Hospitality marketing: 15 ideas for hotels, restaurants and cafés

Where are we eating tonight? Where should we go for a drink after work? Which hotel should we book for our weekend away? Hospitality marketing can influence the answer to all three questions. However, choosing a restaurant is a different process from choosing a café, bar, or hotel.

Hospitality is a broad industry that includes hotels, restaurants, cafés, bars, lunchrooms, and other businesses where service and the guest experience are central. What connects these businesses is that guests are buying more than just a product. You can eat and drink at home, while travelers can also choose alternatives such as holiday rentals or Airbnb for some stays. Hospitality businesses add service, atmosphere, convenience, and an experience at a physical location.

Your marketing should reflect that difference. You need to determine which guests you want to attract, why they should choose your business, and at which moments you want to reach them. You can then use content, online advertising, and your website to turn that interest into a reservation, booking, or visit.

What is hospitality marketing?

Hospitality marketing covers the activities hotels, restaurants, cafés, and similar businesses use to reach their target guests and build a relationship with their brand. This can include local search visibility, content, email marketing, online advertising, reviews, and their own website.

The ultimate goals can differ between hospitality businesses. A restaurant may want more reservations on quieter evenings. A hotel may want to generate more direct bookings, while a café or bar may want to attract visitors for an event or a particular night. Marketing becomes more focused once the desired business result is clear.

The market itself provides plenty of reason to take a considered approach to marketing. According to Statistics Netherlands (CBS) figures on the Dutch hospitality industry, revenue increased by 2.2% in the first quarter of 2026 compared with the same period a year earlier. There were differences between the various types of hospitality businesses behind that average. Restaurants recorded 1.6% revenue growth and cafés 1.3%, while hotels increased by 0.4%. These figures say little about the marketing performance of individual businesses, but they do show that hotels, restaurants, and cafés each operate within their own market.

Why do guests choose hospitality businesses?

Hospitality businesses compete for more than market share within their own industry. A restaurant may sometimes compete with cooking at home or ordering food. For a café or bar, meeting friends at home can be an alternative. Depending on the situation, hotels compete not only with other hotels but also with apartments and holiday rentals.

The decision to choose a hospitality business therefore often revolves around the experience someone is looking for. A guest may want to be looked after, enjoy an experience together with others, or stay in an attractive location. A restaurant can add table service and culinary expertise. A hotel can differentiate itself through personal service, breakfast, housekeeping, or facilities that complement the stay.

Your marketing needs to make that added value visible. Showing only a dish, room, or drink tells just part of the story. Show people what it feels like to eat, drink, or stay at your business. This brings us to the most important question behind your strategy: which guests do you want to attract?

Which guests do you want to attract?

“Everyone is welcome” may be a perfectly good hospitality philosophy, but it provides little direction for marketing. You can use your budget and content more effectively when you know which guests are commercially valuable and what brings them to your business.

Look beyond age or income. In hospitality, the occasion is often just as relevant. Someone looking for somewhere to have lunch within the next twenty minutes behaves very differently from someone comparing hotels for an anniversary weekend.

• Who do you want to reach? Consider local residents, tourists, families, couples, groups, or business travelers.
• Why are they visiting? For example, lunch, an overnight stay, drinks, a meeting, or a special occasion.
• When do you want to attract them? A busy Saturday evening requires a different approach from a quiet Tuesday afternoon.
• How much do they want to spend? The expected price level influences both your positioning and the audiences that fit your concept.
• What experience are they looking for? This could include convenience, personal attention, culinary experiences, a social atmosphere, or comfort.
• Where do they search? Google, Google Maps, social media, booking platforms, and your own website can each influence a different part of the decision.
• What are their alternatives? Look beyond direct competitors to alternatives such as ordering food, staying at home, and other types of accommodation or leisure activities.

Use your own data to answer these questions more effectively. Reservation data, website analytics, social media statistics, and conversations with guests can reveal useful patterns. Look at which guests return frequently, which packages are popular, and which channels generate reservations.

Hospitality marketing differs by type of business

Hotels, restaurants, cafés, and bars belong to the same broad industry, but their customer journeys can be very different. This also affects which marketing activities should receive priority.

Type of hospitality business	Common need	Decision process	Marketing focus
Hotel	Overnight stay, weekend break, business trip, or event	Guests often compare location, rooms, price, facilities, and reviews	Search engines, content, advertising, reviews, and booking pages
Restaurant	Lunch, dinner, meeting, or special occasion	Menu, atmosphere, location, availability, price, and reviews all influence the decision	Google Maps, local SEO, social content, advertising, and reservations
Café or bar	Drinks, meeting friends, a night out, or an event	The decision can be more spontaneous and strongly influenced by location	Local visibility, social media, events, and advertising

There are also major differences within these categories. A business hotel next to an airport has a different target audience from a boutique hotel in a historic city center. A Michelin-starred restaurant requires different marketing from a neighborhood bistro. The same applies to a traditional pub compared with a cocktail bar.

