How to Attract and Convert the Millennial Hotel Booker

A recent study by Boutique Hotelier (1) revealed that 42% of millennials plan to spend more on travel in 2023, presenting a significant opportunity for hotel brands. With this in mind, we’ve been keeping a close eye on the latest generation of travelers to understand what sets them apart from other guests and how savvy hoteliers can adapt their offerings to suit their needs and encourage more reservations.

4 Tips to Attract and Convert Millennial Hotel Bookers

Below you will find four tips to attract and convert millennial hotel bookers.

1. It’s All About the Experience

Millennials have changed how one defines one’s status by prioritizing experiences over owning material goods. They are even willing to give up expenses such as coffee, new clothes, and Spotify to save money for travel.

You can cater to this trend by creating an authentic local experience at your hotel, addressed towards millennials who value connecting with local food, art, and music – for example, offering unique and locally-inspired designs, food, and welcome gifts to your surrounding neighborhood. Be sure to communicate these offerings when visitors visit your site to ensure you spark their interest.

Smart Note promoting local businesses

2. A Mobile-first Approach

Millennials are the first generation of digital natives, meaning there is a complete change in their expectations and behavior regarding technology. With mobile devices dominating traffic to hotel websites, it is no surprise that one in two millennials’ books travels via a smartphone or tablet.

So, how’s your website’s mobile version performing? Given that 86% of millennials express dissatisfaction with poor mobile user experiences, this is the perfect opportunity for you to stand out from the crowd. Please take it to the next level by offering mobile-exclusive content and offers to boost your booking engine to a booking conversion rate on small devices. Make sure your message fits seamlessly on a mobile screen; short and simple is always the best approach.

Mobile-exclusive offers

3. Social media is Their Priority

Their predisposition for mobile means that millennials capture all of their travels for the world to see. 97% of millennials use social media during their trips, triggering their followers to search for an adventure.

Social media has become a true source of inspiration for this age group, and it’s also an incredibly powerful platform for hotel brands to communicate and engage with potential guests. Be sure to grow your brand’s social media presence, with pictures that inspire travelers and make them want to stay at your hotel. Moreover, proactively encourage them to follow your brand to grow your audience and the number of people seeing and sharing your content worldwide.

Exit intent message promoting the hotel’s Instagram page

4. Personalization is the key to success

Most travelers today, especially millennials, are not loyal to a hotel brand. The best shot at grabbing their attention is offering guests a truly unique and personalized experience. Offering packages crafted specifically to suit millennials’ needs is a great way to attract more direct reservations.

Is Rihanna coming to your city? An easy yet powerful tactic is to leverage key events in your destination and create packages around them. Offer a package with a free shuttle to the concert and late check-out the next day. The most important part is showing this offer exclusively to visitors looking for a 1-night stay during the concert date. With, for example, THN’s personalization tool, you can apply targeting rules such as length of stay and reservation dates to ensure your messages and offers are shown to the right user at the right time.

Example of a layer promoting concert package

Free Case Study: How Silken Hotels & Condes Hotels Increased Web Conversion of Their Paid Traffic by 31%

Frequently hoteliers believe that increasing their site traffic would result in more direct sales. This, however, is merely the first step. Complementary efforts may be performed to maximize the conversion of additional visitors to your website and considerably increase direct bookings.

Click here to download the hotel case study “How Silken Hotels & Condes Hotels Increased Web Conversion of Their Paid Traffic by 31%”.

So there you have some simple yet effective tactics to consider when engaging with this new wave of bookers. By following this approach, you can appeal more to millennials and increase the number of reservations your hotel website receives, helping to drive up your direct revenue.

References:
(1) Boutique Hotelier, Hotels should target youth as 42% of millennials say they’ll spend MORE on travel in 2023