DIGITAL INSIGHTS, TRENDS AND

STRATEGY ON SRI LANKA’S

HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY

Impact of COVID-19 Outbreak and

Planning for Recovery

Volume 1.0
31st March 2020

Copyright eMarketingEye. All rights reserved.

2020
EXECUTIVE
SUMMARY
With the Travel Industry becoming one of the most
severely affected industries due to the current COVID-
19 (Novel Coronavirus) Pandemic, Hotels and Travel
companies across the globe have faced major
operational and functional setbacks due to various
lockdowns and travel restrictions imposed by
governments across the globe.

This pandemic is rapidly developing into a major

economic challenge for almost all the national
economies in the world, irrespective of their financial
or political stability, making it one of the most
devastating events to occur in recent history.

Hoteliers and travel industry experts have no choice

but to limit all business functions temporarily and
instead invest their newly freed-up time and resources
towards strategizing, planning and crafting their
recovery plan for the future.

At EME, we have the luxury of being able to monitor

the web analytics data of nearly 100 hotels and resorts
in Sri Lanka of various categories and destinations, in
order to identify the true impact of COVID-19 on the
industry. This report provides recommendations on
actions that can be taken during this time of disruption
so that you can come out ready and ahead of the
game once the situation is back to normal.
CONTENT

1 Introduction
Deliverable 1

2 Analysis/Trends
Deliverable 2

3 Things you can do now

Plan for Recovery: 5-Step

4 Approach

5 Key Takeaways
 INTRODUCTION
Lunar New Year, Wuhan, Italy and the
Coronavirus: How it all unfolded

Coronavirus was first identified

in Wuhan, China.
Unfortunately this coincided
with the world’s largest human
migration, which happens
Despite flights and other
annually during the Chinese
modes of transportation within
Lunar New Year across the
as well as to/from China
globe.
being limited,the virus started
spreading in neighbouring
countries rapidly. The
outbreak is declared as a
“Public Health Emergency of
International Concern” in Jan
With the virus moving across 2020.
Asia towards Europe and
Italy becoming the
epicenter, WHO declares
COVID-19 as a “Pandemic”
in March 2020. The stock
market overall as well as
By the 3rd and 4th weeks of
travel companies’ stocks
March 2020, Travel sector
have seen significant
related companies across the
declines as fears rise
globe are heavily impacted as
regarding the threat of
the outbreak continues to
broader economic
spread and worsen across
repercussions due to the
Europe, US and other parts of
virus’ spread across the
the world. Travel restrictions
globe.
and lockdowns are being
enforced in most countries,
making travel almost impossible
for everyone.

Source: COVID-19 Situation Reports by WHO

Google Trends
 APPROACH
ON
ANALYSIS

An in-depth study was conducted on the

website analytics of nearly 100 hotels and
resorts in Sri Lanka managed by
eMarketingEye, which are located across
the country.

Travel demand for Sri Lanka during a period

of around 90 days was closely monitored
using the metrics of website traffic, online
bookings, revenue and conversion rate,
and was compared against the same
period in the previous year (2019).

Google Trends data was used to analyse

and further evaluate the impact on overall
travel related search behaviour on Google
as well as the impact of this event on APAC
and Sri Lanka.
IMPACT ON APAC REGION
Travel demand in the APAC region saw a gradual decline in especially “Destination +
Hotels” related search queries for various APAC destinations.

A similar trend was seen in queries related to the major OTA brands.

However, search queries for “Destination + Flights” still showed a significantly lower rate
of decline compared to the same for Hotels for APAC.

Source: Google Trends – Last 90 Days Worldwide Data

 IMPACT ON SRI
LANKA TRAVEL &
HOSPITALITY
INDUSTRY

The travel industry in the APAC region as a whole has experienced heavy setbacks due
to the consequences of the outbreak, and Sri Lanka, as a destination, is no exception.

Did you know? COVID-19 managed to wipe out 98% of the

revenue from the Brand websites of Sri Lankan

98%
Hotels and Resorts during just a 7-day period.