That is why the following fifteen ideas work best when adapted to your concept, audience, and the moments you want to attract guests. We divide them into three areas: content marketing, online advertising, and your website.

Content marketing for hospitality: 5 ideas

Hospitality is particularly well suited to content because much of its value can be shown and experienced visually. Food, rooms, people, locations, and moments provide material that helps potential guests imagine the experience before they arrive.

1. Sell the experience before the guest arrives

Show more than the finished product. A restaurant can show how a signature dish is prepared and introduce the person behind it. A hotel can combine room content with information about breakfast or the surrounding area. A café or bar can show the atmosphere during one of its regular evenings.

Photography and video work particularly well when they provide a realistic impression of what someone can expect. Your content then becomes a digital introduction to the business.

2. Give people a reason to follow you

A social media account that only posts offers uses just a small part of its potential. Create content around what actually happens at your business.

• Show new dishes, rooms, or packages.
• Take people behind the scenes.
• Introduce employees and the people behind what you create.
• Tell stories about local suppliers.
• Promote events and seasonal occasions.

Then look at which topics generate engagement, website visits, and reservations. This allows you to develop your content based on the actual behavior of your audience.

3. Turn your guests into content creators

Guests already take their own photos and videos of food, rooms, cocktails, and memorable moments. This user-generated content can provide an authentic view of the experience from the guest’s perspective.

Make sharing easy by clearly displaying your location and social accounts, for example. Ask permission before reusing content created by guests. Reviews can also become part of your content, such as on a reservation page or alongside a package.

4. Work with creators who match your audience

For local hospitality businesses, a creator’s follower count is only one factor. Pay particular attention to who they reach, where those people live, and whether their content fits your concept.

A local food creator may be relevant for a new restaurant, while a travel creator may be a better fit for a hotel. A cocktail bar may benefit more from someone who covers local nightlife and events. Agree on the content and any usage rights in advance.

5. Stay visible after the guest leaves

Email marketing can help you reconnect with previous guests using relevant information. A hotel can share a new package, a restaurant can announce a seasonal menu, and a café or bar can inform regular guests about an upcoming event.

Build and manage your guest database in accordance with applicable privacy and marketing regulations. Segmentation makes messages more relevant. A business hotel guest, for example, is likely to have different interests from someone who booked a romantic weekend.

Online advertising for hospitality: 5 ideas

Advertising gives you more control over who you reach and when you reach them. This is particularly useful when there is a clear commercial reason to invest in additional visibility.

1. Be visible when someone is actively searching

Search advertising can be effective when potential guests already know what they are looking for. A restaurant might advertise around relevant searches for a particular cuisine or location. A hotel can target searches related to accommodation, packages, and destinations.

Pay attention to search intent. Someone who is simply looking for inspiration is at a different stage from someone specifically searching for a restaurant tonight or a hotel for particular dates.

2. Reach local audiences with social advertising

Social advertising can reach people before they actively start searching for your hospitality business. Visually appealing concepts work particularly well because you can immediately communicate your atmosphere and offer.

A restaurant can promote a new menu to a relevant local audience. A café or bar can advertise an event, while a hotel can promote a package to people who match its chosen target audience.

3. Use advertising to fill quieter periods

More reservations are most valuable when you actually have capacity available. A restaurant that is full every Saturday has little reason to spend additional advertising budget creating even more demand for the same Saturday.

Look at your occupancy instead. The opportunity may be on Tuesday evenings, at lunch, or during the early evening. Hotels can apply the same principle to periods when more rooms are available. This connects advertising to a genuine business objective.

4. Reconnect with previous visitors through retargeting

Not every website visitor makes a reservation or booking immediately. For hotels, the period between initial research and booking can be relatively long. Guests who view a package or event may also return later.

Retargeting can help you reach eligible previous visitors again where the selected advertising platforms and privacy regulations allow it. Match your follow-up message to their previous interest instead of showing every visitor the same advertisement.

5. Build campaigns around seasons and events

Hospitality businesses have many natural campaign opportunities. Think of a summer terrace, Christmas package, seasonal game menu, festival weekend, or your own themed evening. These occasions give you a concrete story and a clear reason for people to make a reservation at a particular time.

Start early enough to match your audience’s decision-making process. A spontaneous visit to a bar may require very little planning, while a hotel package or group dinner may be booked much further in advance.

Website and online visibility for hospitality: 5 ideas

Content and advertising can generate interest, but ultimately people need to find information and take action. Your website and local online presence should make that process easy.

1. Turn interest into a reservation or booking quickly

Visitors should be able to find everything they need to make a decision without unnecessary effort. This can include your menu, prices, opening hours, location, photos, and availability. For hotels, rooms and facilities play a larger role.

