Hotel Marketing Opportunities in the Hospitality Metaverse

Accommodating ever-changing guest expectations is arguably one of the biggest challenges in the hotel industry. By taking advantage of cutting-edge marketing tools, you can better adapt to the needs of your guests. 

The metaverse is one of these tools that provide modern and innovative marketing avenues to adapt to evolving guest expectations. Hotels now have the option of creating a metaverse-friendly environment to provide unique experiences for both physical and virtual visitors. 

In fact, 43% of travelers will turn to virtual reality to help decide where to book, while 46% of travelers are more likely to travel to a place they otherwise wouldn't if they can first experience it digitally. This showcases just how great an opportunity the metaverse presents to improve your marketing.

Below, we’ll go over the metaverse’s role in the hospitality industry, how it can improve your marketing strategy, and how a hotel PMS can help you dip your toes into the virtual water. 

What Is the Hospitality Metaverse?

Although there isn't a single definition, the metaverse encompasses an interactive virtual environment that combines augmented reality and virtual reality technologies. As a result, users can have a more immersive experience online that replicates what you would see in person.

By implementing the metaverse into your marketing strategy, you can bring your hotel to life by enabling guests to develop a full picture of your property before they even arrive. 

Using the Metaverse To Boost Hotel Marketing Opportunities

The metaverse enables hotels to provide new ways for visitors to interact with your brand and compare options, but it also gives you the opportunity to boost your revenue and reservations.

Improve Upselling Opportunities

The metaverse can be used to give your guests more rich insights into your amenities. 

With the metaverse, visitors can virtually tour your hotel in many different ways. One way is with a 360-degree, first-person view from their smart device, just as they would with tools like Google Street View. Another more immersive way is through virtual reality glasses or headsets. With these devices, guests can then view your hotel in a 3D environment through VR-friendly tours. You can accomplish this by uploading videos of your hotel on your website or YouTube channel that are VR-friendly.

These experiences give guests the most comprehensive understanding of your offerings, as they can explore different rooms, discover upgrades, and learn more about the services your hotel provides for more upselling opportunities. 

Additional options and upgrades become more likely to be purchased when they are visualized and explored in a hands-on way, allowing guests to see exactly what they would receive.

Expand Your Reach

As 42% of travelers between the ages of 18 and 34 plan to travel and tour this year, it’s vital to ensure you are reaching them through their preferred channels. Millennial and Gen Z guests might not engage with your other marketing channels because they don’t match their preferences. 

However, the metaverse is primarily used by younger generations. In fact, Gen Z makes up 60% of the user base, making it absolutely vital to tailor your hotel marketing strategy for the metaverse. 

The metaverse allows hoteliers to market to these younger audiences with a variety of subchannels, such as hosting virtual events, using native ads in the metaverse, connecting with meta communities, and more. 

How Hotel Marketing Software Can Prepare Your Property for the Metaverse

Making the leap to the metaverse can be difficult without the right guidance and tools.

If your hotel isn't quite ready to adopt the complete metaverse experience, here’s how an advanced property management system (PMS) can help bring your business one step closer to the digital age. 

Provide a Digitized Experience for Guests

Guests now expect most or all of the booking process to be completed online. As a result, contactless services, like self-check-in, are essential in today's hospitality sector.

With an advanced hotel PMS, a guest portal can unify communications and reservation information into one location, making the booking process more automated and user-friendly. 

Additionally, you can utilize specialized email templates and messaging to highlight the guest loyalty program and upgrades. This simultaneously improves the experience of your visitors online and grants you more upselling potential. 

However, a guest portal doesn’t just offer more marketing opportunities or convenience for guests but helps your staff as well. If your hotel PMS enables you to, you can store the guest data collected using a guest portal for future reference with automated tools. This improves operational efficiency, as your staff won’t need to manually input and extract information for each guest, as well as cross-property management.

Maximize Upselling with AI

AI has become an integral part of hotel operations worldwide due to its ability to improve operational efficiency and provide advanced hotel marketing opportunities.

Chat bots are one of the most effective AI tools with hotel management software. Hoteliers continue to implement them into their marketing strategies because of the versatility of this AI. For instance, chat bots can update guests about ongoing events, discounts, amenities, and upgrades to boost upsell opportunities. They can also funnel visitors on your website toward what they’re looking for to increase the likelihood of converting.

Chat bots can help prepare your hotel for the metaverse by helping with customer support and answering queries. In the metaverse, helping users interact with others, navigate and understand the virtual world, and provide assistance is necessary to maximize your virtual marketing.

Interactive Features

​​Virtual reality options with your hotel PMS enable your customers to precisely plan for their trip and prepare your hotel for the metaverse.

Virtual tours using AI tech, such as virtual reality glasses, and interactive maps can provide a more comprehensive understanding of your property. In the metaverse, guests will want to experience what your hotel offers in an immersive way. Static photos simply cannot meet this demand, but combining them with the interactive features of your hotel PMS can.

Offering virtual tours and immersive features does more than prepare your hotel marketing strategy for the metaverse; it can encourage direct bookings by improving the experience for guests on your website. Furthermore, offering these options can allow you to market to guests that filter their search results by hotels that offer immersive features. This maximizes your chances of marketing to a broader audience and getting your hotel in front of more eyes.

Maximize Your Hotel Marketing Opportunities with Hospitality Technology

The metaverse offers an abundance of opportunities to expand your marketing strategies, but combining this channel with a PMS can maximize the potential of your hotel's digital marketing strategy even further.

To see how combining the metaverse and other marketing efforts with a cutting-edge, cloud-based hotel solution, read more about the evolution of hotel technology and marketing strategies.