How to Adapt Hotel Marketing for Different International Markets

A marketing approach suited to Germany might not even be noticed in Japan. Tik Tok campaigns to entice American travelers may miss every Asian traveler. A good pricing strategy for British travelers may absolutely baffle Russian travelers.

Marketing a hotel internationally can seem insurmountably challenging. Each region has their own cultural expectations, different communication styles, different ways of doing business, and different booking behavior. A single unified marketing approach can be catastrophic, and lose potential customers at every stage of the booking process.

Statista reports the global hotel market’s revenue in 2023 is over $870 Billion. A huge slice of that revenue is due to international tourism and the World Tourism Organization reports 1.3 billion travelers crossing international borders that year. The hotels that successfully captures even a fraction of that extra international business will have a huge advantage.

The steps in this article will help adapt your hotel marketing to international markets. Each segment will focus on a different type of change that hotels and hospitality businesses around the world have implemented successfully.

How to Localize Your Hotel Website and Booking Experience

Only some aspects of a site can be translated. Unlike translation, which simply replaces words in one language with words in a different language, localization involves changing the entire site layout along with graphics, payment methods, date formats, and different content areas to meet the expectations of a given market.

In the hospitality industry, Booking.com is the leading example of how to expertly localize a site. The site operates in 43 languages and modifies the site appearance for each locale. For users in Japan, Booking.com offers detailed specifics about the particulars of the rooms, dimensions, and extensive galleries of photographs. This is because travelers from Japan tend to conduct research about possible places to stay before renting more thoroughly than travelers from other locations. For users in America, Booking.com places more importance on the reviews from guests and on showing ratings with stars because travelers from America tend to place more importance on proof that is social.

Accor Hotels took localization even one step further with its individual market landing pages for all of its resorts. For its resorts located in Southeast Asia and its efforts to attract Chinese travelers, Accor developed special pages on its Chinese website (as opposed to merely translating the English pages) that emphasized visuals that matched Chinese aesthetic preferences, included WeChat and Alipay for payment, and featured the items that guests from China value the most, for example, a hot water kettle in the room, Chinese cable channels, and congee for breakfast.

This step is where many hotels lose international bookings. Worldpay’s study claims that 50% of online shoppers drop off when there is no solution of their preferred payment method. For travelers from the Netherlands, online payments are processed through iDEAL. In Germany, many travelers choose bank transfers or Sofort. For travelers from China, both Alipay and WeChat Pay are a must. In Brazil, Boleto Bancario is the most common payment method. Hotels that offer only credit card payments exclude a huge part of international travelers.

Conversion rates can also be impacted by how you format dates and currencies. Americans prefer the date and price format of MM/DD/YYYY and USDrespectively. Europeans prefer DD/MM/YYYY with their local currency or EURwith their local currency. The wrong format can cause friction and confusion and can negatively impact the booking process.

Your website speed for each target market matters as well. A hotel website hosted on servers in Europe may load slowly for visitors in Asia or South America. Google has confirmed that page speed is a ranking factor, and a one-second delay in mobile page load time can reduce conversions by up to 20%, according to Google research.

How to Adjust Your Brand Messaging for Cultural Differences

The ways in which words, images, and emotions persuade travelers can vary greatly depending on cultural context. What one culture interprets as warm and inviting, another culture may see as pushy, rude, or insensitive. The hotels that are most successful in the international market spend time properly researching their customers so that they understand the appropriate communication techniques for the culture of their target customers.

The best example of consideration of cultural messaging is Marriott. For American customers, Marriott’s messaging focuses on self-rewards and self-upgrades and promotions of the self-oriented loyalty program. Their messaging is, “You deserve this” and “You did this.” However, for the customer base of Japan and South Korea, which is a collectivist culture, Marriott’s messaging is instead geared towards messaging surrounding group rewards and family-friendly offerings and messaging surrounding group rewards and family-friendly offerings and family-friendly offerings and family-friendly offerings. Every customer focuses on their message. Marriott does not change who their brand is. However, Marriott focuses on messaging what parts of their brand they think is most valuable.