Make the desired action prominent. A restaurant can use a clear reservation button, while a hotel can prioritize live availability and direct booking. Test the experience particularly carefully on mobile, as much local research happens on the go or shortly before a visit.

2. Get found for relevant local searches

Local SEO helps search engines understand what you offer and where you are located. Consider combinations of business type, location, cuisine, occasion, or relevant facilities.

An Italian restaurant in The Hague may serve different search queries from a hotel near Schiphol Airport. Create pages primarily for guests and incorporate your location and offer wherever they are contextually relevant.

3. Treat Google Maps as a second storefront

For many hospitality businesses, the Google Business Profile is an important customer touchpoint. Keep your opening hours, category, photos, address, phone number, and relevant links up to date. Where appropriate, add links to your menu or reservation system. For additional figures on online visibility and search behavior within the Dutch hospitality industry, you can also review these hospitality marketing statistics.

Guests can gather a considerable amount of information from local search results before ever opening your website. Consistent and current information helps them quickly determine whether your business matches what they are looking for.

4. Let reviews speak for you

Reviews give potential guests information from the perspective of previous visitors. That makes reputation management an important part of your online marketing.

Ask guests to share their experience at an appropriate moment. Respond thoughtfully to feedback and use recurring comments as input for your own operations. Reviews can therefore support both your marketing and the guest experience.

5. Create dedicated pages for packages and campaigns

An advertisement for a Christmas menu should ideally lead to a page about that Christmas menu rather than a general homepage. The same applies to hotel packages, private dining, group reservations, and events.

A dedicated landing page can continue the message from the advertisement. Visitors immediately see what the offer includes, who it is for, and how they can make a reservation.

How content, advertising, and your website work together

These three areas create more value when they support the same customer journey. Imagine someone sees a video of a new restaurant on Instagram. A few days later, they search for restaurants in the same neighborhood and see the business again on Google. They then check the menu and reviews before reserving a table.

In that situation, it is difficult to give a single channel all the credit. Content created the initial awareness, search marketing brought the restaurant back into view at the decision stage, and the website made the reservation possible.

For hotels, the journey can be longer. A guest may first find inspiration through video or social media, then compare several accommodations, and only later book directly. It is therefore more useful to view marketing as one connected system rather than assessing each channel entirely in isolation.

Which hospitality marketing KPIs should you measure?

Marketing data becomes valuable when you connect it to the goals of your hospitality business. Reach and website traffic tell you something about visibility, while reservations and bookings are closer to the actual business result.

Useful marketing KPIs can include:

• Website traffic: how many relevant visitors your website attracts.
• Organic traffic: how many visitors arrive through search engines.
• Reservations or bookings: how many desired actions result from your marketing.
• Conversion rate: the percentage of relevant visitors who reserve, book, or complete another desired action.
• Cost per reservation or lead: how much advertising budget is required to generate the desired result.
• Return on ad spend: the measurable revenue generated in relation to advertising spend when your attribution setup can support this reliably enough.
• Email performance: for example, clicks and reservations generated through campaigns.
• Reservation source: which marketing channels bring guests to your business.

Compare these figures with business data such as occupancy, guest numbers, average spend, revenue by period, and returning guests. Reservation systems, point-of-sale data, and web analytics can help connect marketing activity with business results.

Then test specific changes. A different advertisement, photo, landing page, or proposition can produce a measurable difference. Define the result you want to improve for each test so that you genuinely learn what works for your business.

Should you manage hospitality marketing yourself or outsource it?

Some parts of hospitality marketing benefit from being handled by people who are present at the business every day. Your team sees what happens firsthand and knows the stories that make content feel personal and authentic.

Internally, you can collect photos and short videos, share current events, answer guest questions, and gather ideas for new content. This keeps your communication closely connected to the reality of the guest experience.

Specialist support can be useful when strategy, advertising, SEO, websites, tracking, or ongoing content production requires additional expertise or capacity. The division does not need to be absolute. A hospitality team can provide the raw material and knowledge, while a marketing partner turns that input into campaigns and a measurable marketing approach.

Build your hospitality marketing around the guest

Effective hospitality marketing ultimately starts with the guest you want to attract. Hotels, restaurants, cafés, and bars sell different experiences and serve different occasions. Even two restaurants on the same street can have completely different target audiences and reasons for visiting.

Start by asking why someone would choose your business specifically. Then make that experience visible through content, reach relevant people with advertising, and ensure your website and local presence make it easy to reserve or book. Finally, measure which activities contribute to the occasions and guests that create value for your business.

Want to develop this approach further for your hospitality business? Explore our restaurant marketing services for support with content, online advertising, and websites. Want to discuss your target audience, current marketing, and growth opportunities? Contact us.

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