Maximizing Your Hotel’s Instagram ROI with Hashtags

It’s no secret that Instagram has become one of the most popular social media platforms in the world. With brands, designers, and hotels alike leveraging influencers and advertising on this platform, it should come to no surprise that this app living in over 77.6 billion people’s phones is a huge driver of traffic and sales in today’s marketplace. This is especially true for the hotel and travel industry. We recently saw a resort’s booking inquiries raise over 1,300% after one photo went viral on Instagram. Yes, one thousand and three hundred percent – from one photo. Talk about an ROI! At Dawning Digital, we love to talk about Instagram ROI because it’s the one platform where a strategic approach and a bit of creativity will allow you to reach the stars with a small investment. As a boutique marketing agency, we have experience working with small businesses and making tight budgets (or even no budgets) go a long way. Instagram is one of the platforms we leverage to do so. For example, we have grown accounts by over 1,000 followers per month without an advertising budget.

What’s great about Instagram is that you can reach a wide audience organically (i.e no more paying for ads!) You can comment on any number of strangers’ posts, you can begin direct conversations with just about anyone, and you can post your photos. What’s even better, you can use hashtags to ensure that thousands of people see your posts too. Instagram can be a complicated platform, and it can feel like you’re shouting out into the masses without ever hearing anything in return… but once you crack down on the algorithm and understand how it works, your relationship with this app will change forever. Instead of viewing Instagram as a challenge, you will see it as an opportunity to increase your hotel’s bookings. We could write a whole textbook on Instagram, but today we will start with some actionable advice for those of you in the hotel industry: hashtags. As we mentioned before, hashtag research is an essential part of your Instagram strategy. Posting photos with no hashtags is like setting up a bar in the middle of nowhere. It might be a great place, but people may never find it if they don’t know to go look for it. Posting a photo with hashtags, on the other hand, is like setting that bar up on a busy street where people will see you (how busy that road is and the amount of traffic going by your bar will depend on the quality of your hashtags). You would be quite strategic with your new bar location, right? Same should go for your hashtags!

Instagram Hashtags for Hotels

While you can read about hashtag research here, we’re sharing our top hashtags for hotels below: General Hotel Hashtags #hotelgoals #hotelsoftheworld #hotelgram #beautifulhotels #hotelstyle #beautifulhotel #besthotel #hotelandresorts #hotelstory #designhotel #hotelsoftheworld #hotelife #hotellifestyle #hotelwithaview #hotelreview #hoteles #hoteleria #hotelview Luxury Hotel Hashtags #luxuryhotels #luxuryhotelsworld #luxurytraveller #luxurydestination #luxuryhotelsoftheworld #luxurytravel #smallluxuryhotels Boutique Hotel Hashtags #boutiquehotels #boutiquehotel #designhotel #botelboutique Variable Hashtags by Location These hashtags will vary based on your location. We suggest entering the name of your location or country in the Instagram hashtag search page and browsing through suggested tags. As an example, we will pretend that we are a boutique hotel in Zurich, Switzerland looking for hashtags. Step 1: Open Instagram search and type in Zurich Step 2: Switch over to the “tags” tab Step 3: Scroll through suggested hashtags Step 4: Click on a relevant hashtag such as “#zurich_switzerland” Step 5: Scroll through “related keywords” Step 6: Click on relevant keywords such as “#switzerland_vacations” Step 7: repeat steps 5 and 6 Anytime you find a relevant keyword, write it down and save it to use in future posts. Here’s our list: #zurich_switzerland #switzerland_vacations #iloveswitzerland #travelswitzerland #zurichcity #hellozurich #visitzurich #topswitzerlandphoto #exploreswitzerland #dasischzuri #zuri (always consider different languages if you attract an international crowd!) #thebestofswitzerland #unlimitedswitzerland #switzerlandtrip #zurich_insta Aside from location hashtags, you may also find hashtags for themes and activities. We encourage you to do your research and save your list of relevant hashtags to use in future posts. Pro tip: Try to also spend time engaging with other posts that use the hashtags you use – the Instagram algorithm has been shown to like that.