Hospitality marketing has a specific pressure that most other sectors do not: the product is consumed in person, but the decision to try it almost always happens online.
A guest who chooses a hotel, a restaurant, or a travel experience is making that choice based on what they see before they arrive – the photography, the reviews, the way the business presents itself across platforms, and whether any of that is compelling enough to choose this place over the alternatives competing for the same occasion.
Most hospitality businesses understand this. They invest in photography. They manage their social media. They run promotions. They respond to reviews. And the results are inconsistent in ways that feel inexplicable given the quality of the actual experience.
The explanation is almost always the same. The work that should come before the campaign – the examination of who the guest is, what occasion they are planning for, and what would make them choose this place specifically – has not been done. The marketing is built on what the business knows about itself, not on what the guest needs to see to make the decision.
The guest the marketing thinks it is reaching and the guest who actually books
Hospitality marketing defaults to describing the experience – the ambience, the menu, the views, the service. This is necessary but not sufficient.
A guest who is choosing a restaurant for a business dinner is making a different decision from a guest choosing the same restaurant for a birthday celebration. The ambience that works for one is wrong for the other. The photography that compels one says nothing to the other. The review that builds confidence for one is irrelevant to the other.
Most hospitality marketing produces one version of the experience – the version the business is proudest of – and presents it to everyone. The guests whose occasion matches that version book. The rest do not.
The gap between the bookings a hospitality business generates and the bookings it should be generating given the quality of the experience is almost always a positioning gap – not a visibility gap.
More reach sends more people to an unclear picture of what the experience is for. The right reach sends the right people to a picture that speaks directly to the occasion they are planning.
What hospitality marketing needs to do differently
- Match the message to the occasion, not just the experience.
A guest does not book a hotel. They book a place to stay for a specific trip, with a specific purpose, at a specific price point, with specific expectations about what the stay will include. The marketing that converts is the marketing that speaks to that specific occasion – not the marketing that describes the hotel in general.
This requires knowing which occasions the business serves best, what the guest who is planning that occasion is looking for, and what would make them confident enough to book without having been there before. - Build trust before the visit, not just during it.
Hospitality businesses invest heavily in the experience. Many invest significantly less in the signals that build trust for the guest who has not yet decided – the specific, recent, occasion-relevant reviews, the photography that shows what arrival actually looks like, the pricing that is clear enough to evaluate against alternatives without needing to contact the business.
The trust signals that convert a browser into a booker are different from the experience signals that produce a repeat guest. Both matter. Most hospitality marketing focuses on the second at the expense of the first. - WhatsApp is where most Kenyan hospitality enquiries happen.
A potential guest who has seen the property on Instagram and is ready to ask a question is almost always going to WhatsApp – not a booking form, not a phone call. The business that has a clear, responsive, specific WhatsApp presence converts that enquiry into a booking. The business that is not present there, or that has a generic auto-reply, loses it to the next option on the feed. The WhatsApp presence for hospitality is not optional – it is where the decision actually happens.
Before the next campaign is briefed
The question worth asking: does the marketing know specifically who it is designed to reach, what occasion they are planning, and what they need to see to choose this property over the alternatives?
If the answer is “everyone who appreciates good hospitality,” the brief is not specific enough to produce a campaign that converts anyone in particular.
Find out who your marketing is actually designed to reach
