For economy hotels like Hampton Inn, Sleep Inn, Econolodge, Quality Inn and Suites…i.e. small budget and limited resources. What kind of budget justifies video ROI?
John McAuliffe, VFM Leonardo:
We all look for positive ROI. As such, it is always a marketer’s dilemma as to what to spend money on. We always suggest the basics. Henry spoke a lot about Merchandising and the 5 pillars of success. Many tactics involved in successfully using these pillars do not cost a lot of money so the potential ROI is huge.
Take for example ensuring that the text descriptions you use are detailed and tell a nice story – 3 to 5 lines and bullet points will go a long way to telling your story to travel shoppers.
Video is an excellent tool to inspire and appeal to the emotional aspect of travel shoppers. With video you have the opportunity to tell your story to travel shoppers with a focus on what is unique about your hotel. Video is not the expensive venture it was a number of years ago. At VFM Leonardo we are producing excellent quality videos that focus on a well thought out merchandised story for less than $1,000.
We ran a study with a limited-service hotel chain in North America that concluded those that watched video were 89% more likely to book than those that did not. If you are experiencing a 5% look-to-book ratio on your bookings and you increase that by 89% (to just under 9 ½ bookings) the investment will pay off quite quickly.