(Data as of 20th- 26th March 2020 compared to the

same period last year)
Revenue Decrease

Overall Situation from Jan 18th - Mar 22nd 2020

Brand.com Web Traffic and Revenue for Sri Lanka Hotels and Resorts

|- Travel Restrictions imposed by the SL Government

Although travel is mostly impossible in Sri Lanka at the moment due to the curfew and other
measures in place locally and despite similar lockdown measures being advised globally,
international travel demand only started to show a gradual decline from the beginning of
March 2020.

After travel restrictions were imposed for several European regions around 14th March
2020, the web traffic and revenue for Sri Lankan Hotels and Resorts saw a more drastic
drop.

Source: The data presented above is based on Last Click attribution on Google Analytics
 A gradual drop in Revenue for Sri
Lankan Hotels and Resorts was
observed each week since Jan
2020 till the 3rd week of March.

Over 50% YOY drop in all

Travel related In-Market
Audience* categories for
Sri Lankan Hotels and
Resorts

*In-market Audiences - Customers who are in

the market, which means that they are
researching products and actively considering
buying a service or product related to yours.

International Markets for Sri Lankan Hotels and Resorts

Revenue from top markets saw a

decline starting from the third week
of January 2020.

Declining Revenue from Top Markets

Revenue continued to drop from the key source markets for Sri Lanka since the third
week of January 2020 compared to the same period last year.
Jan 18th - Mar 22nd 2020

The United Kingdom,

Australia and United States
remained as the top
international revenue
generating markets for Sri
Lanka despite the travel
restrictions enforced for
the region by the Sri
Lankan government.

Source: The data presented above is for a period of Jan - Mar 2020 compared with Jan - Mar 2019
based on Last Click attribution on Google Analytics
March 2020
When considering data from 15th-31st
March 2020, total website sessions saw a
77% drop while total conversions
dropped by 97% compared to the same
period last year.

Total Sessions Total Transactions

-77% -97%

Similarly, total revenue saw a 97% drop while the looker-to-booker conversion rate of the
sites also showed a 84% decline compared to the same period last year.

Total Revenue Conversion Rate

-97% -84%

The majority of Sri Lankan Hotels and Resorts saw a shift in revenue from international
markets to the local market at the beginning of March 2020 as depicted below. However,
this changed drastically, and everything came to a stand still as travel bans and island
wide curfew came into play.

Jan 1st - Mar 22nd 2020 Mar 1st - Mar 22nd 2020

Over 65% Revenue was

generated by the local
market in March 2020*

*Data from 1st March 2020 - 22nd March 2020.

Source: The data presented above is based on Last Click attribution on Google Analytics
Search Trends
for
Hotels/Travel
 SHIFT IN ONLINE SEARCH
BEHAVIOUR FOR SRI LANKA
March 2020

Sri Lanka Travel related queries peaked during mid-March 2020 due to travel
bans imposed by the Sri Lankan Government on the countries severely affected
by Covid-19

Last 14 days (from 22

nd March 2020)

Sri Lanka Travel related search queries have seen a drastic drop over the last
14 days, primarily due to the curfew and internal travel restrictions/advice
issued by the government.

Source: Google Trends – Worldwide Data

Search Trends for Hotel/ Travel
Keywords
A downward trend for searches related to hotels and top local brands in Sri Lanka
was seen from audiences worldwide.

Source: Google Trends – Worldwide Data

Search Trends for Brand Terms

Source: Google Trends – Worldwide Data

Search Trends for Brand Terms

Source: Google Trends – Worldwide Data

Search Trends for Brand Terms

Source: Google Trends – Worldwide Data

Search Trends for Brand Terms

worldwide

Note: The above illustrated Google Trend diagrams showcase the most commonly used ”search
term” of the respective Hotel brand

Source: Google Trends – Worldwide Data

 Trending Search Terms

A significant increase in searches related to coronavirus updates in Sri Lanka could be

seen.

An upward trend can be observed for searches related to top news providers in
Sri Lanka as well.

Source: Google Trends – Worldwide Data

Working from
Home?
DO YOUR HOMEWORK

“Find the silver lining”

Take this time to do your homework and

take care of things that you just never
had time to get to before and when you
do, you’ll be in best shape possible to get
back in the game, when travelers start
roaming across the world

1 Have you updated your website with a

COVID-19 Message?

