small print marketing or menu cards for the services your hotel provides can communicate the elegance of your luxury hotel. Exclusivity is experienced by the elite, and cards that can be personalized are used to align hotels with such an idea.
Signage
It is important to note that luxury hotel marketing stands in stark contrast to mass marketing. Mass marketing “is a strategy in which a firm markets its products or services to a large number of people simultaneously.”
While mass marketing can be effective for certain campaigns or endeavors, it is not the correct approach for luxury brands. Because luxury brands possess more influence, their social responsibility is key in developing marketing that attracts their select target audience. Each piece of signage on the property needs to reflect the same values as the rest of the branding, with the main corporate signage maintained for quality.
Lifestyle video content
Luxury brands are known for sleek imagery, vivid photography showcasing high end products and experiences. It is no surprise that high resolution photos and videos, with ultra-fine quality, communicates to an audience that responds. Apps like TikTok have a huge community waiting to be stimulated by dreamy visuals.
Luxury hotels can leverage TikTok and Instagram for their social reputation, even offering rewards or incentives for visitors to take their own photos and videos during their stay.
Virtual video tours
Virtual video tours are one type of type of luxury hotel marketing material that has gained immense popularity within the last few years especially. Apps like AirBnb and Couchsurfer have changed the way people travel, now people rely on virtual video tours to tour properties even if they are not physically there.
Event hosting brochures
With every luxury hotel, there are spas, classes, and other features to provide a high end experience to guests. Hotel events laid out in an itinerary not only assist those interested, but provides your hotel with another way to relate to your guests and provide all the pertinent details about breakfasts, classes, or other curated events.
Menu design
Luxury hotels offer room service to guests as well as offer private dining options within the hotel itself. Bars, restaurants, small eateries and more located on the hotel’s property need to be branded to communicate cohesively under the hotel’s brand. This can be as inviting as offering small reminders of the hotel room within the restaurants’ branding, for example.
Photo by Saad Khan
