As hoteliers jump into the (perceived) shark-infested waters of social media and on-line marketing, it is easy to see how a fear of over-spending can creep in. The sheer volume of on-line marketing opportunities can overwhelm even the bravest of hearts, and empty even the fullest of wallets.

With the quickly changing profusion of opportunities, many hoteliers are encouraged to invest precious money and time into completely unfamiliar venues. So, where must the marketing dollars go to get the highest ROI?

The appropriate and engaging use of visual imagery is one of the most important investments you can make in your hotel’s marketing budget; and there are a plethora of ways to utilize this imagery to engage, bond and guide your potential guest into making that important booking. As explained by Laurie Babin in the Journal of Advertising, “The potential of imagery is both potent and provocative, especially when one takes into account that the forms of mental impressions include all five senses: hearing, touch, taste, smell, and sight.” In other words, it is possible for a person to experience a sensory stimulus without the stimulus ever being present (the “potent” part). The more senses stimulated, the greater the chances of a guest conversion and the extra benefit of better storage in the guest’s long-term memory (the “provocative” part). With great imagery, your guests can feel as though they’ve touched the velvety-soft pillows, smelled the gardenias outside the window, and tasted the béarnaise sauce on the extra tender steaks. This is what they need to feel in order to bond with your hotel, and to bond instantaneously. Images that convey facts alone aren’t nearly as compelling.

People are visual beings. If you think it’s mainly women who choose hotels based on imagery, think again. (Caveat: medical summaries are approaching. If you are not interested in such a genre, please skim through lightly, understanding that the author – an eye doctor/hotelier – believes this to be some of the most compelling aspects of the article!).

As reported in the NeuroReport (Sabatinalle, Flaisch, et al), activity in the part of the brain called the extrastriate visual cortex (as measured by MRI imaging; hang in here…) is greater when either of the sexes view emotional relative to neutral pictures. The MRI indicates the speed of decisions when presented with emotional visual stimuli – it is a measurable response in the brain. Interestingly (but perhaps not surprisingly to many), men make their choices when looking at pictures much more rapidly than women.

What does this mean for your hotel? If we liken this to “speed dating” for your hotel, the point may be more obvious. If your target market is the male business traveler, keep in mind that in general, males take approximately 2.5 seconds to make a decision to continue reading (or not) when visual imagery is involved (according to a study by Xerox in conjunction with The Loyola College in Maryland, U.S.A). Therefore, images must not just convey facts—they must involve the extrastriate visual cortex by including subtle, yet emotive features. In other words, such emotional stimuli may mean that the traveler makes the choice to be a guest at your hotel, but may not fully understand the reason for his or her choice (the extrastriate cortex is not a conscious level of the brain). Much like “speed dating” or other short bonding experiences, one just “has a feeling that it is right”. But these “feelings” are scientifically based, and measurable.

As explained by EVP, Creative Services of WD Partners, Lee Peterson, “Business owners often focus on the rational benefits of their brand out of necessity… speed, convenience, accuracy…but rationale works best when blended with great care with the emotional benefits of a brand….comfort, relaxation, trust….from our experience, no brand will reach its full potential until both are well attended to.”

So, hoteliers are faced with the challenge of providing both the rational and emotional benefits of their brand, and to do so in as short of a time frame as possible.

Interestingly, for leisure travel, women are the predominate decision makers – taking an average of 29 days and performing 12 searches and visiting 22 different travel sites prior to making their vacation bookings. With this sort of detailed evaluation, you will want to be sure that your visual imagery matches or exceeds that of your competitive set. According to the TIA (Travel Industry Association), the vast majority of reservations are still made at the visual gallery or one click later.

As if hoteliers don’t have enough to worry about, a terrifying new trend is becoming obvious. Because downloading imagery takes time, hoteliers and webmasters must be aware of this new threat – the ever-shortening attention spans involved in downloading visual stimuli. Research from web performance giant Akamai produced in conjunction with PhoCusWright, indicates that in a study of nearly 2,800 U.S. travel buyers, 57% will wait THREE seconds for a hotel web-site to download before abandoning it for other sites. Even worse, Generation Y (ages 18 – 24) expects travel sites to load in TWO and a HALF seconds. With the ever-popular multi-tasking trend, many of these potential guests will pull up other site while a slower one is downloading, dumping the slower one for one that pops up faster.

Read more at hotelmarketing.com