15 best hotel social media marketing strategies in 2026

Key takeaways

• Consistent and engaging social media content helps hotels build brand awareness, connect with guests and drive direct bookings.
• Using platform-specific strategies, including video, user-generated content and influencer partnerships, maximizes reach and engagement.
• Monitoring key metrics and integrating organic and paid campaigns helps turn social media activities into tangible revenue results.

Social media marketing for hotels is key to increasing visibility, boosting direct bookings and improving brand awareness. With more guests interacting with social media regularly and getting inspiration for their next trip, it has become an integral part of any marketing strategy.

Posting consistently across your social media channels keeps both new and returning guests engaged with your brand, allowing you to showcase what sets you apart. It also helps build stronger, more meaningful connections with your audience. With a well-planned and consistent strategy, your hotel can strengthen its presence and ultimately drive more bookings.

In this article, we’ll explore the top social media marketing strategies for hotels, detailing how to create a robust overall plan and customize approaches for each platform.

What is hotel social media marketing?

Hotel social media marketing is the strategic use of social media platforms to promote a hotel, engage with guests, build brand awareness and drive bookings.

Within social media marketing, there are different types of marketing efforts, including content marketing/content creation, advertising/sponsorship, influencer marketing, social media management and paid social media marketing.

All these actions help you better engage with existing customers and leads, as well as prospective guests who are in the consideration phase of their buyer journey.

Why social media marketing is important in hospitality

Social media marketing plays an important role in the hospitality industry. By incorporating a well-planned marketing strategy and sharing engaging content across channels, your hotel can significantly enhance its visibility.

This wider presence helps increase brand awareness, connect with both current and potential guests, maintain a positive reputation and ultimately attract more customers.

A strong social media marketing strategy also allows hotels to showcase their unique offerings and create a more personal connection with guests. Highlighting experiences, special events and behind-the-scenes moments helps build trust and encourages travelers to choose your property over competitors.

Download our guide “Perfecting Guest Communication” to learn how to engage with guests effectively and strengthen relationships through every touchpoint.

How to build a hotel social media strategy

Building a strong social media marketing strategy for hotels requires a deliberate, channel-specific approach guided by a team that deeply understands your brand.

Here are the key platforms every hotel should focus on:

Facebook

• Facebook remains relevant for hotels, as it continues to attract a wide range of audience segments, making it an effective platform for reaching diverse traveler demographics.
• You can run paid campaigns across both Facebook and Instagram since the two platforms are now integrated.
• Posting interior shots, live videos, stories and promotions helps keep your audience engaged.
• Encouraging guests to share their experience using a branded hashtag or tagging your location can help increase organic reach and user-generated content.

LinkedIn

• LinkedIn connects you directly with business professionals, making it ideal for promoting your venue for corporate events and conferences.
• You can use it to build partnerships with local businesses and position your hotel as an industry leader through articles and thought leadership content.

TripAdvisor

• With its wide reach and strong community, TripAdvisor is one of the most powerful tools for generating organic word-of-mouth and enhancing your hotel’s online reputation.
• More bookings naturally lead to more reviews, creating a self-reinforcing cycle that builds credibility.

Instagram

• Instagram is one of the most effective platforms for keeping guests continuously engaged with your brand through polls, behind-the-scenes content and reposts.
• A branded hashtag supports guests during their pre-trip research and increases your visibility.

YouTube

• As one of the largest search engines in the world, YouTube is an essential platform for any hotel marketing plan.
• Video tours, guest testimonials and amenity highlights give potential guests a genuine sense of what to expect before they book.

TikTok

• TikTok has become a key discovery platform, particularly for younger travelers who increasingly turn to short-form video content when researching destinations and accommodations.
• Authentic, creative content such as property tours, local area highlights and behind-the-scenes clips can significantly boost your hotel's visibility and appeal to a new generation of guests.

Google Reviews

• As the first thing many travelers see when searching for a hotel, Google Reviews plays a vital role in shaping first impressions and influencing booking decisions.
• Actively encouraging satisfied guests to leave a review and responding promptly to all feedback, both positive and negative, helps build trust and strengthen your hotel's online reputation.

