Hospitality, travel, and marketing trends for 2016

Several articles have come out recently with trend predictions for 2016. They range from travel, to hospitality, to SEO, to general marketing. Here is a recap of some of the findings and predictions.

What trends do you see emerging in your market or for hostels in general?

From TripAdvisor

TripAdvisor recently released their TripBarometer survey results, analyzing more than 44,000 responses from travelers and hoteliers around the world to determine travel trends for the coming year. (599 hostel operators were included in this survey, which is approximately 5-6% of the accommodation providers) Here are the trends they reported:

Travel spending is expected to go up

• Almost half of the respondents said that they would spend more because “I deserve it”
• One out of three said that their spending would increase because they will take a longer trip
• One in five said that their expenses will decrease because they will use a cheaper type of accommodation

Going somewhere new influences 75% of travel plans
The top five influences when making travel plans are:

• Going somewhere I’ve never been before
• Flight prices
• Accommodation prices
• Being able to learn something new on a trip
• Weather

When picking a specific destination, 30% of Millennials made their choice because of a cheap flight!

The effect of mass media
One in five travelers have visited a destination that they saw on a TV show.

Must-Have amenities

• The #1 demand worldwide is air conditioning. Nearly two thirds of travelers say that they will look elsewhere if it is not provided.
• Surprisingly, less than half of all travelers list either wi-fi or breakfast as a Must-Have. Compared to those who insist on these amenities, approximately the same number of respondents said that having wi-fi or breakfast included in the price is nice to have but not a necessity. 13% of all respondents said that they would pay for breakfast.
• Millennials in particular are more demanding with 55% insisting on in-room wi-fi and 43% demanding that breakfast be included in the price of accommodation, and stating that these are deal breakers.

7 in 10 travelers want to try something new
Of all respondents wanting “something new” 17% want to try solo travel and 15% want to try adventure travel in 2016.
Broken down by demographic, the desire for adventure and solo travel look like this:

• Millennials – 28% adventure, 25% solo travel
• Generation X – 14% solo, 12% adventure
• Baby Boomers – 10% solo travel

Travel Essentials
More travelers won’t leave home without their smartphones than their toiletries. :)

• 87% of Milennials will be traveling with their smarphones (vs 27% who will carry a tablet, and 21% who will carry a laptop)
• 39% of all travelers intend to carry around a guidebook
• One third of Millennials will bring their own towel

Prices are going up
The majority of hoteliers around the globe are planning to raise prices in 2016.

• The #1 reason for this price hike is an increase in overhead costs (75% of all respondents)
• 35% cite increased demand as a reason to bump up prices
• Only 32% claim that they will increase prices to achieve bigger profits

Top 5 factors hoteliers consider important for the future of their business

• Online traveler reviews
• Increasing repeat business
• Increasing direct bookings
• Differentiating from competition
• Ease of access from any device

Don’t underestimate special offers
Only 45% of hoteliers think that special offers are important to guests, while 54% of the guests themselves say special offers are an important factor in their booking decision.

From CloudBeds

CloudBeds also put out a list of Hospitality Marketing Trends for 2016.
It doesn’t read so much like a list of trends, but rather a How-To for marketing your hostel in the coming year.

Video Will Continue to Dominate

Video is the best way to grab potential guests’ attention in this media heavy world. If you haven’t already, you need to craft a video marketing strategy for your property.
…
Before the new year, create a video content calendar for 2016.

Revisit Your Branding and Make Refinements

Revisit the story your property is trying to tell. Your story and branding will drive the content you produce and the social media strategy you create.

Identify Your Consumer Base

The New Year is a good time to create or revisit your guest profiles. Take the time to see if you existing customer profiles match the type of people who came to your property in 2015. Make the necessary changes and add as many profiles as you see fit.

Email Marketing

Email is still one of the best ways to market to potential guests. There are many ways you can get creative to engage your guests and even cross-promote on other channels.
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Here are some examples:

• Offer an upgrade or some other low-cost swag when someone shares a piece of content via their social channels
• Send a pre-arrival package
• Send a post-stay checkup email
• Share guest stories
• Notify past guests of upcoming seasonal events
• Share owner, manager, or employee stories to humanize your property
• Share your regular blog content
• Gather and share interesting articles

Online Ads

You probably already use Google Adwords to market your property, but the new year is a great time to revisit your keywords.
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With display ads, you can also implement what is called retargeting or remarketing. This form of online advertising targets Internet users based on their previous web interactions. For example, you have probably experienced this when you are online shopping and then leave the website only to see an ad for that exact product on say, Facebook, for example.

Online Reviews

Before the new year, make sure that you do a thorough search for any online review, and respond when appropriate. It is best to respond to all reviews, but the negative ones are especially important.

Add Marketing Channels

Make it a goal to experiment with at least two new marketing channels to your property in 2016.
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Add a marketing channel that caters to a niche market. A niche marketing channel is one that appeals to a smaller, more targeted group of people. One example includes Bud and Breakfast, which helps cannabis loving travelers find friendly accommodations.

