Contributing approximately $4.7 trillion dollars to GDP globally in 2020, even with COVID and travel restrictions in play, the sheer size and economic importance of the travel industry is unquestionable.
Not only are the travel and hospitality industries massive contributors toward GDP and employment worldwide but it is, all in all, one of the largest service providers with hundreds of thousands of clients on a daily basis.
Think about it: from the moment you click to book a flight ticket until that final Uber ride back home, you are a consumer of purchased items or services. Throughout your holiday or work trip, you are a paying customer and will receive customer service from one or multiple companies.
With such a large and wide-ranging customer base to service 24/7, many travel and hospitality businesses have turned to using a CRM to consolidate sales, marketing and customer-service efforts for a more streamlined whole and to service clients better.
Let's look at 6 ways in which companies can use HubSpot's CRM to help with various aspects of their business, from increasing sales to upping brand awareness.
6 Ways Travel & Hospitality Businesses Are Using HubSpot
1. To create rankable content and increase website traffic
Croatian-based Adria Camps utilised inbound and HubSpot Marketing Hub, with the goal of improving their SEO and growing their organic website traffic.
This led to the company gaining more than 50K new website visitors in a single month, and 66% more bookings than expected in the first six months alone.
The content created included not only lists of the best campsites per preference (e.g. family or pet-friendly campsite) but also roundups of the best Croatian beaches and caravan rest stops to rules of conduct for road users in Croatia.
Adria Camps also used the software to define their key buyer personas. By doing this, they were able to gain a deep insight into their potential customers and their needs.
This allowed them to not only segment information on their database but also to create personalised, targeted offers for each persona.
As HubSpot allows you to see what content your users have read, what call-to-actions they clicked on and which emails they opened, you can gain valuable insight into exactly what offers will entice them and drive a sale.
2. Travel and hospitality businesses using HubSpot can better leverage their CGC
HubSpot can also be used to leverage your consumer-generated content or CGC. Defined as “any content that has been created by consumers that is publicly available to other consumers”, it can include photos, videos, blogs, or reviews on social media platforms or websites.
HubSpot’s social media management software allows you to create and schedule blogs and social media content and keeps you up-to-date with your social media mentions.
Keeping an eye on these provide you with opportunities to engage directly with consumers to thank them for tagging you in a post or a good review for instance. It also allows you access to content to repost or re-use to build brand awareness through, for instance, a fun social-media photo competition or hashtag campaign.
The true value of CGC, apart from additional media collateral, lies in the fact that it allows your customers to tell their story – and for prospective leads to get an honest, transparent review without brand intervention.
Word-of-mouth advertising is invaluable today, especially if you consider that according to the Nielsen Consumer Trust Index, 92 per cent of consumers trust organic, user-generated content (UGC) more than they trust traditional advertising.
3. To generate more leads via online content
Visit Costa del Sol, the tourism board for the Spanish region, signed up to HubSpot to kickstart their new marketing strategy. They wanted to focus on online content to attract visitors to their site and provide interesting, relevant and helpful content about the region and its offerings. The ultimate goal was to turn their website into a lead-generating machine and boost tourism to the area.
“Our potential customers were already online – they were looking for information, they were ready to book and share. We needed a way to draw them to our site, find out more about them and then delight them with targeted content and online services.” Manolo Lara, director of digital marketing.
With the help of the blog and SEO tools, the company started producing quality content to attract and engage potential clients. They turned their website into a content library with destination guides, itinerary planners and video content. They also use the Social Inbox to share posts and target users with personalised email campaigns.
The results? A 50% increase in qualified leads and 2 times more visitors to the region, which translated into a positive economic impact of 72.7m Euro.
4. Businesses are using HubSpot to automate guest comms
HubSpot’s workflows tool is also a great way to manage guest communications, such as cancellation and change requests. You can set up various workflows for each customer action, such as a workflow to target customers 24 hours after they abandoned their cart to remind them to place their order or even offer a discount. By automating these processes, you can build a streamlined, highly effective system that frees up valuable time.
A workflow can, of course, also be set up to automate other communication channels, such as confirmation and cancellation emails, online check-in emails, pre-stay questionnaires and tips, used for upselling (based on your customer personas) and much more. HubSpot also allows you to send re-engagement emails to interact with inactive clients.
Chatbots are another helpful tool to communicate with clients. For instance, bots can be used to qualify leads, book meetings and answer customer queries.
HubSpot’s chatbot functionality allows you to have unlimited custom conversations at scale with leads. The chatbots also seamlessly integrate with the your CRM, which means that the bots can draw on information already in your CRM to provide customers with more personalised answers based on available information.
5. To reduce the cost per lead
US-based B2B business Airstream manufactures travel trailers was on the lookout for a simple yet effective way to generate leads at scale and distribute it amongst their network of dealers at a cost-effective rate.
Airstream made use of HubSpot Marketing Hub to create quarterly customer-journey-based ad campaigns that were highly targeted and segmented. For this, they synced their HubSpot contact lists with Facebook to create ad audiences for extreme granularity and to retarget existing contacts. They used Facebook lead ads and forms, which were then automatically synced to the company’s CRM. The company then used HubSpot’s marketing automation tools to send users follow-up emails that contained content offers and info on their closest dealer.
The result of this was a 78% increase in leads and a reduction in the cost per lead of 44%. By using the insights gathered via lead scoring and campaign reporting tools, Airstream realised that leads are most likely to convert on a Facebook lead ad than other more expensive advertising avenues, such as print ads.
6. To build brand awareness and drive organic traffic
South African wine estate, Hazendal, underwent a major reno in 2018 which saw the addition of wedding and event venues, a kids edutainment centre, luxury accommodation, an executive golf course and multiple restaurants to the estate.
Hazendal then started looking for a way to market its new, expanded portfolio, which is when they came across HubSpot.
With help from Uku, Hazendal implemented a comprehensive inbound marketing strategy to drive organic website traffic through a bumper-packed blogging schedule centered around specific topic clusters, as well as custom landing pages to promote the wedding venue. Six informative blogs focusing on the estate, its offerings and travel in and around the Cape Winelands, in general, were published each month for a year.
The result? Hazendal’s organic traffic has increased by 237% in one year.
In addition, Hazendal’s custom landing pages, on average, converted new visitors to contacts at a rate of 19.89% since its implementation in March 2021.
Read the full Hazendal case study here.
Key Takeaway
The repercussions - financially, geo-politically and socially - of COVID 19 are far-reaching and will be with us for many more years to come.
The travel and hospitality industry has been one of the sectors hardest hit by the pandemic. But is also one that can bounce back quickest as home-bound, travel-hungry individuals gear up to see family and friends, or take a holiday as soon as restrictions allow.
With a proper CRM in place, travel and hospitality businesses will be poised to entice these customers with bespoke deals and exceptional service right out of the gate.
Ready to talk? Let’s schedule a call and take a closer look at your business’s unique needs and how Uku can help you grow.