2 When was the last time you did a Website

Audit?

3 How well do you know your Analytics?

4 Is your Booking Engine driving visitors away or

are you?

5 How effective is your Social Media?

6 Get Certified & Familiar with New Tools

Have you updated your
website with a COVID-19
Message?
Update your current website with a COVID-19 Message and keep
your website visitors well informed of the current situation, the
hotel and the precautionary measures you are taking.

If you have introduced any flexible cancellations or any measures

to support customers during this pandemic, your website is the
best platform to communicate the same.

Highlight additional
preventative measures taken

How the hotel team is trained

to follow the official protocols

Build guest confidence with

flexible date changes &
cancellations
 When was the
last time you did
a Website Audit?
Start with the basics! Go through your
website content, images & videos and get
the website up-to-date. Learn from your
historical data and see which pages
visitors have spent more or less time on &
look at how you can improve

Have you highlighted your engagement on those pages.

‘book direct’ benefits on

the website?
Online Tools for
website Audits
Is your website mobile
responsive? Can you push
Website Speed Test
mobile specific content? https://developers.google.com/speed/p
agespeed/insights/

How many clicks does it SEO Health Checker

take for a user to make a https://moz.com/
https://www.semrush.com/
booking?

Google Trends
https://trends.google.com/trends/
Do your content & images
positively capture and
convey the full extent of
the guest experience?
How well
do you
know your
Analytics?

It’s important during this time to keep monitoring the visitors, bookings & revenue
fluctuations of your website. Learn how to make sense of the Google Analytics platform
and use it to your advantage to come up with strategies & website improvements.

Google Analytics (GA) Setup Identify user patterns/trends

The first step is to check if your GA Use your historical data to understand
account has been setup correctly. which months have performed well,
Are you tracking e-commerce data identify the different touch points
such as bookings, room nights, involved in online bookings and
revenue, offer types & the booking discover the most appealing offers to
engine funnel? guests from different countries.

Dive into your Data Custom Reports & Alerts

Analyze the countries of your visitors, You can create your own custom
devices they have used, pages they report to monitor key aspects that
have spent more or less time on & matters to you the most & create
what offers have performed well alerts to let you know when there are
significant changes in traffic and
patterns on your site
 How to create your GA
Dashboard

01 02 03
Go to Reports
Sign In to Google Start Creating &
>Customization
Analytics Customizing
> Dashboard

Every view in Analytics comes with a default "My Dashboard." While the default Dashboard
may suffice, the real usefulness of dashboards lie in the flexibility to customize the data the
way you want.
 Is it your Booking
Engine that drives
visitors away or is
it you?

Take time to analyze how you have lost

your bookings to OTAs over the past
years. Small improvements on the
Booking Engine can make a big
difference in improving bookings &
conversion rates.

1. Are you maintaining rate parity? If

not, fix your rate plans

2. Are you asking many questions or

do you have too many
mandatory fields to fill before
your guests can complete the
booking?

3. Is the cancellation policy on the

official site flexible compared to
that of the OTAs?
Use Google Analytics to
understand where visitors are
dropping off
Understand which steps are causing potential customers to leave your booking engine
without making the booking.

Source: Google Analytics – Funnel Visualization Report

How Effective is
your Social Media
Strategy?

Now is the time to

focus more on Social
Media!

1. Doing anything to support guests, staff

and the community during the COVID-19
crisis? Let the world know.
2. Swap out promotional posts for
inspirational ones with positive messaging.

3. Share useful wellness, recipe and DIY tips

to help your followers while they are in-
doors
4. Emphasize on your CSR, Green and Safety
& Hygiene initiatives

5. Remember to use a mix of creative types

to keep people engaged (Images,
Videos, Cinema graphs etc.)