Hilton’s messaging changes to the Middle Eastern culture’s words on hospitality and translates their messaging to the Arabic language. Their properties in the Middle East focus on family-friendly, family-friendly offerings and family-friendly offerings and family-friendly offerings and family-friendly offerings and family-friendly offerings. Hilton’s success in culturally friendly areas prohibits Hilton’s expansion to over 70 locations in the Middle East.

There are many different emotions, words, and images that appeal to travelers from different cultures. Even if a message is warm and welcoming, it may still be considered inappropriate in some cultures. Meaning and color of marketing materials are also widely different in this area. In China, red is considered to be a lucky and prosperous color and is often used in marketing materials directed toward them. In the west, red is considered an elegant and pure color, and white is considered to be a mourning color. Choosing blue in marketing materials instills trust and professionalism in most cultures. This is why many brands use blue in their logos.

Professional hospitality marketing agencies understand these cultural differences deeply. Teams like Διαφημιστικό Γραφείο Θεσσαλονίκη, which specialize in tourism and hotel marketing, help properties develop campaigns that respect cultural context while maintaining a consistent brand identity across markets. This balance between local relevance and global consistency is what separates effective international hotel marketing from generic translation.

Using humor in marketing strategies is the most difficult approach. In the UK, humor is often ironic and understated. Humor that comes from the US is often more in your face and more physical. Humor is not often used in advertisement because the German audience often prefers something that is very clear and direct. Many advertisements that are marketed in Japan often use playful visuals and cute characters, which is often used in advertisements directed toward children. This approach is often considered the safest. Using emotions such as relaxation, comfort, and discovery, which are expressed through the idea of travel and comfort, is more likely to appeal to many different cultures. lead with emotion, specifically the emotions of relaxation, discovery, and comfort, which translate well across most markets.

How to Choose the Right Digital Platforms for Each Market

In most Western markets, Google leads search. Most countries don’t have Google and most don’t have Instagram as their top social media platform. Hotels spend their entire digital marketing budgets on Google and Meta advertising. Hotels that spend their entire digital marketing budgets on Google and Meta platforms overlook travel markets outside of Western markets.

In China, Google, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube are banned. Chinese travelers use Baidu to search, WeChat to socialize, Xiaohongshu (Red) for social inspiration, and Ctrip (Trip.com) for travel booking. Hotels seeking Chinese guests need a marketing presence on all of these platforms. Luxurious Hotels of the Dorchester Collection have dedicated WeChat accounts and partner with Chinese KOL (Key Opinion Leader) travel influencers on Xiaohongshu. Their marketing strategy increased Chinese guests to Dorchester hotels in London and Paris.

In many CIS countries and Russia, Google is not the main search engine. Facebook is not the most social network. If a hotel wishes to attract customers from Russian-speaking markets, its marketing needs to prioritize Yandex for search and VK for social media over Google and Facebook.

Naver has a 60% market share for searches in South Korea. However, other than traditional text searches, Naver promotes a variety of other platforms, such as blogs, user reviews, and other self-contained services. To reach South Korean nationals, hoteliers are advised to develop a Naver blog and put their hotels on Naver’s maps and bookings.

Japan has its own peculiarities. Google commands the bulk of search-related activities; however, Japanese nationals typically search on Yahoo Japan and book hotels through Jalan.net, even though Yahoo Japan uses Google’s backend. LINE heavily influences the messaging market in Japan, while hotels have become a new marketing sector for LINE Official Accounts.

As for social media, there is some general guidance to follow. In the Western, Southeast Asian, and some Latin American markets, Instagram is the preferred medium for marketing luxury and boutique hotels. TikTok should also be prioritized, as it has quickly become the dominant social media application for travel-related content. Pinterest is still the most impactful for planning trips across the United States. Lastly, YouTube remains the most popular platform to showcase a hotel’s virtual tour, property, and other related travel content.