15 powerful hotel social media strategies

A well-executed social media strategy can be one of the most cost-effective tools a hotel has for attracting guests, building loyalty and staying competitive in a crowded market.

The following 15 strategies cover everything you need to build a presence that drives real results:

1. Plan for seasonality

Take seasonality into account when beginning your strategy planning. Seasonality can guide what content to publish around holidays and help shape strategies for low, mid and peak travel periods.

In the low season, you'll want to drive bookings by sharing promotions or special thematic packages based on the time of year. During the high season, you can use your social channels to position your hotel as the must-visit destination, encouraging guests to book early and secure their stay for the upcoming year.

2. Use reputation insights

TripAdvisor and Google are not only powerful tools to drive bookings, but they're also key to unlocking important learnings about where your hotel is lacking or where it's excelling.

Use what you learn on your social networks to make improvements to the hotel experience. Make sure to respond to all reviews, both positive and negative, so that users get a sense that the hotel cares about what their followers have to say.

Most importantly, if you receive an excellent review on TripAdvisor, share it with your followers, as authentic guest feedback is one of the most powerful forms of social media marketing for hotels.

3. Build emotional connection

Use your channels to give a face to your hotel, creating a human connection that allows potential guests to see the people behind your team.

Highlight staff members once a week across different channels to display the personalities and dedication within your team. Interact with guests by organizing raffles, contests, taking polls and asking them for feedback.

Engage your audience by finding out what they want to see more of: hotel room photos, nearby destinations or restaurant tips. Involving your followers in messaging makes them more invested in maintaining a relationship with your hotel. Additionally, tag your guests in the pictures you post to inspire them to follow you and repost your content.

4. Leverage influencers

According to Expedia Group's 2025 Traveler Value Index, 73% of travelers say influencer recommendations have directly led to a booking decision, with hotels ranking as the number one travel type booked based on an influencer's recommendation.

Influencers are real and here to stay. Identify the influencers in your area or those capable of reaching your target audience. Before hosting influencers at your property, ensure you have a clear and well-defined plan in place.

Consider your budget, as this will help you determine what kind of influencer you can afford. Micro influencers may be willing to trade services, whereas macro influencers typically want the big bucks.

Define objectives once you've established the budget. What key performance indicators (KPIs) are you aiming for? Clearly outlining these goals will help you track and measure your success.

5. Invest in video content

While a picture may be worth a thousand words, today’s audiences are increasingly surrounded by short-form video content. In this context, video is one of the powerful formats for capturing attention.

High-quality videos capture attention, encourage engagement, keep users on your page longer and are far more likely to be shared. Therefore, investing in professional video content should be an essential part of your marketing budget.

6. Define brand identity

Make sure you're consistently transmitting your brand's identity and unique selling points (USPs) on social media channels. Guests who resonate with your brand and its distinctive offerings are more likely to select your hotel instead of the competition.

7. Select the right channels

It is better to be present and consistent on a few channels than stretched thin across all of them. Take time to understand each platform, the type of content it rewards and whether your audience is actually there. Choosing the right channels comes down to knowing how your guests discover, research and engage with travel content rather than making assumptions based on age alone.

Behaviour-based thinking tends to be more useful here. Guests who are visually driven and drawn to immersive inspiration tend to gravitate toward Instagram and TikTok, making short-form video and Reels a natural fit.

Those who prefer researching travel in depth often turn to YouTube, where longer content and destination guides perform well. Facebook remains a strong channel for reaching guests who engage with community-driven content, reviews and local recommendations, spanning a wide age range.

LinkedIn, meanwhile, suits properties with a business travel or corporate audience. The key is to let your guest behaviour and booking data guide your channel mix, and revisit that decision regularly as platforms and habits evolve.

8. Understand guest personas

Know your target audience's pain points and find ways to show how your hotel is the solution. You can then create high-value content that tells this story.

For example, digital nomads might be looking for a home-away-from-home. You could create a "Day in the Life of" series where you portray what it looks like for a digital nomad to stay at your property from the time they wake up in the morning and visit the coffee kiosk downstairs to sitting down at the coworking located next to the reception.