6. Remember to have a Call-To-Action for

each post, to give it purpose, and link
back to the brand site to drive awareness
& web traffic.
Get Certified & be up-to-date with
the Latest Trends

• Take advantage of this time & enhance your knowledge on new tools,
trends & platforms. Below are a few resources that you can start reading up
on:
https://www.searchenginewatch.com/
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/
https://www.youtube.com/user/rustybrick
https://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleWebmasterHelp
https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/

• As hoteliers, it is always better to be certified on Google Ads, Google

Analytics & many other platforms https://skillshop.withgoogle.com/
Plan for
Recovery:
5-Step Approach
RECOVERY AFTER COVID-19
Plan for Recovery & Important Measures

With the increasing severity of the COVID-19 pandemic

affecting the hospitality industry around the globe, it is
important to understand what measures should be taken to
reduce the impact of the crisis, and at the same time
understand what strategies should be put in place to be a
frontrunner when the market bounces back.

The 5-step approach we have come up with outlines the key

areas that need to be taken into consideration when planning
your road to recovery through digital channels.

We are determined that by working together, we can achieve

faster recovery during these challenging times.
 5-STEP APPROACH

Focus on Long Term

SEO Friendly & Platform Ready

Efficient Use of Marketing

Budgets

Protect Brand Bookings

Offer & Rate Strategy

Better Flexibility to Guests

Domestic Market First

5 Staycations…

Educate Staff / Learning New

Things in Digital

Upgrade Staff Skills in Digital

 1. Gearing for the Long term
Focus on On-Site & Offsite SEO

)
At a time when every market dollar is questioned and ad
budgets are being cut down due to low demand and high
cancellation rates, hotels should start gearing for the long
term.

Spend this time on making your website more SEO friendly

by optimizing it for the right keywords; improving the
content, using techniques to increase opportunities to
appear on featured snippets; fixing technical errors;
auditing the quality of backlinks and conducting
competitor analysis.

It is also important to have strong content marketing efforts

on external 3rd party websites as well as content on your
own blog.

Although results via SEO may not be instant like PPC, the
efforts put in now will reap benefits when the market
bounces back. If you stop SEO now, it will have ripple
effects in the future… When the market demand starts
recovering, your website may lose-out on organic visibility
and rankings.

“With Google’s latest algorithm update BERT in

late 2019, the focus has shifted towards ‘user intent
matching’ rather than just matching a ‘string of
words’ for which a user is searching”
10 Things to Do to Improve SEO
1. Fix missing, duplicate and long title Meta tag issues

2. Relook at keyword strategy

3. Look into adding more semantically related keywords to content (Search

Intent/User Focused Optimization)

4. Look into toxic backlinks and take necessary action

5. Recover lost backlinks

6. Conduct competitor backlink audits

7. Fix website issues/errors

8. Improve site speed

9. Implement schema

10. Conduct quality content marketing submissions

Local SEO

Local pack & local directories are ü Identify opportunities to list hotels and their
increasingly becoming important for restaurants, spa and event facilities in local
SEO rankings especially when users are directories and sites
looking for local businesses and ü Use of ‘Local Business’ Schema to markup
services ‘near me’. Google My Business
ü If your hotel/business is closing, update the
This is especially true for your Google business status from “Open” to
My Business listing, as this is one core “Temporarily Closed”. Read more.
element Google considers for the ü If the restaurants or wedding venues at the
Knowledge Graph appearing on the property are closed, these can be
right hand side of the SERP page. updated using a post
Be Platform Ready!
As travel globally has slowed down, it’s important for hotels to look at
other ancillary revenue options and make their website and other online
channels ready to cater to these needs.

eGift Cards / Online Gift Certificates

eGift Cards or Online Gift Certificates is a great way of sharing your love
towards others and showing that you care especially after a situation like
this. Hotels can take this opportunity to look at integrating their websites
to an eGift card system to help customers send a hotel stay as a gift for
their loved ones to be used in the future.

Making your Restaurant Menus Available Online

If your dining outlets are losing business due to low dine-in guests, it’s a
good idea to make your restaurant menu available online and offer
take-away or online delivery options. By having a shopping cart that lets
you sell your goodies online, you can go to those guests who can’t come
to you.

