Creating Experiential Offerings That Drive Hotel Marketing Growth
Luxury travel has never had a more challenging year. Yet with the reset button firmly pressed, there may be new opportunities on the horizon for independent and boutique hotels to drive future growth and profitability.
Once a peripheral trend, experiential offerings have more recently become one of the fastest growing areas in international travel. By meeting the global travelerโs desire for immersive, rich and authentic experiences, experiential travel has opened the door for hotels to find new and compelling ways to attract attention and convert it into revenue.
As consumer demand for unique and exceptional experiences continues to rise, one thing is certain โ experiential offerings are here to stay.
Letโs take a closer look at how to position your property to create meaningful, profitable opportunities for your hotel.
Letโs Define Experiential for Hotels
For many years, the majority of international travelers sought out known and trusted hotels that offered homogenous standards as a means of reassurance when they were traveling to a new destination. The experiential definition, on the other hand, is driven by the travelerโs desire to authentically immerse themselves in the culture of their chosen destination.
For hotels, this shines a light on the importance of reflecting their local destination in every facet of their guest experience, from their food sources to their staff uniforms, and from their music playlist to the shampoos and soaps in their bathrooms.
If executed correctly, an experiential hotel offering translates into the creation of an immersive travel experience where guests donโt simply sit in your hotel and enjoy the amenities, but feel part of the culture and environment of your local community.
Experiential hotels break down the boundaries between guest and local, designing activities and amenities that bring guests into their new environment. Your hotel becomes a portal for your guests to access these elements on a much deeper, more interactive and exciting level.
Experiential Marketing Examples for Hotels
So, what do experiential offerings look like in the luxury travel industry, and how can they be marketed? Here are some insights.
#1 โ Adventure Excursions That Create Unique Experiences
When it comes to experience based tourism, adventure experiences top the list โ and the more remote, unique and exciting they are, the better! The world has become a very small place and guests want to see something that no one else in their social circle has.
Travelers are searching for new types of travel experiences that deliver that elusive wow-factor. Something thatโs unique, challenging and utterly different to anything theyโve ever experienced before. And they are happy to get messy in the process.
For experiential vacations, think climbing cliffs, forging rivers, exploring caves, tracking rare creatures and getting as up close and personal with nature as possible. When we developed Kaโana Resort, the guest experience was built around intrepid experiences such as the ATM Caves - an all-day hike through the jungle and into underground caverns where Mayan priests used to perform sacrificial rituals.
Our guests accessed the caves early in the morning so that they were the only people there, we ensured the guides were the best in the region, and we integrated cultural cuisine by stopping in local villages along the way for home-cooked bites. We also offered luxury add-ons like champagne picnics for the ride home to ensure our guests always had the option to incorporate some pampering. This kind of offering creates a story worth telling and gives your potential guest another strong reason to commit to staying with you instead of your competitor.
#2 โ Cultural Tourism That Immerses You in Local Communities
Like ecotourism, cultural tourism of the past has at times been limited, sterile and lacking in meaningful interaction. Experiential hotels overcome this by breaking down the barriers between hotels, hotel guests and the communities within which they exist, creating opportunities for upliftment and empowerment while delivering a truly unique guest experience.
Cultural homage comes in many different forms, from designing the hotel based upon availability of sustainable local materials, to serving local cuisines and having community activities for guests run by local people. Singita, a luxury hotel brand in southern Africa, has embraced this by creating a demanding, specialist culinary school for local communities, transforming underprivileged children into world-class chefs who pass their knowledge of unique, local culinary styles on to the lodgeโs guests.
Creating a cultural experience for guests means avoiding the generic or the stereotypical and working with the communities right outside your door to create something inspired and unique. When executed correctly, it can create a powerful connection between your resort, your guests and your community thatโs grounded in authenticity and respect.
#3 โ Wellness Experiences That Push Your Limits
Wellness culture is one of the most powerful trends in modern society, changing our workplaces, lifestyles, eating habits and our travel experiences. Guests no longer just want to feel pampered when they travel โ they want to feel as though they are supporting the best and healthiest versions of themselves. Activities like yoga, meditation, sweat-crawls and fitness coaching are quickly becoming the norm, supported by amenities that provide exceptional nutrition, the cleanest air and water, as well as the most hygienic spaces.