Similarly, you might want to show how it's the sort of place where you can meet other like-minded people.

9. Optimize posting times

Timing plays a role in how algorithms surface content, but the best time to post is ultimately shaped by your specific audience and the platform you are posting on. Most platforms reward early engagement, so publishing when your followers are most active gives your content the best chance of gaining traction.

While general patterns can serve as a starting point, regularly reviewing your native analytics is the most reliable way to pinpoint when your audience is online and responsive. This is especially important across a full platform mix, as peak times can vary significantly between Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok and YouTube.

10. Encourage user-generated content

User-generated content is created when guests independently share photos and videos of their hotel experience, requiring no effort from your team. They may tag you, include a hashtag or leave a review. This is an effective way to increase your brand’s visibility and build recognition organically.

Be sure to repost and reshare to spread the word and encourage other guests to do the same. You might even dedicate a specific day of the week on social media to feature user-generated content.

11. Engage with followers

Engagement goes beyond sharing user-generated content. Replying to comments and DMs, resharing tagged posts, reacting to stories, and joining conversations around your brand hashtags all help you show up consistently for your audience.

Whenever someone mentions your hotel, uses a relevant hashtag or tags your location, taking a moment to acknowledge it builds visibility and signals to potential guests that there is an active, attentive team behind the account.

Thanking followers who contribute content goes a long way too, turning one-time contributors into loyal advocates and fostering a genuine sense of community around your brand.

12. Track performance KPIs

Every hotel's KPIs differ, but it's important to have clear metrics in place to measure the success of your efforts.

Not all social media metrics serve the same purpose, so tracking the right mix matters. Visibility-focused metrics like follower growth, engagement rate, reach and impressions tell you how well your content is connecting with audiences, while commercial metrics like conversion rate, click-through rate, revenue generated from social channels and engagement-to-booking ratio help connect that engagement to tangible outcomes like direct bookings, website traffic and revenue.

13. Create shareable content

Content that provides value and is easy to share naturally attracts greater audience engagement. Content such as city guides, top local tours and language tips gives guests something genuinely useful to engage with and share, naturally extending your reach beyond your existing followers.

Mixing up formats makes this even more effective, as short-form videos, behind-the-scenes moments, guest experiences and authentic local storytelling all bring different dimensions to your feed, keeping your content fresh and your audience coming back for more.

14. Run contests and giveaways

Competitions and giveaways boost engagement and give guests a reason to check your social media channels regularly. Consider raffling off a free night's stay or inviting guests to tag a friend they'd like to enjoy a spa day with, along with a hotel stay.

This approach not only encourages active participation but also helps broaden your audience base and gain more followers on your channels.

15. Combine organic and paid advertising

Sometimes, organic posts can only take you so far. Consider integrating paid advertising, such as Facebook and Instagram Ads, into your strategy. You can even invest in boosting specific posts that you really want your users to see. Targeting your efforts based on audience interests, demographics and location leads to stronger results.

Emerging social media trends for hotels

The social media impact on traveler behavior is evolving rapidly, and hotels that keep pace with emerging trends are better positioned to capture guest attention before competitors do.

Here's a look at the three trends that are reshaping how hotels show up online:

Turn social media engagement into direct bookings with Mews

Social media sparks interest, while bookings are completed on other channels. For hotels, the real challenge is keeping the momentum alive from the moment a guest discovers you on Instagram to the moment they confirm a reservation. This gap is where the revenue is lost. Mews helps close it.

As part of its hospitality operating system, Mews Hotel Booking Engine turns your website into your strongest direct sales channel by removing the friction that sends guests straight to OTAs.

Here's what it makes possible:

• Guests book and pay in one seamless flow, without leaving your site
• Upsells like parking, bike rental and early check-in are built directly into the booking journey
• Real-time availability and currency conversion keep the experience smooth for international guests
• Every booking feeds directly into your property management system (PMS), with no extra software or manual data entry

Since the booking engine is fully integrated within the Mews Hospitality Operating System, your team gets a single view of reservations, payments and guest data from the moment a booking is made.

Book a demo today to see how Mews helps you increase bookings and revenue.