Email marketing requires specific adaptations to each market. These include open rates, preferred times emails are sent, the content sent in the emails, and other metrics. Northern European travelers prefer emails that are brief, have clear prices, and have straightforward content. Emails for Southern European and Latin American travelers can be designed to be more visually appealing, and can contain emails with a focus on content that is more experiential and atmospheric. In many Asian markets, LINE and WeChat serve as email substitutes. Because of this, hotels should incorporate chat marketing, and traditional email marketing, into their marketing strategies.

How to Adapt Pricing, Promotions, and the Guest Experience

Adjustments to pricing and promotions are based on the guest’s experience. International travelers have varying expectations when it involves pricing. For example, some travelers want no price discrimination. This means that all travelers are provided the same discount. When a hotel uses the same pricing, discounts, and promotions for every single market, they will inevitably lose money.

When setting prices and offer promotions with the goal of maximizing revenues, it will be necessary to take into consideration the market the travelers are coming from. For the Swiss, Norwegian, and American travelers, it can be effective to offer them a value-added bundle. For travelers from less developed countries, price discrimination is a best practice to follow, and they are most interested in price transparency and the absence of additional costs that are not disclosed.

Liberal booking leads can be very effective when given to certain markets. Foreign travelers from Germany are early bookers and are very responsive to early-bird promotions. Young travelers from China are late bookers and go on promotional trips to sales in the travel marketplace that occur during the shopping holidays that are “Singles Day” (November 11) and the Chinese New Year.

Demand seasonality differs by geographic market. Mediterranean hoteliers’ peak demand occurs in July and August from northern Europeans. Hotel occupancy from the Gulf states occurs during the shoulder seasons since they prefer the milder weather. Seasonal marketing efforts should follow the booking rhythm of the source markets, not the destination’s peak season.

Aman Resorts is an example of market-related guest experience. Aman changes its property services by the nationality of the guest. For Japanese guests, Aman properties customize yukata robes with green tea and Japanese welcome materials. For Middle Eastern guests, Quran and prayer mats are provided along with halal meals. For American guests, pillows and high-speed WiFi are made available. Personalization creates a recommendation and review cycle that supports property marketing efforts.

Another area of market adaptation is review management. American and European customers pay attention to TripAdvisor and Google Reviews. Chinese customers look to Ctrip and Xiaohongshu for reviews. Japanese customers follow Jalan.net and also check Rakuten Travel reviews. Therefore, it is imperative for any hotel to manage and respond to customer reviews on the appropriate platforms that are most popular in its important customer demographic markets.

The Four Seasons Hotels is a noteworthy case study for global review management and company response. The chain responds to reviews in the language the reviews are written in, and thus customer and guest feedback review response style is tailored to specific cultural needs. Japanese customers or guests tend to be quite formal and rather polite even when they are raising critiques. An appropriate response to a very overtly negative one star review by an American customer will probably not be appropriate for a formal review of critique posted by a Japanese customer.

Adapting loyalty program design to an evolving market can be smart. IHG Hotels and Resorts updated aspects of its loyalty program to attract Chinese guests. Now, IHG offers a WeChat-managed loyalty membership, works with select Chinese airlines to facilitate point transfers, and allows users to redeem rewards via popular Chinese apps. By capturing the Chinese market with this unique program, IHG has increased its Chinese member loyalty rate by 30% within two years.

At the core of a hotel’s international marketing strategy should be the respect of the hotel’s owners for their customers’ needs and wants. For each of their customers, hotels need to identify exactly where their customers are from, how their customers like to communicate, how their customers like to make business decisions, and how their customers like to distinguish excellence. Hotels that do this will successfully welcome a whole new category of international guests because their customers will recognize that their needs are no longer met with a cookie-cutter approach. Hotels that will be admirable in a fluid international economy will be those that make their guests feel that their visit was specially customized.