Finding inspiration for your hotel’s blog isn’t easy. After all, as a busy hotelier, you probably don’t have the time to dream up wonderful content ideas when you need to concentrate on delivering a great guest experience.
This is a common challenge, but it’s one that’s worth overcoming, because the benefits of having a hotel blog are significant.
It’ll fuel your social media output, and demonstrate to website visitors that you’re helpful, on the pulse with the local area, and proud of your venue.
Thankfully, there are some relatively simple ways to use other people’s content to feed your own blog (or, at least, fuel your ideas). And don’t worry – this isn’t plagiarism or copying; it’s a recognised, brilliant marketing strategy.
Get involved
When you have a spare ten or fifteen minutes each day, spend some time looking at other hospitality blogs.
Articles written by restaurants in your area, or travel businesses and bloggers provide an opportunity to increase your visibility online. You may even strike up conversations with people who will gladly guest blog on your website.
All you need to do is read and engage with those articles by liking, commenting and sharing on social media. The more you do that and reference any related blogs you’ve already written, the more people will notice you.
Write blogs about local news and events
Destination marketing has become incredibly important for hotels. It demonstrates that you play an important, active role within your community, and proves that you’re a voice worth listening to for anyone travelling to the area.
We know that the modern guest wants far more than ‘just’ a room for the night, and destination marketing will reveal that you’re worth talking to if they need some inspiration for how to spend their time while in the area.
Every month, try and write at least one blog post about the local area. You can save time during this process by keeping an eye on local news and events and rewriting the stuff you think your guests will be most interested in. Just make sure you provide a link to the source of the news story to give them their due credit.
Bring in some guest bloggers
Good news: you don’t have to write all of the blog yourself!
Think about who within the hotel might be up for penning a few pieces. Updates from the kitchen team or amusing stories from the front desk are great ways to involve team members in content marketing.
Then, you have the guests themselves. If you’re lucky enough to have particularly loyal customers, you may be surprised by how willing they are to contribute to the blog.
Reach out to your top guests and ask if they fancy writing about their experience at your hotel. People love a moment in the spotlight, and your hotel’s blog could be the perfect platform for them to tell the world about the wonderful experience they had at your property.
Wrapping up
There’s no escaping the effort you’ll need to put in to make this work, but as we’ve hopefully demonstrated today, by leaning on others, you can create some wonderfully engaging content for your audience.
Doing it this way will significantly reduce the amount of time you need to spend on content marketing, and your hotel’s website will be all the better for it.
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CMS Hospitality holds over 30 years of experience in delivering hospitality software solutions. GuestCentrix offers the most complete solution in hotel property management software, whether you’re running a hotel, a resort or a hostel. Our highly experienced support and installations team holds a unique understanding of the hospitality industry and will aim to provide software that suits your property’s needs.
Call us today at (+61) 2 9440 9711, or email us at sales@cmshospitality.com. We will be happy to guide you to the GuestCentrix solution that’s right for you.