2009 will be a tough year for hotels with the global economic downturn biting hard. What can hoteliers do in these tough economic times to avoid discounting and maintain their ROI (Return on Investment)? How can they approach and retain customers, maintain respectable margins and simply survive?

Smart hoteliers understand that with more than half of all travel bookings and up to 40% of all hotel bookings occurring on the Internet the answer undoubtedly lies in effective hotel online marketing. Online travel and hotel bookings are expected to grow further in 2009 by up to 10%.

Yet, despite the downturn the great majority of senior marketing managers worldwide say they plan to maintain or exceed current spending, but crucially, more than half said they will cut funding for traditional media to allow for increased spending for online marketing.

What is the most effective hotel online marketing?

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is all about driving targeted traffic to your hotel website by the process of…

• Extensive keyword research i.e. determining the search phrases your potential customers are using to find your hotel website
• Optimizing your website to target those keyword phrases by incorporating them in both the visible content of your pages as well as the “behind the scenes” technical coding
• Building good quality, relevant and trustworthy inbound links to your pages

Without a doubt effective hotel online marketing in 2009 should begin with hotel search engine optimization.

Which SEO company understands hotel Internet marketing better than any other? Having developed hotel websites around the world SEO Works have done extensive research on the keywords and phrases hotel customers use i.e. the “money” keywords which covert to revenues.

These may well be tough economic times, but the winners in 2009 will those marketing managers who understand the importance of optimizing and driving targeted visitors to their hotel websites.