While the wellness revolution had gained momentum far in advance of the arrival of COVID-19, the pandemic has the potential to turn this momentum into overdrive. The global wellness industry (currently valued at over $4.5 trillion) continues to go from strength to strength. Itโs impact on the travel industry has been exceptional, with the global wellness tourism industry alone projected to reach $1.2 trillion by 2027.
Aro Ha in New Zealand is an interesting example of this experiential tourism trend, where wellness takes on an entirely new meaning. Rather than massages and manicures, the luxury hotel sets a gruelling no-tech schedule of yoga, hours-long hikes through the sub-alpine wilderness, hot soaks, ice baths, cooking classes and strength training classes, with all-vegan meals supplied by their onsite organic farm.
#4 โ Redefining What Luxury Means
Luxury travel is no longer defined strictly by material offerings for guests. Instead, it is about giving guests what they want - personalising their experience, anticipating their needs and ensuring your offering speaks deeply to their values.
Instead of cocooning guests within the premises, experiential tourism hotels are bringing the outside world in and empowering guests to realise their yearning for an authentic and unique experience. Experiential hotels focus on making their local experiences as accessible, interesting and luxurious as possible while staying true to the values of your guests and their community. A true experiential offering should take your guestsโ wanderlust and make it a meaningful reality.
At Kakslauttanen Arctic Resort, guests donโt simply stay in stunningly elegant glass igloos, they ride out onto the frozen tundra on reindeer sleighs led by local herders, forging their way through Lapland forests, dining outdoors and returning to a night sky lit by the Northern lights. This is a great example of taking a fantasy and making it into a fully immersive reality.
#5 โ Ecotourism That Makes You Part of the Solution
Todayโs travelers are more aware than ever before that the natural world is on the edge of destruction โ and they want to help do something about it. Hotels are in a unique position to educate guests as they experience your unique environment first-hand, and hosting eco-tourism events is an effective way to support environmental causes through one-on-one interaction.
Through working with local conservationists and cultural leaders, hotels can gain eco-friendly credentials by developing personal, interactive experiences that showcase the challenges the local ecosystem is facing as well as how youโre working to overcome them.
Copal Tree Lodge in Belize is a great example of this type experiential travel, as they actively participate in the preservation of the 12,000-acre rainforest preservation while running the countryโs first 3,000-acre USDA-certified organic farm and teaching guests about sustainable farming and organic chocolate production.
#6 โ Actively Supporting Green Goals
Experiential travel and immersive tourism have a strong bond with environmental sustainability and respect for heritage. Guests want to know that theyโre acting with integrity โ and that means choosing hotels that share their values. Of course, uplifting local communities and supporting local ecology is part of this, but so is the fundamental structure and operation of the hotel itself.
Having a sustainable or eco-friendly hotel is central to the values of experiential travellers, where minimizing any negative impact on the environment goes hand-in-hand with your drive to preserve the unique environment and cultural heritage that is central to your experiential offerings.
87% of global travellers actively seek green travel options โ and this number keeps on growing every year. Demonstrating your commitment to sustainability can take any number of forms suitable to your hotel, from solar or hydroelectric power to locally sourcing organic food producers to waste water recycling and green landscaping.
Pikaia Lodge, located on what is arguably the worldโs most significant ecological site โ the Galapagos Islands โ embodies strong sustainability values in every element of their hotel experience. Itโs a carbon-neutral property built using recyclable, eco-friendly materials, cleaned using only biodegradable, safe cleaning products and supplying heated water from its solar panel system. Through building such a strong sustainability baseline, theyโve created an excellent foundation upon which theyโve been able to develop authentic, immersive experiences for their guests.
Develop Experiential Travel Journeys for Revenue Growth
Proven Partners specialises in leveraging concept development to drive business development. We have the specialised expertise in boutique resort development and management to help you strengthen and refine your offering into something compelling and profitable.
If youโre looking to develop experiential travel packages or delivery experiential family vacations, contact us today. We can help you create experiential strategies that position your hotel in line with the unique and immersive travel experiences your guests are seeking.
