User-Generated Content & The Hospitality Industry: An Incredible Marketing Strategy

The hospitality industry is majorly consumer-centric, where the success of the business is dependent on the experiences and satisfaction of the customers with a business.

Therefore, it becomes essential that hospitality marketing is also focusing on delivering value and motivational elements to the consumers that will drive consumers to the business. 

So, let’s understand what Hospitality marketing is, How User-generated content fits into the picture and the integration of UGC with Hospitality marketing campaigns. 

Hospitality Marketing – The Meaning

Hospitality marketing is the process where different sectors of the hospitality industry like Tourism, Hotels, Restaurants, Amusement parks or any other experience-driven business promote its products & services to the audience.

The marketing is mainly focusing on creating and showcasing the offers & attributes that have value for the customers. The value here is the experiences and satisfaction of existing customers with a business that can be leveraged to attract new customers. 

That is where the ultimate role of user-generated content comes into play for the hospitality industry.

Existing customers validate the quality and value of any hospitality business based on their experience, which is not possible in brand-generated advertising campaigns. 

User-generated Content & Hospitality Marketing

UGC or User-generated content is any form of content that has been created by the users and has been shared on digital platforms. The critical characteristics of UGC are:

• Driven by customers’ ideas, opinions, feedback, or experiences
• Most trustworthy, reliable, and authentic form of content
• Mainly concerns or relates to a brand or its elements
• Heavily influences the behavior of other potential consumers
• Helps in brand reputation management and driving revenue

With these characteristics of UGC and the need for such attributes in hospitality marketing campaigns, Users’ content becomes the perfect choice for creating a user-generated content marketing strategy. 

The hospitality industry can probably gain maximum benefits from user-generated content marketing as having positive CGC(Consumer-Generated Content) will create a significant impact on customer retention as well as harnessing new customers to the business. 

Read More – UGC For Fashion Marketing: A Guide To Increase Your Brand Trust & Sales

How UGC benefits your business?

• People tend to engage more with the content shared by other customers
• Advertising performance increase tremendously with UGC integration
• Influences the online purchasing behavior of the customers
• Referral marketing with a positive brand image development
• Free-of-cost quality content creation for your brand
• Helps in enhanced reputation management for your Hotels or restaurants
• Finally, it drives conversions and revenue for your business

People are creating content a lot more about their experiences rather than the products they buy, which leads to the statement that the hospitality industry has a tremendous opportunity to leverage by utilizing the UGC in their campaigns. 

Also Read – How to use UGC to lightup your website

How To Leverage UGC for Hospitality Industry

1. Storytelling Through Customers’ Perspective

User-generated content can let you tell amazing brand stories that aren’t possible with images or videos created by the brand itself. Users post a lot of visuals about their experiences during their travel or hotel stay or while eating at a restaurant

This UGC can be harnessed and reshared on your brand’s social profiles or even your advertising to showcase how the existing customers are having an incredible experience with your brand.

It will create a compelling and engaging brand story that will help in attracting customers and driving results.

2. Build A Powerful Reputation & Loyalty 

Reputation is a key driver of revenue for any hospitality business as people look for the best hotels, restaurants, or travel options with an excellent reputation so that they get the best experience and value for their money. 

So, the hospitality industry can take immense benefits from UGC, such as online reviews, user photos, or videos to build a powerful reputation. These reviews and customer photos hugely influence the purchase decisions of potential customers. 

Therefore, UGC can be leveraged to manage your brand reputation that will directly relate to customer loyalty and increasing revenue. 

3. Develop Brand Trust & Reliability 

User-generated content can help you build trust, reliability, and a sense of authenticity among the consumers, which is not possible with the brand-generated campaigns. 

As a hospitality brand, this social proof is quite necessary as it influences the buying behavior of the people. 

Having UGC as part of your promotional campaigns will help you showcase why previous customers trusted your brand and their satisfaction. It will help in attracting new audiences and increasing user engagement & conversions with your business. 

Besides, it will also create a positive referral marketing thread, ultimately increasing sales volume and enhanced brand image. 

4. Make Users your Brand Advocates

Social media is a hub of opportunity for any hospitality brand, and you can use UGC to leverage these social benefits for your brand. 

The idea is to create custom brand hashtags and ask your customers to share their experiences with your brand on social media using these hashtags. So whenever users share content about your brand, you can easily track it and share it as your brand’s social content.

The best part is that it encourages users to share more content, easy UGC tracking & collection, customer satisfaction analysis opportunities, social promotion through the voice of your customers. 

Your customers will become your brand advocates, along with online community creation and effective promotional campaigns. 

Also Read – User-Generated Video Content Guide

5. Personalized Promotions With Greater Effectivity

With access to UGC, you can gain insights into what type of services and experiences each individual’s likes, their tastes & preferences, and further insights into user behavior.

