Hotel promotion ideas: what to offer, when, and where to show it

• One kind of guest: families, couples, companies, wedding guests, people from your nearest city.
• One date or spell you need filled: a quiet weekday, the weeks after a festival, the monsoon.
• A reason to book direct: something on your own website the booking sites don't show, such as breakfast, a later checkout or a pick-up from the station.
• An end date, and a limit on rooms if you need one.
• A way to count it: its own name, code or rate plan.

Check your contract with each booking site before you lower a price on your own website (see the guide on what rate parity is). Adding something to the stay, rather than taking money off it, keeps the price the same everywhere.

• Diwali, Holi, Navratri and Durga Puja, Christmas and New Year, Eid, Onam, Pongal or your region's own festival: a stay with the festival dinner, the decorations, a puja or a party at the hotel.
• Long weekends, when a national holiday falls beside a Saturday or Sunday: a three-night break with meals, for families from cities a few hours' drive away.
• School holidays in summer and winter: a family room with an extra bed, children's meals, and a day out arranged by the desk.
• Valentine's Day, honeymoons and anniversaries: a room with dinner and a late checkout, for couples.
• Your town's own fairs, melas, races, concerts and conferences: a stay timed to the event, with the event's dates on its page.

Plan each six to eight weeks ahead: the price and any minimum stay first (see the guide on pricing rooms for Diwali and New Year), then the package, then a page on your website, then the posts and messages that lead to it.

• Weekday stays for companies and travel agents, at a set rate with breakfast and wifi (see the guide on getting bookings from companies and travel agents).
• Longer stays: a lower price a night from the third or the seventh night, for people working away from home.
• The monsoon or the off-season as a season of its own: the hotel in the rain, a fire in the evening, a spa, a cooking class.
• Stays for people from your own city: a night away without travelling far, with dinner and a late checkout.
• Day use: the pool, a room for the afternoon, or lunch for families, sold on days the rooms are empty.
• Workshops and retreats held at the hotel, such as yoga, photography or writing, with the rooms sold as part of them.

• A wedding package with rooms for both families, the lawn or hall, and a room for the couple, shown with photos of real weddings at the hotel, with the families' permission.
• Smaller weddings and weddings on quieter dates, at a price that fills the dates the big ones don't.
• Company offsites and training days: a meeting room, lunch and rooms in one price.
• School and college trips, sports teams and pilgrim groups, for the dates they travel.
• Event organisers in your town: ask to be listed on their page for visitors (see the guide on getting more wedding and event bookings).

• Restaurants, cafés and shops nearby: your card on their counter, and theirs at your desk.
• Taxi and tour operators: a day out the desk can book, and your hotel among their suggestions.
• Wedding planners, photographers and decorators: a visit to the hotel, and photos they may use with credit.
• Companies, colleges and hospitals near you: a rate for their visitors.
• Local creators on Instagram whose followers are your guests, with what they will post agreed in writing and the stay labelled as advertising, as the Advertising Standards Council of India's guidelines ask.

• A welcome for returning guests: the room they had before, a note from the owner, the dessert they liked.
• A thank-you after checkout with your Google review link, and, separately, a reason to come back.
• A message before the same season next year, to the guests who said yes to hearing from you (see the guide to emailing past guests).
• A perk for friends and family a guest sends to you, booked on your own website.
• A card at checkout with your WhatsApp QR code, for the next booking.

Google says offering incentives such as free or discounted goods or services in exchange for reviews is strictly prohibited, and that applies to changing or removing a review too. Keep every offer to guests apart from reviews.

• Your own website: a page for each promotion with its dates, what is included, the price and a button to book. Every other place should lead here.
• Google Business Profile: Google doesn't let hotels create offer posts, or any post that mentions or links to deals, promotions, special offers or discounts. Post the event itself instead, such as the festival dinner or the concert, under “Posts”, then “Add post”, then “Event”, with its title and dates.
• Instagram: reels and stories showing the package as it will be, with its page as the first link in your profile.
• WhatsApp: a catalogue item for the package, and a message to the past guests who agreed to hear from you.
• Email: to past guests who said yes, timed to when they came.
• Booking sites: their own promotion tools, each with its own terms and costs, explained in OneHorizyn's guides to each site's extranet.
• The desk and the rooms: a card at check-in, a line on the bill, a word from the staff.

Google says posts older than six months are archived unless a date range is set, so give an event post its dates.

1. 1This week: list your next three busy dates and your next quiet spell, and choose one idea from this guide for each.
2. 2This week: make a page on your website for the first of them, with its dates, what is included and the price.
3. 3This month: tell the past guests who said yes, post it on Instagram, add it to your WhatsApp catalogue, and post the event on Google.
4. 4This month: tell the desk and whoever answers the phone, so that everyone gives the same answer and the same price.
5. 5This season: after each promotion, write down what sold, and plan next year's from it.

• Give each promotion its own name, code or rate plan, so that every booking of it can be counted, whatever the source.
• Tag every link to its page with campaign tags, so that Google Analytics shows the visits from each place (see the guide on digital marketing for hotels).
• Count the rooms and room nights it sold, the price they sold at, and how far ahead they were booked.
• Count how many came direct, and the commission you would have paid on the same rooms through booking sites.
• Compare with the same dates last year, not with last month.
• Ask the guests who came on it how they heard of it.

A promotion that filled rooms you would have sold anyway at the full price cost you money. Look at whether it filled dates that were empty, and keep the ones that did.