One of the greatest things about digital marketing is the ability to measure actual outcomes and test for different results, allowing for a quick iteration and experimentation when rolling out new advertising campaigns or digital assets. This can be at times hard to combine with the need to track business relevant KPIs specific to the hospitality industry. If you then also add very hard to measure intangibles like luxury brand equity and luxury pricing power into the mix it can become quickly overwhelming for most in-house teams. Luckily for you, we got you covered with this comprehensive guide that lists the most important KPIs in luxury hospitality marketing overall.
What are Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)?
Key Performance Indicators are metrics or variables that measure how well a specific project, team, department or initiative is performing and contributing to the overall health and growth of a business. In the context of marketing and sales analytics this often means that we are looking at things like creative production, project management, marketing/advertising campaigns, engagement, web traffic, leads, opportunities, closing, costs, revenue and profitability. Basically everything that can help you forecast revenue with accuracy and scale revenue generation with a predictable level of investment. Measuring and interpreting KPIs to make improvements for future campaigns is the most important function of marketing analytics. That is what is nowadays often called a data-driven mindset. Just guessing what will work or what worked before nowadays is simply not enough anymore.
Which digital marketing KPIs are a must-have?
If you are following the full-funnel marketing approach (if your business is large enough to afford it) there are distinct KPI sets you should measure at each stage when you start a new campaign. This way you can create a holistic picture of where you need to improve your luxury and digital marketing planning, execution and team management:
Before the campaign
- Marketing persona match
(100% means your creatives and content are totally inline with your personas)
- Time to launch
(How long does it take you to produce all relevant creatives, content and digital assets you need for a new campaign)
- Production costs
(How much does it cost you to produce all the relevant creatives, content and digital assets)
- Amount of delay incurred
(How much internal or external caused delays occurred throughout the planning and production process)
- Planned marketing investment
(How much do you plan to invest into production, execution and analysis for this upcoming campaign)
Top of the funnel (brand marketing, awareness phase)
- Reach
(How many people that match your personas will this campaign reach)
- Impressions
(How many times was your ad or content actually shown to people)
- Cost per mile
(CPM, or your cost per 1000 impressions)
- Frequency
(How often will every person be exposed to your marketing message)
- Engagement
(How many likes, shares and comments will your online content generate)
- Video views & audio plays
(The amount of views your video or audio assets will generate)
- View through rate
(How many people have watched your videos to the end)
- Emails delivered
(If email is part of your campaign)
- Emails opened
(If email is part of your campaign)
- Ad or campaign recall
(How memorable is your advertising creative idea, slogan or campaign)
- Brand awareness
(How recognizable is your brand overall in the market)
Middle of the funnel (direct or performance marketing, consideration phase)
- Web traffic
(How many unique visitors to your website did you get)
- Time on page
(How much time people spend on your website)
- Bounce rate
(What percentages of your audience leaves your website fairly quick)
- Average entry and exit points
(What are the most common pages your audience visits first, and when do they leave)
- Clicks
(How many clicks did you get from your advertising, SEO, content, etc.)
- Cost per click
(CPC, what did each individual click cost you)
- Clickthrough Rate
(CTR, how many people clicked your links or ads compared to shown impressions)
- Opt-Ins
(How many people are willing to share their contact data with you for further communication)
Bottom of the funnel (direct or performance marketing, purchase phase)
- Number of conversions
(MICE leads, MICE sales, direct bookings, f&b/spa/nightlife/entertainment reservations)
- Cost per conversion
(How much did it cost you across the whole funnel to acquire that guest)
- Conversion rate
(Out of all your visitors and opt-ins, who did actually book with you)
- Return on advertising spend
(ROAS, how big is the multiplicator when it comes to revenue that was generated through advertising or marketing investment)
- Return on investment
(ROI, how much revenue did your marketing investment generate)
- Amount of up & cross sells
(How much additional revenue were you able to generate per guest)
- Customer lifetime value
(How much revenue will each guest generate on average over its lifetime of doing business with you)
After the campaign
- Consolidated marketing spend
(How much did you actually pay for production, execution and analysis, including media)
- Campaign execution efficiency
(100% means everything went as planned, less means roadblocks and problems occurred to a varying degree)
- Actual revenue generated
- Profitability of that respective generated revenue
A list of specific hospitality KPIs
Naturally, since you are a luxury hospitality marketer, your GM, CEO or colleagues in finance and controlling will want to measure the results of your efforts not necessarily in common marketing and sales KPIs but instead will use specific industry standards. Let’s list some of the common ones here:
- Average daily rate
(ADR, shows the average rate per occupied room)
- Revenue per available room
(RevPAR, shows the average revenue over a certain period of time across all bookings)
- Average length of stay
(ALOS, average length of a booking per guest)
- Occupancy rate
(How many rooms are booked vs empty)
- RevPAR Room Type Index
(ReRTI, shows which rooms are the most profitable on average)
- Market penetration index
(MPI, how much occupancy do you have versus your competitors in the market)
Hard to measure luxury marketing KPIs
Under normal circumstances looking at marketing and hospitality KPIs would be enough to come up with a set of metrics to track, but we are dealing with luxury here. These luxury KPIs or intangibles, how they are sometimes called, are mostly based on psychology, long-term brand marketing, service reputation and time and, as such, are the most difficult to influence directly through pro-active marketing or product development. Pricing power is a specific secondary luxury KPI derived from a combination of the previous three (heritage, recognition, and equity). Sometimes to protect or increase these values, luxury hospitality marketers must employ tactics that differ from mainstream hospitality marketing to a large degree.