Reduce Operating Costs

In general, the largest cost contributors include labor, energy, marketing, and software.
Here are a few things you can do to reduce your operating costs:

• Avoid overheating bedrooms and hallways
• Adjust the settings on your TVs so that they don’t remain in “quick start” mode even when they appear to be off
• Use LED lights
• Reduce labor costs by cross-training employees
• Use free online software to manage email and social media when possible.

Add a New Social Media Network

Consider adding Pinterest or Instagram to your social media strategy. If you’re a superstar and already on both platforms, consider Snapchat or Periscope.

Mobile Optimize Your Website

If you don’t have a mobile website yet, create one. But, if you do have one, take the time to go through all of the pages and make sure everything displays correctly.

Then, go through the booking process on multiple different mobile devices such as an iPhone, an Android phone, and a tablet.

From The Economic Times

The Economic Times put out their list of general Travel trends to watch out for in 2016. Here are some of the trends they saw in 2015 and what they expect in the coming year.

By 2020, two out of every five travellers are expected to be Asian and will account for nearly half the global tourism expenditure.

2015
Travelers now look for “Bleisure”
Travelers are expecting the same experience for their business travel as they do for their leisure travel.

When experience trumps money

Brands are now looking at offering unique experiences that money can’t buy. Hotels, for instance, created personalized experiences for long-standing members as part of their loyalty programmes.

Virtual finally becomes a reality

…new technology is allowing travellers to experience their potential destination before deciding if they want to go.

2016
Rail will go high speed and cross-border
High speed trains projects are under development in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, India, and China.

Airports as a destination

Airports are building their own hotel complexes in an effort to transform themselves from travel hubs into standalone destinations.

The demise of seat-back entertainment

After years of big investment, airlines have started talking about the plan to toss seatback entertainment & instead stream to travellers’ devices. Passengers may end up with a better entertainment experience & a lower cost to the airline.

Robots take over traditional service roles

It’s not about robots taking over the world, but the use of AI to bring about new levels of automation, while allowing “real” people to deliver a personalized service & that human touch.

SEO Trends

And here is a look at what is expected to change regaring SEO marketing for websites.
SEO trends in 2016: What do the experts predict?

Movine towards the ‘no-search’ future

Mobile will overtake desktop, where it hasn’t already, in 2016 and that means more voice searches and smart assistants.
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In SEO terms this “no search” future means audience engagement strategies that include proxies like smart assistants.

For example, it might mean making sure your content is preferred by Facebook M (Facebook's virtual assistant) so it’s the match suggested by that smart assistant.

Integrated SEO more important than ever

As the SEO sphere of influence mushrooms to include new technologies and platforms, it will be increasingly important not to run the channel in an isolated silo.
…
…while SEO makes heavy use of data, the very best SEO is also, in part, instinctive – just as a good headline writer or artist is.

Page one to transform through AI

Interactivity and guidance built on what others have been searching for combined with a greater understanding of intent and acquired knowledge will see Google itself becoming the expert rather than the sites it gathers its knowledge from.
…
This in turn will change our relationship with Google as it continues its transition from a collection of doorways into more of a helpful intermediary on our journey through life; there for us whenever we want, acting in part as an algorithmic gatekeeper, only sending us on to websites when it has either completed its work or exhausted its knowledge.

Machine learning diversifies search

On both desktop and mobile, we expect to see natural language and machine-learning-driven search continue to grow in prominence.

As a result, we expect to see marketers using split-testing more and more for SEO purposes as ranking factors continue to diversify.

Penguin to become real-time

Google’s Penguin algorithm is likely to also create a fair amount of chatter in early 2016 – so brace yourselves!
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The algorithm was first introduced in 2012 to combat black-hat link building tactics, however it received much criticism due to the large time gaps between updates, which meant that sites that had been penalised but had subsequently cleaned-up their acts had to wait many months before experiencing any kind of recovery.

The reason why the SEO community has so eagerly awaited the forthcoming update is because it will see the Penguin algorithm transition into becoming ‘real-time’.

Blurred lines between web and app

The introduction of app streaming by Google (well in advance of when we expected that to happen) blurs the line between mobile web and app and will enable it to continue blurring the line in the search results.

Competition between platforms, not search engines

The battles between Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Google are likely to influence market share more than direct search-on-search competition.

Schema to go from strength to strength

I’m still surprised at the number of big brands and websites that are not utilising this type of mark-up. In fact, I’m surprised by the number of people who still ask “What is it?”.

It’s all about making your content stand out from the crowd – and, Schema is an essential part of fulfilling that objective.

Don't forget, Google can and will mix it up

Lastly, in 2016 we should remind ourselves that Google crunches numbers and trends. What worked in the past might not work in the future if that’s the decision Google’s number crunching comes to.

For example, if Google or Bing starts to algorithmically detect that the majority of beauty bloggers publish too much advertorial content with too little disclosure, then links from those blogs might become a negative quality signal rather than a positive one.