Social media influencers have been a tried-and-tested tool in hotel marketing, but on the other side of the pandemic, with less cash floating, hoteliers must take more care concerning influencer messaging and targeting bookings.

Martin Stockburger, founder and managing director of Cologne, Germany-based Koncept Hotels, which has a total of six hotels in Austria, Germany and Switzerland, said partnerships with social influencers will be different going forward. He added his company’s marketing team has discussed “who we select in the future, what our expectations will be and how we will work with them.”

Stefan Matthiessen, the firm’s chief brand officer, said that before the pandemic his company regularly communicated with influencers.

There wasn’t “one day we did not get an email or message from an influencer asking for partnerships,” he said.

Forming a partnership with an influencer requires an appropriate level of scrutiny by a hotel, Matthiessen said.

“Before the pandemic started, we developed over the years a very high sensitivity as to what type of partnerships is actually worth going for,” he said. “It is not dependent on potential reach the partners had, but on their branding strategy, the topic they usually talked about.

“Some have extremely high reach but did not talk about us. We obviously can only suggest topics, but some do not talk about sustainability, which is extremely important to us, [and] rather only present themselves in an appealing way in hotel rooms.”

Matthiessen said the COVID-19 pandemic will result in hotel chains not having the capacity to invest in this type of brand-building.

“We will ask, where do I invest, how does it pay back and does investing in branding really work?” he said. “These are the main questions hoteliers will ask themselves when we come out of this crisis.”

Campaigns must drive new bookings or enhance the perceived value of the brand, Matthiessen said.

Santiago García Solimei, global director of social media at Mallorca-based Meliá Hotels International, said changes in his company’s use of influencers started with the need to show consumers the safety of hotels amid COVID-19, but now it has moved to showing off the hotels and their offers again.

For the peak summer season, he decided to communicate that destinations were reopened and managed 34 concurrent influencer collaborations.

“We felt we had delivered that precise message, and also to show the experience and exclusivity,” García Solimei said, adding that Meliá concentrated on 14 hotels in Spain and Italy. Bookings were generated at the high end of its inventory, especially if influencers had stayed in and shown off those rooms.

García Solimei said his rule of thumb is not to pay influencers to stay at his company’s hotels but to pay for their content creation.

He said chefs and DJs are strong partners, and with staycations likely to dominate 2021 and possibly 2022, local influencers will gain popularity.

“We use key tools to select influencers, which gives us assurance that influencer audiences are meaningful for us, and we create a full report to show the impact of their reach,” he said.

Even for a larger chain, a room at the inn might still be harder to secure for influencers. Koncept Hotels’ Matthiessen said historically, the idea of giving away a hotel room was fine as it would have been empty anyway, but now that’s less likely.

Hoteliers “will reach a point where marketing, no matter how much it will cost, will have to focus on what is in it for [them],” he said. “Pure marketing will not be enough, certainly with every brand shouting, ‘please come to my place.’

“Brands will focus more on what the influencer stands for and how they fit their brand.”

Simon Wharton, director of business strategy at advisory PushON, said influencer engagement is one aspect of marketing that could be conducted blindfolded.

“Clear messaging is needed, especially at this time. Ask yourself what is it [the brand] stands for, and what is it that it does,” he said.

Wharton said defining audience in social media messaging is key.

“Ask who is it you want to be talking to, rather than necessarily who has the biggest number of followers,” he said.

Wharton said the use of micro-influencers, those with fewer followers — but well-targeted ones — will see an increased focus post-pandemic.

“Have a dialogue with them, and see what they are genuinely interested in. Do they have something worth talking about?” Wharton said.

Fewer followers might result in higher numbers of bookings, he said.

“Work your website. Marketing techniques can contribute to the strategy, so have good materials on the website that are engaging, that the partnership can develop and create the chance of bringing in additional demand,” Wharton said.

Meliá’s García Solimei said a website must help amplify the brand or hotel’s message, be it one of design or music, or another topic, and run parallel with influencer campaigns.

“We want to work with content very connected to the message we want to offer,” he said.

He said for him, there are five parts of any influencer campaign that need to be satisfied: quality of audience, resonance, relevance, reach and location.

Matthiessen said 95% of collaborations with social influencers are one-offs, but there are those whose professionalism, messaging and reach result in ongoing partnerships.

Ukraine’s Lily Boiko said before the pandemic, she was mostly working with large hotels and hotel chains, and in 2020 this changed to working with small, family-owned hotels.

Boiko said such hotels “finally got a chance to be noticed, as in summer, after several months of lockdown, people rushed to travel within [Ukraine].”

She said hoteliers are returning to promoting internationally.

“As people missed international travel, they will be booking trips to foreign destinations and hotels will be actively promoting their services through all kinds of media, including working with influencers,” she said.

García Solimei said it is easier to have long-term relationships with micro and niche collaborations than influencers with millions of followers.

Matthiessen said rooms booked via unique partnership codes with influencers are donated to charities chosen by those influencers.

“We can help drive change in the holistic sustainability in our industry in a wholly digitalized way. The impact is much greater,” he said.

Such campaigns will continue to be seen similarly to old-fashioned affiliate marketing, where a base fee is agreed with the influencer related to their reach and additional fees agreed for every booking that can be traced to them.

“This kind of relationship is a more trustworthy one as the influencer really has an interest in pushing your brand,” he said.