4 New Tools Your Hotel Business Can Use On Pinterest

Pinterest and hotel businesses go together like a sunny day and a cold drink – they are a match made in social media heaven thanks to the visual nature of the platform. Much like photo sharing rival, Instagram, Pinterest users are driven by strong inspirational and aspirational motivations. As a hotel business, you can tap into this desire by sharing your own beautiful and carefully curated images with your fans, helping to engineer interest, shares, traffic and ultimately, room bookings.

If you have been pinning a while and are ready to take your hotel social media efforts up a notch to further drive room reservations, Pinterest’s recent flurry of new tools and functionality offers an ideal starting point. Here are the four most compelling of the new tools to try now:

1. Promoted App Pins

Promoted App Pins are one of the very latest innovations from Pinterest and, as the name suggestions, this new format makes it possible for Pinterest users to discover and download your app directly from Pinterest.

This new functionality is available to all advertisers. Explaining its benefits the social network says, “With Promoted App Pins, Pinners will find mobile apps designed to meet their needs, mixed right in with the compelling content that keeps them coming back.”

So how can your hotel use this new tool to its maximum potential? It can be hard to stand out on the App Store and Google Play due to the millions of other apps all fighting for downloads. Use Promoted App Pins to make your app more visible to those searching for travel inspiration at exactly the right time. If your hotel app includes a booking or price comparison element, this can directly contribute to increasing booking figures.

Pinterest research shows that its users head to boards when they are looking to achieve something, such as a goal. That could be planning a dream trip or visiting a bucket list city break destination. Tests show that downloads come from users ready to make the most of the app – meaning you can nurture that interest by including compelling calls to action and attractive discounts or special deals to monetize the intention in the moment it occurs.
You can also use audience targeting capabilities to drive app downloads for the key demographic for your hotel business.

2. Use the expanded Pinterest for Business Resources

175 million Pinners look to Pinterest for ideas each month. That’s a whole lot of demographics and audience insight to drill into. In April, Pinterest overhauled its resources for business. Now available in 31 languages, this section of the site is specific to business users and includes a number of guides relating to audience demographics, business tools and how the platform can be used to drive results as well as how to improve ad performance.

How can you use this to your hotel business’ advantage? Check out the expanded success stories to get inspiration and insight into how competitors are leveraging the network to drive bookings and then study the audience demographic information to ensure you understand who uses Pinterest and how – with this information, you can tailor your hotel social media marketing to resonate with each user group to create more effective campaigns with a better ROI.

3. Showcase your best content with Brand Showcase

The travel and hospitality industry is very visual and, showing off the very best of your hotel business is key to generating bookings and increasing revue. The new Brand Showcase is a perfect fit, giving you a rotating space that sits at the top of your profile to draw in the guest and sell your hotel. You can use the showcase to give prominence to your Promoted Pins – if these shoppable pins lead to booking deals, the showcase can directly help to improve revenue.
The showcase also makes it easier for your followers to discover your latest pins and uploaded content, helping to increase engagement.

4.Use Search Ads as part of your advertising strategy

Pinterest launched Search Ads at the end of January, giving your hotel business an easy way to tap into the 150 million monthly Pinterest users and their two billion monthly searches. Pinterest says that the majority of these searches focus on products and services its users actually want to buy. Because Pinterest users use the platform for inspiration, Search Ads are an excellent way to place your hotel front and centre at the prime decision making moment with compelling imagery that really sells your destination.

The Search Ads feature includes the option to build both keyword and shopping campaigns and is backed up with robust targeting and reporting options.
One of the most compelling arguments for Pinterest Search Ads is, the social network estimates its users begin looking for products or services on its platform around three months before their intended purchase data. This means you can use Search Ads to build awareness and lead users up to the booking process, reaching them as they are still deciding which hotel to book.

So there you have it – the four new tools from Pinterest to add to your hotel social media strategy to help increase both bookings and revenue for your hotel business.