- Luxury brand heritage
(How historically significant is your property or brand in the eye of the affluent guest)
- Luxury brand recognition
(How well known is your brand globally)
- Luxury brand value or equity
(How much weight and status assign do your guests assign to your brand)
- Pricing power
(How much of a premium in price are you able to command due to being luxury)
Which KPIs should I combine into a set?
Now that we have three lists of digital marketing, hospitality, and luxury KPIs mapped out, we need to come up with a measurement process that we can use every time we want to pursue a new business goal or improvement in our overall marketing/sales machine. The most important part to remember here is that ALL THESE KPIS ARE CONNECTED. Let me repeat that – all of them are connected.
Top of the funnel marketing KPIs influence the middle of the funnel while the middle obviously also influences the conversions and sales at the bottom. Marketing KPIs influence hospitality KPIs overall and, of course, luxury KPIs influence both the performance of marketing and hospitality KPIs respectively (hence why they need special attention from a trained luxury marketer).
The simplest method of campaign planning is to isolate a couple of funnel KPIs or a specific area of your business first and focus on that. One thing at a time. For example, you can start with a top-of-the-funnel awareness campaign and measure the outcomes accordingly. Then do a middle of the funnel consideration campaign right after and try to determine the influence the previous campaign had. Did your consideration KPI costs decrease? Did the amount of opt-ins increase?
Continue with this process until you have three ongoing concurrent campaigns that cover the top, middle, and bottom of your funnel. At this stage, you should also start measuring the impact on your hospitality and luxury KPIs over time. If you take the time to build a system of analytics and reporting like the one described here, it will ultimately become way easier to change and adapt to market influences over time while maintaining a clear overview of current bookings and pipeline.
Attribution Modelling
A specific challenge of running a full-funnel advertising strategy combined with sophisticated analytics is to track accurately which channels, campaigns, tactics, content pieces, digital assets, etc. had the biggest impact on your overall success. Where did most of your MICE leads come from? What type of campaign generates the most lucrative bottle service bookings in a casino nightclub? Is it the army of promoters you employ or the overall brand marketing that you run at an ongoing basis to promote your high quality DJs and music acts?
There are several models that companies can use to measure their conversions, but the most common are last touch and multi-touch. Multi-touch is obviously more sophisticated but requires more effort in terms of UTM parameters, analytics tools and business intelligence dashboard technology.
The Role of Technology
There are a lot of different ways to measure the KPIs we listed earlier, but, in general, you will need to have couple different technologies or tactics per category in place for that to be possible:
- Digital Marketing KPIs
(Web analytics, UTMs, Email/CRM/MAP analytics, media buying analytics, sales enablement analytics, heatmaps, screen recordings, A/B testing environments)
- Hospitality KPIs
(ERP solutions, finance/controlling software, property management systems)
- Luxury KPIs
(Customer surveys, customer interviews, online reviews, press coverage, social listening, competitive analysis)
If you need help at your property or cluster with setting up effective reporting and interpretation for some or all of these KPIs don’t hesitate to reach out to us. One of our four core areas we help clients with is marketing analytics for luxury hospitality and travel brands.