Target market strategy for hotels starts with your own guests
The best hotel target market strategy is not a persona deck. It is your own reservation data, grouped by why people stay and what each stay is worth.
Somewhere on a shared drive there is usually a persona deck. There is a slide for a creative couple in their thirties who love a long brunch, another for a business traveller called Mark, and a third for the family. It was made in a workshop, it looked good, and nobody has opened it since.
A target market strategy is the decision about which groups of guests a hotel sets out to win, which it prioritises, and where it spends its marketing money to reach them. For most hotels the honest place to build one is not a workshop. It is the reservation data they already hold.
That means segmenting the stay rather than inventing the person. Group guests by why they came, when they booked, how long they stayed and what they were worth, then point every channel at the same groups. It is the work our Growth Marketing practice starts with, because a campaign aimed at the wrong guest wastes money however well it is run.
Personas or segments
A persona is a fictional character who stands in for a type of guest. A segment is a group of real stays that share something measurable, such as the reason for travel, the booking window or the length of stay.
The classic way to describe a target audience uses four lenses.
- Demographic. Age, income, life stage and household, the lens personas lean on most.
- Geographic. Where guests travel from, which shapes the message and the media.
- Behavioural. How guests book, how far ahead, for how long and through which channel.
- Psychographic. Values, interests and what they want from a stay.
The trouble for a hotel is that only two of those sit in its own systems. Geographic and behavioural data are in every reservation. Demographics are thin, and psychographics are mostly guesswork unless you ask.
There is a deeper problem with personas too. The same person is a different guest depending on the trip. The executive who stays midweek on a corporate rate comes back in August with two children and a dog, books four months ahead and spends twice as much in the restaurant.
The same traveller who books a weekend city break on autopilot might spend three weeks agonising over where to take their parents for a milestone anniversary.
Harry Fielder, CEO, Umi
Segment the stay, not the person, and the strategy matches how guests actually behave.
Start with your own booking data
Every hotel already has a target market. It is the guests who booked last year. The first job is to describe them accurately before deciding who you want more of.
What the PMS already knows
Twelve months of reservations from the property management system (PMS) will tell you more than any persona workshop. Look at these fields first.
- Reason for the stay. Inferred from the rate code, the room type, the package or any notes on the booking.
- Lead time. How far ahead each segment books, which decides when your marketing has to run.
- Length of stay and day of week. The midweek one-nighter and the weekend two-nighter are different markets.
- Party and room. Couples, families, groups and anyone who brought a dog.
- Origin and channel. Where guests travel from, and whether they came direct, by phone or through an OTA.
- Spend beyond the room. Dinner, spa and extras, which can change which segment is most valuable.
- Repeat stays. How many guests came back, and which segments they came from.
What the website adds
Your website sees the guests who looked but did not book. Searches in the booking engine show the dates and lengths of stay people want, including the ones you could not sell. The pages they read show interest, whether that is the spa, the wedding pages or the dog-friendly rooms.
GA4 can show demographics and interests, but only for users signed in to Google with ad personalisation on, and Google withholds the figures when numbers are small. Treat those reports as a hint, not a census. Your own booking and search data is the stronger evidence.
What only guests can tell you
Some things no system records. A single optional question at booking or in the pre-arrival email ("What brings you to us?") gives you the reason for travel in the guest's own words. Over a season, it turns psychographics from a guess into a count.
Choosing primary and secondary segments
A primary segment is the group that gets most of your attention and budget, because it has the most value to the business. A secondary segment is smaller, with room to grow, and usually gets its own campaigns rather than a share of the main one.
Rank segments by what they are worth, not by how many there are. Put revenue, spend beyond the room and the cost of the channel they book through against each one. Then lay them over your occupancy. A segment that fills Sunday to Wednesday can be worth more than a bigger one that wants the Saturday you would have sold anyway.
Next, look at why people come and where from. Some guests come for the hotel itself, a restaurant with a name or a setting people travel for. Some are visiting family nearby and care about parking more than the spa. Some are there for the location, and search for hotels near a venue or attraction. Two hotels in the same city can draw completely different markets, one full of locals who come for dinner and a drink, the other filled by guests who travel from the other end of the country for the weekend.
Segments and product feed each other. Once you know a segment is worth winning, build something for it, a theatre package, a dog-friendly room type or a match-day package for the ground down the road. Then watch whether the package changes who books.
The best segment is the one that fills the nights you struggle to sell, at a margin you can live with.
Putting segments to work
A segment only earns its keep when it changes what you do. These are the four places it should show up.
In paid media
Ad platforms have moved away from the interest targeting that personas were built for. Meta's Advantage+ audience can reach beyond the interests you choose, and only location, minimum age, language and excluded custom audiences stay fixed. The strongest signal you can give a platform now is your own data, meaning lists of past guests in each segment and audiences built from the pages they read.
Location still matters. Show locals the dinner and the spa day, and show guests further away the stay, which is the heart of advertising to local guests.
In email and CRM
Your CRM is where segments become messages. A family who stayed in the summer holidays should hear about next summer before January, and a corporate guest should not get the half-term offer. Our introduction to hotel email marketing covers the list and the cadence.
On the website
A guest arriving from an ad for a dog-friendly break should land on a page about dog-friendly breaks, not the homepage. Pages built for each reason for travel give every segment a place to land, and our guide to hotel landing pages shows what goes on one.
One definition everywhere
This is where most segment work quietly fails. The revenue team means one thing by "leisure", the CRM uses another, and the paid media agency has built its own audiences from scratch. Each report looks fine. None of them describe the same guests.
Write the segment definitions down once and make every system and supplier use them. It is also why we built Mio, so that reservation, CRM and website data describe one guest rather than three.
Where to start this week
None of this needs new software to begin. It needs one export and an afternoon with the team who know the guests.
- Export the last twelve months of reservations from your PMS, with rate code, channel, lead time, length of stay, origin and spend.
- Group the stays by reason for travel, then split each group by lead time and length of stay.
- Put revenue and channel cost against every group, and mark which ones fill your quiet nights.
- Choose one primary and one secondary segment, and brief every supplier on the same definitions.
The persona deck can stay where it is. The guests you want more of have already stayed with you, and their bookings say who they are.
Questions hotels ask
It is the decision about which groups of guests a hotel sets out to win, which ones it prioritises, and how it spends its marketing to reach them. A good one is built from the hotel's own reservation and website data, grouped by reason for travel, booking behaviour and value.
A persona is a fictional character that represents a type of guest. A segment is a group of real stays that share something measurable, such as lead time, length of stay or reason for travel. Segments are easier to act on because every system can recognise them.
Fewer than most people expect. One primary segment and one or two secondary ones are enough for most independent hotels to plan around, and each should be large and valuable enough to justify its own campaigns.
Start with the PMS, which holds rate codes, lead times, length of stay, origin, channel and spend. Add booking engine searches and website behaviour, then ask guests directly with an optional question at booking or before arrival.
