A hotel marketing plan explains how you will bring more business into your property over the next twelve months. It sets out which guests you want to reach, what you will offer them, where you will promote it, how much you will spend, and who will do the work.
Start with the business you need. Then choose the marketing that can help bring it in. This guide shows how to make those choices, with a worked annual budget and campaign schedule. For an overview of the available tactics, see our hotel marketing strategies.
1. Decide Which Business You Want More Of
Look at the dates, room types, and guest groups where you have room to grow. Are weekends full while weekdays are quiet? Do you need more shoulder-season leisure stays, corporate accounts, or small groups? Choose a specific problem before selecting a campaign.
Write the goal in ordinary language. For example: “Sell an average of eight more rooms per night from Sunday through Thursday in April, May, October, and November.” That tells the team which nights to promote and gives you something specific to check. Record current results for comparable dates so you have a starting point.
For the example below, assume an independent 80-room resort with strong weekends, quieter spring and autumn weekdays, usable past-guest email contacts, and a website that needs clearer room descriptions. Its target audience is couples who can travel midweek. These are fictional planning assumptions, not an industry benchmark.
2. Decide What the Marketing Budget Must Pay For
Agree on the amount available for the year and what it includes. A campaign may require an offer, photographs, copy, a website page, delivery to an audience, and someone to manage the work. Ask for prices covering the complete job before approving it.
For this example, the hotel has a $36,000 annual marketing allowance. It covers the outside work and campaign costs listed below. Existing employee salaries, OTA commissions, and the cost of delivering the guest’s stay are outside this allowance and must still be considered when judging the business it produces. A hotel doing more work internally should account for that staff time when comparing costs.
Example: How to Allocate a $36,000 Annual Budget
These are proposed spending allowances, not supplier quotations or recommended prices for every hotel. Replace them with actual quotes and check that the expected business can justify the expense.
| What the money pays for | Annual allowance | What the hotel gets |
|---|---|---|
| Website and booking improvements | $6,000 | Clearer room descriptions, updated offer pages, and fixes to the mobile booking journey. |
| Photography and short video | $3,000 | An agreed set of room, dining, and experience images that can be reused on the website and in campaigns. |
| Search and local information | $6,000 | A $500 monthly allowance to maintain map and directory listings, write or improve two pages about couples’ breaks and weekday activities during the year, and report monthly search visits and inquiries. Page setup is covered by the website allowance. |
| Four email campaigns to reach new guests | $12,000 | Four email campaigns budgeted at $3,000 each through AGR’s hotel email marketing service, reaching travelers outside the hotel’s existing guest list. AGR provides audience targeting, email creative, campaign delivery, and reporting using its proprietary traveler audiences. |
| Past-guest email program | $6,000 | A $500 monthly allowance for planning, design, audience selection, delivery software, and reporting on relevant return-stay emails. |
| Uncommitted reserve | $3,000 | An extra campaign for still-quiet dates if earlier results justify it, or an unexpected booking-site repair. Requires general manager approval and does not have to be spent. |
| Total annual allowance | $36,000 | $33,000 assigned to planned work, plus a $3,000 reserve. |
The example uses prospect email to put a dated midweek offer in front of couples outside the hotel’s guest list before they book their spring or autumn trip. It assumes a partner can demonstrate relevant audience targeting; if not, revise the allocation. Search work helps couples already researching the destination find useful information about the stay. Another property might choose paid search, local partnerships, or group sales. Our hotel marketing channel guide explains those roles.
3. Turn Each Allocation Into a Specific Job
Give every budget line a deliverable and a responsible person. For website work, name the pages and booking problems to fix. For photography, agree on the shot list and usage rights. For search work, name the information to improve. This makes it possible to check whether the hotel received what it paid for.
For each new-guest campaign, confirm the audience fit, complete price, and booking-reporting method. Have the partner exclude matches to the hotel’s existing-guest records through an agreed secure process before each send. This reduces overlap with the past-guest program. Agree on contact-use rights and applicable marketing requirements. Access to a partner’s audience does not mean the hotel receives that partner’s contact list.
What One $3,000 Email Campaign Would Pay For
The $3,000 email campaign budget covers $500 for email creative design and $2,500 for email campaign deployment. The email reuses photographs funded by the photography allowance. Building and updating the offer page belongs to the separate website allowance.
The offer could be a three-night weekday stay with breakfast on selected dates. The revenue manager approves the rate, available rooms, and cost of breakfast. The marketing manager approves the message and delivery date. The reservations manager checks that guests can find and book the advertised stay.
Past-guest emails have a separate job: give previous visitors a relevant reason to return. Use eligible contacts, respect opt-outs, and agree on the schedule. The monthly budget funds the program; it does not require sending every guest an offer every month.
4. Put the Work on a Twelve-Month Calendar
Schedule promotion before guests make their booking decisions. This example assumes roughly a month’s lead time for the selected weekday stays. Use your own booking history to set the timing; group business and other audiences may need a different schedule.
| Period | Scheduled work | Spending from the annual budget |
|---|---|---|
| January–February | Complete the room and booking updates. Produce photography. Prepare the spring offer and confirm campaign audiences. | $6,000 website allowance and $3,000 photography allowance. |
| March–April | Send the first new-guest campaign in March for April stays, and the second in April for May stays. Coordinate relevant spring messages through the past-guest program. | $6,000 for two acquisition campaigns; guest-email work is already in its monthly allowance. |
| May–August | Review spring results, maintain search and guest communication, and prepare the autumn offer. Avoid paying to promote dates that are already filling well. | Monthly search and guest-email allowances; reserve remains uncommitted. |
| September–October | Send the third new-guest campaign in September for October stays, and the fourth in October for November stays. Coordinate the past-guest messages. | $6,000 for the remaining acquisition campaigns. |
| November–December | Review completed stays and campaign costs. Decide what to retain, change, or stop for the following year. | Monthly allowances continue; use any reserve only for approved work. |
The search and past-guest programs run throughout the year at a combined allowance of $1,000 per month. Put actual deadlines, supplier payments, approvals, and staff names into the hotel’s working calendar.
5. Check Whether the Spending Brought the Right Business
After each campaign, check reservations for the stay dates you intended to sell. Then check completed stays, cancellations, room revenue, and the costs of attracting and serving those guests. A campaign that books busy Saturdays has not necessarily helped your quiet Tuesdays.
For the weekday package, include the campaign expense, breakfast, booking fees, and other relevant stay costs. Compare the result with the goal and the hotel’s starting position, allowing for changes in rates, availability, and demand. Bookings connected to a campaign are useful evidence, but some guests might have booked anyway. Do not treat every reported booking as entirely new business.
The marketing manager should report what ran, what it cost, and what happened. The general manager, with revenue or finance input, decides whether to repeat the activity or release reserve money. If results disappoint, check the audience, offer, timing, and booking experience before authorizing more spending.
6. Keep the Plan Simple Enough to Use
Your working plan needs a clear goal, a costed list of activities, a calendar, named owners, and a short record of results. Update it as bookings and business needs change. Supporting quotes and campaign details can sit behind that summary.
Discuss Your Hotel Marketing Plan with AGR
Tell Americas Great Resorts which guests and stay dates you need, what marketing you already run, and the budget available. We can discuss whether our new-guest acquisition campaigns fit your plan.