Mobile Responsive & Social Integrated

It’s important to ensure your website and any other platform (gift card
systems, shopping carts) are mobile responsive, easy to navigate and
loads fast. Also, it’s best to have a sync between your website & social
channels to ensure guests are up to date on what’s happening at your
resort and if you’re offering any products/services online.
 2. Efficient Use of Platform Budgets
Which budgets to cut and which to keep?

When your budget is already under advisable. However, once the situation
strain, evaluate which revenue settles down, reactivating your PPC
channels are more profitable. campaigns could be an option to
consider depending on the location of
Low cost channels like the brand
the hotel.
website should be given prominence, as
opposed to handing your profits to OTAs PPC enables you react to market
and other channels that charge higher conditions quickly (e.g. by immediately
commissions. adding/removing markets) and change
messaging to convey the most recent
It’s important to remember that PPC
offers as well as updates to cancellation
may not give you any returns at this
or flexibility policies etc.
moment, therefore keeping the
campaigns temporarily paused is

1
Protect your brand. Focus marketing efforts on brand
website bookings

2
Once the situation is stable and the hotel is operating
as usual, consider restarting PPC with brand &
remarketing campaigns

3 Cut down/pause prospecting display & video campaigns

Spend this time to...

§ Review your existing campaign structure

§ Improve campaign health

§ Create more ad copy variations

§ Add new ad types/extension types

§ Create new audiences and let them populate

§ Implement Automated Bid Strategies, rules &

scripts
3. Offers & Rate Strategies
Offering flexibility to guests

The plan for recovery during COVID-19 should include a robust offer strategy. Make sure
your Offers & Rates are flexible to guests, so as to reduce uncertainty while making online
bookings.

Rather than offering heavily discounted offers across the board, look into markets that
are recovering/or that are less impacted (no travel bans) and offer geo pricing.

It’s also a good idea to promote/sell e-gift cards to guests who wouldn’t be travelling
now, but would like to purchase and gift their loved ones with hotel stays, spa vouchers,
and dining e-gift certificates for future use.

Allow guests who have already booked,

the facility to modify their stay dates

Offer better flexibility to attract more advance or ‘early-bird’

bookings (avoid non-refundable rates)

Geo Fenced offer/rates

Look into ancillary revenue

opportunities (eGift cards,
Spa vouchers, etc)
4. Domestic Market First
Staycations, Local Resident Rates..

Staycations
As more and more markets are issuing travel bans each day
restricting travellers from entering and leaving the country,
it’s important to target the locals. Once a hotel’s domestic
market Stay Home restrictions are lifted, there is a huge
opportunity to attract local guests by offering local resident

rates and special value additions.

Self-Isolation Offers
Serviced apartments and suites & villa operators can push
long stay offers (14 days) to attract guests who are still
interested in travelling but keen on privacy & seclusion

Online Shopping Carts / Delivery Options

It’s also good to make your restaurant menus available on
your website and offer the ability to order online. This way you
can support your dining outlets during a time when there are
low or no dine-in guests.

Did you Know?

You can do radius targeting to capture an audience that’s close
by to your property for better conversion opportunities
 5. Educate
Staff/Learn New
Things in Digital
Focus on On-Site & Offsite SEO

If your hotel is planning to close down for a couple

of months or your property location is currently
infected/under lockdown, it’s a great opportunity to
use this low occupancy period to educate your staff
and to upgrade their skills in digital.

§ Analyse past data and trends

§ Be up-to-date with the latest in SEO

§ Familiarize yourself with important tools such as

Google Analytics, Google Ads and Search

Console

§ Look into new platforms & tools

§ Plan & strategize for the future

Monitor, Analyze &
Continue to Optimize

PPC Campaigns
§ Revise ad copies, add ad variations to do A/B
testing
§ Re-look at extensions. Add sitelinks, callouts
and structured snippets across all the
campaigns
§ Add negative terms and look at new keyword
opportunities
§ Check the ‘Recommendations’ tab in Google
Ads & make the necessary changes
§ Create new/custom audiences and analyze
the website visitors as well as booking engine
visitors