Using these insights, you can create a more personalized marketing strategy focusing on each individual that can be developed. 

Hotels can send personalized communications to individuals who like to travel around a certain period, or restaurants can deliver emails to customers about special dishes according to users’ tastes & preferences. 

UGC can enable these highly effective personalized campaigns catering to the specific needs of every individual. 

6. Get Results with Authentic Content 

The ultimate aim of most marketing strategies in any industry is to get results in the form of conversions. So is the case with integrating UGC in hospitality marketing campaigns. 

People tend to explore what others are posting before traveling to any destination or booking a hotel or searching for a restaurant and much more. Promoting UGC will provide greater exposure to your brand, leading to increased traffic, engagement, and conversions. 

The best advantage UGC offers is that it influences the purchasing decisions of the consumers. Thus, with the perfect use of users’ content, you can drive user engagement and conversions for your brand.

Examples of How Hospitality Industry is leveraging UGC

1. Airbnb

Airbnb is an online marketplace that connects people who want to rent their residences and people who are looking for accommodation in that particular area. It is the biggest hospitality brand in its category, with a global presence and customer base. 

Being the most prominent brand, Airbnb focuses highly on the user-generated content to promote how its customers are having adventures as the locals do. 

Airbnb also integrates the UGC with their experiences campaign where they showcase the local experiences that travellers can have while during their visit. 

The strategy to highlight UGC on their social profiles has been tremendously successful as they have managed to grow their exposure, online community, attract new users, and business growth.

2. Tradewinds Resort

It isn’t always necessary that you have to share UGC on your brand’s social profiles; instead, you can bring the UGC to your online storefront i.e., website. Tradewinds island resort from the United States did something similar in its marketing campaign. 

The resort asked their customers to share the fun and adventurous moments that they had during their stay at the Tradewinds resorts. Then they accumulated this valuable UGC and displayed this live hashtag feed on their website. 

This strategy gives them a more humanized brand image that focuses on superlative customer experience and a distinct personality from competitors. 

3. HelloWorld Australia

HelloWorld Australia, a leading travel & holiday experience brand, created a significant impact on marketing strategy by integrating UGC in their campaigns. The brand created a #HelloworldRELAY campaign along with touch screen public display ads. 

These display ads had interactive maps of the world where the people could explore the user-generated content that was pinned to different locations. So, when clicked, people could see what the travellers from that particular location are posting and how they are spending their holiday with HelloWorld.

This campaign helped in showcasing the brand authenticity, customer satisfaction, locations they serve, and, most importantly, enhanced user engagement with this Digital out-of-home advertising campaign. 

4. Wayback Burgers

Not just hotels, travel, or tourism industry, but one of the most famous hospitality industry – Food & Beverages can also benefit hugely from the UGC campaigns as their business revolves around consumer experience, authenticity, and experience. 

Wayback Burgers, a fast-casual restaurant chain from Connecticut, U.S., makes the best use of their happy and satisfied customers through their user-generated content marketing strategy. 

The users share their images from Wayback restaurants or having food delivered by Wayback burgers and post it on social media with #waybackburgers.

They have installed a UGC feed on their website homepage showcasing the best of UGC around their custom brand hashtag – #waybackburgers. It helps them showcase the superior services and food they provide, which provides satisfaction & happiness to their customers.

Must Read – How to Leverage UGC In Facebook & Instagram Ad Campaign

Taggbox solutions for UGC & Hospitality Marketing

As we have seen with the examples on how to leverage valuable UGC for any hospitality business and how it has benefitted them, it is time to understand how Taggbox can help your complete Hospitality marketing solutions with User-generated content. 

Taggbox being a UGC platform, discovers & collects UGC from diverse social media platforms into a single social media wall. You get the functionality to customize the feed according to your need & liking, moderate the content quality, and manage UGC rights.

You can use this UGC feed in to embed it into your website like Wayback Burgers, display it as digital signage like Helloworld, use it in email marketing, or create digital magazines with Taggbox. 

The opportunities to leverage UGC are endless with Taggbox with easy and hassle-free implementation to drive business growth. 

Also Read – Example Of Successful UGC Campaign

Conclusion

The hospitality industry is a highly competitive one where brands providing the best customer experiences and value to the users will be successful and survive in the long-run. 

The strategy to integrate UGC with hospitality marketing ensures that you reach maximum potential customers, create immense brand exposure, showcase brand values & customer satisfaction, build social proof that will result in increased engagement and conversions. 

These UGC marketing solutions convert your existing customers into your brand advocates that help you drive your revenue and build a loyal customer base.

So, as the hospitality industry is consumer-centric, it is essential that your advertising should also convey that to gain maximum returns on investments.