Jeffrey V. Fallis 
Michael Del Gigante | November 22, 2019
Through Michael del gigante
It’s easy for hotel marketers to take Facebook for granted.
The platform has been around for so long – over 15 years now – and is so well established that it can sometimes blend into the background and look like just one marketing option among many.
However, the reality is that this is far from just another marketing channel: For hotel brands, Facebook is a particularly powerful platform that has distinct advantages and offers unprecedented opportunities.
What are these advantages and opportunities? What makes the social network so special? Why should marketers stay optimistic after all these years?
Here are six main reasons why Facebook is an essential marketing channel for hotel brands:
1. Facebook Ads Are Very Effective For Hotel Brands
The importance of Facebook to hotel brands is rooted in one simple fact: it works.
Specifically, Facebook’s advertising options tend to be consistently more effective than other approaches in helping marketers reach valuable travel audiences.
This effectiveness is clearly seen in the platform’s popularity with marketers. According to Sojern data, as quoted by eMarketer, Facebook ads were both the most used social media channel by hotel brands last year and the most used channel by hotel brands this year.
What’s important to note is that marketers aren’t just looking to standard Facebook ads. Other options, such as Facebook’s dynamic travel-specific ads and Stories ads, are also used more by hotel brands than Twitter, Pinterest, or Snapchat ads.
2. Facebook has a unique combination of scale and targeting
Why are Facebook ads – and Facebook’s efforts in general – so effective for hotel brands?
Mainly because of the massive scale of the platform. According to Pew Research The data, 69% of adults in the United States use Facebook, making it the second most popular social platform after YouTube. To put this in context, more than twice as many American adults use Facebook compared to Pinterest, LinkedIn, Snapchat or Twitter.
This large audience is paired with sophisticated advertising options that allow marketers to connect with specific groups. In other words, Facebook is a unique blend; it combines the reach of mass media, such as television, with the targeting options of digital channels, such as search.
3. Facebook Enables Hotel Brands to Reach Valuable Travel Audiences
The benefits of combining massive scale and sophisticated targeting can be seen when trying to reach specific audiences.
Well-off travelers are a good example. According to Skift Research The data, as cited by eMarketer, Facebook is by far the most used social platform for travel inspiration / planning by those with household income over $ 100,000 (around 39% of respondents use it , against 33% for Instagram, 18% for Twitter, and 14% for Snapchat).
The same goes for other valuable audiences. Essentially, because Facebook is so popular and has so many different content options (text, photos, videos, branding pages, etc.), it tends to be the first social network that many different groups turn to in planning a trip.
4. Facebook is effective in helping to achieve branding and disaster recovery goals
There are a number of marketing channels that can help hotel brands achieve their branding or direct response (DR) goals. What makes Facebook unique is that it is very effective for both.
According to Sojern data, as quoted By eMarketer, travel marketers rank Facebook and Instagram (combined) as the most effective channel for branded and direct response advertising, well ahead of other options such as paid search, video advertising, and marketing. programmatic display.
This dual effectiveness has significant benefits for hotel marketers. For example, it allows marketing efforts to be executed on a single platform rather than multiple platforms, enables easier measurement, and makes hybrid branding-DR campaigns more powerful.
5. Facebook helps different hotel businesses in different ways
Facebook is not only seen as highly effective by some types of hotel businesses, it is considered very efficient by all types of hospitality businesses.
However, the most important benefits tend to differ depending on the type of business. For example, according to data from Sojern as quoted by eMarketer, hostels say Facebook advertising is most effective at targeting new audiences; independent hotels say it’s the most effective way to build brand awareness; and home actions indicate that it is most effective at generating direct bookings and personalizing offers.
That’s not to say that Facebook can’t help every type of business achieve other goals; rather, it indicates that the platform is so powerful and flexible that it is able to handle the unique needs of different types of businesses.
6. Facebook is more than Facebook
Finally, in the graphics that you saw throughout this article, you may have noticed that Facebook seems to have a strong and promising competitor: Instagram.
The twist with this, of course, is that Facebook owns Instagram.
This highlights another key element that makes Facebook unique: its family of services is both broad and deep, encompassing everything from the leading social network Facebook to Messenger, Instagram, Oculus and WhatsApp.
This is important in the short and long term. Right now, this means that hotel brands can engage through the overall Facebook platform in a number of ways (feed advertising, organic posts, Stories ads, video ads, etc.) and through a wide range of applications / services. Going forward, this means that the company’s control over the social media space is unlikely to weaken.
Simply put: Facebook is incredibly well positioned today and into the future. Given this and its effectiveness in many key areas, hotel marketers should make sure to treat it as a unique and powerful option, not just a marketing channel.