SEO Campaigns
§ Re-look at the keyword strategy
§ Work on improving the content on the site,
look at semantic ideas, structured snippets,
FAQs
§ Conduct an SEO audit and work on the
recommendations (optimizations ideas,
crawler errors etc.)
§ Update local business listings (Google My
Business, Apple & Bing Maps based on the
availability)
§ Run competitor audits and understand what
competitors are doing
§ Analyze backlinks and toxic links and work on
removing the same, disavow poor quality
links.
 Monitor, Analyze &
Continue to Optimize

Website Tracking & Implementation

§ Audit the current tracking and ensure eCommerce

tracking is enabled
§ Implement alerts to track any anomalies (drastic
drops in sessions, bookings, seasonal comparisons,
frequent data updates etc.)
§ Implement goals for website actions (form
submissions, button clicks, downloads etc.)

Social Media
§ Audit your social media pages/platforms (posting
mix, engagement, comments & reviews, followers)
§ Align your messaging with the current situation and
publish positive, supportive and informational
content
§ Ensure your Business Information is up-to-date
§ If your resort is closing temporarily, publish a notice
on the pages, update your FB cover photo
accordingly and set up an automated messaging
response conveying the same
§ Respond to unanswered queries with extra care and
sensitivity
 Key
Takeaways

ü A significant drop in Travel searches was

seen globally. Continue to monitor trends
closely & identify opportunities.

ü Spend time on learning new things in

digital as well as the latest tools & trends.

ü Continue to focus on website

improvements and SEO.

ü Monitor your competition closely &

identify opportunities.

ü Strategize, plan & be ready to make a

strong comeback when the world starts
travelling again!
About eMarketingEye
eMarketingEye is an award-winning digital marketing agency specializing in the
hospitality industry. Established in 2007, we have gained international recognition
for our expertise in providing 360-degree digital marketing solutions; these
include Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Web Development, Pay-per-click
Marketing (PPC), Social Media Optimization (SMO), Content Development, Email
Marketing, Web Analytics etc.

Our forte lies in an effective combination of web design, search marketing,

strategy consultancy, performance optimization and web analytics. We offer our
clients an integrated approach, based on performance-driven marketing
principles which enable us to offer customized digital marketing solutions for
world-renowned clientele in the hospitality industry.

Our ethos is to provide complete transparency on all digital marketing activities

while offering ROI centric solutions that are tailor-made to client requirements.
We aim to help our clients define their digital objectives and execute the best-
suited strategies to engage their target audience, to increase online visibility
while exceeding online sales and revenue objectives.

With over 1,000 successful client engagements, execution of over 4,500 projects
and over 230 award wins during the past 13 years, we are proud to be widely
considered a thought leader in Asia.

Visit https://www.emarketingeye.com
Join us on this road to recovery,
as together we can rebuild
As an initiative to help the Sri Lankan hospitality industry recover during this time
of need, ‘Truly Sri Lanka’ (www.trulysrilanka.com) - eMarketingEye’s premier
destination website promoting the island, will be offering all local hotels an
opportunity to be featured on the website for free!

By registering, your brand will experience a range of benefits including free

exposure and listings from all digital marketing activities by Truly Sri Lanka
including SEO, PPC, Social Media and many more.

Let us all join hands and prepare now for a better future by rebuilding the industry
while reminding the world about the beauty and enchantment of Sri Lanka.

Grab this opportunity to get ready to promote Sri Lanka’s destinations and what
our wonderful island home has to offer, once we overcome this current global
pandemic!

Register for free now:

https://www.trulysrilanka.com/register-your-hotel-property.html
Stay Informed,
Responsible and Safe!
As an effort of a responsible corporate citizen, eMarketingEye launched ‘Sri Lanka
Stay Safe’ www.srilankastaysafe.com - a website with the aim to empower
individuals on how to mitigate the threat by the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19).

Offering an easy-to-refer compilation of useful information we aim to increase

awareness to the general public on the current situation in Sri Lanka. Read on crucial
and helpful segments such as Symptoms, Prevention, FAQs, Latest News and
Updates.
 [email protected]

eMarketingEye (Private) Limited

D: +94 112151200 | F: +94 11 2814265
www.emarketingeye.com
Level 29, MAGA ONE, No.200, Nawala Road, Narahenpita,
Colombo 05, Sri Lanka