When it comes to hotel blogs, Ritz-Carlton’s The Journey content hub is a fantastic example of a brand offering extra value to travellers.
Hospitality industry blogs provide an opportunity to go beyond the hard sell and instead focus on inspiring potential guests and immersing them in the travel experience before they’ve even booked.
You build trust with your target audience, position yourself as an expert on certain destinations and reinforce your brand identity with a unique tone of voice that creates an emotional connection with readers.
Travel content writing also provides great avenues for search engine optimisation (SEO), also known as digital gold. Search engine algorithms value useful, relevant pages as well as regular refreshed content.
Having more high-quality pages on your website increases the chances of driving traffic. Internal linking also helps algorithms navigate your site and find specific pages. By including relevant long-tail keywords, your website will appear in more search engine results pages, leading to increased traffic. Furthermore, the quality of your posts can impact conversions and bookings. This is why Ritz-Carlton has heavily invested in its blog, The Journey. So, what makes it successful?
A luxury experience for a luxury brand
The first Ritz-Carlton hotel opened in New York in 1911. Today, the brand operates 108 luxury hotels in 30 countries around the world.
This provides the perfect opportunity to position itself as an expert in a whole variety of destinations, offering useful and inspirational content to become the trusted voice for those places, encouraging travellers to book one of its hotels.
Travellers who book with Ritz-Carlton are paying premium prices for a premium experience, so the creation of a blog that helps them get the most out of their stay offers added value.
A mix of detailed guides and inspirational features helps evoke that sense of luxury travellers expect from the brand and brings to life a glossy magazine feel. It is an extension of the brand experience during your stay with links to useful details and ideas almost acting as an online concierge.
Sleek and streamlined
When it comes to your blog, it’s not enough to simply write one-off posts as they occur to you, the best approach is a strategic one.
This is precisely what Ritz-Carlton has done with The Journey. The blog itself works as a content hub, with interconnecting posts that support each other and encourage you to keep clicking to find out more information.
The user experience (UX) is well thought out and everything is interconnected in a way that makes sense, with multiple categories making navigation simple.
The blog uses a nested layout with three main categories: inspiration, destination guides and travel interests. Within each category, you’ll find further subcategories.
This simple structure helps you find what you’re looking for, while also letting you browse and be inspired by the content. It also engages you as a reader, keeping you on the site for longer.
It also helps SEO. Having internal links, a wealth of content and clear categories helps search engines classify the site so it appears in more search engine results pages.
How the content works
The blog is split into three categories, and posts are generally no more than 1,000 words. The content is peppered with images and quotes to make everything more engaging and readable. The categories are as follows:
Inspiration
This section uses compelling content to inspire your travel ideas. Posts, such as ‘Family-friendly European getaways’, give great insights into several destinations and feature high-quality imagery that is placed to the side of each piece of text. This layout provides a magazine-like feel that helps transport you to each destination.
Destination guides
These are focused areas with evocative travel blog writing that covers some of the world’s best destinations. The nested format allows you to dive in and explore. There are pillar posts, such as ‘The US’s best sunsets’, that then open up to guides on each location. It’s a great approach that encourages you to go deeper.
Travel interests
Here, The Journey blog zones in on particular parts of the travel experience. One example is the post about cocktails with a view, which delves into the pairing of some of Ritz-Carlton’s most remarkable locations and its finest mixologists.
Tone of voice
Ritz-Carlton launched a new brand tone of voice back in 2015 as part of a logo and brand update to keep it at the forefront of luxury travel.
While the brand has always been associated with the idea of legacy ad luxury, it wanted to bing its tone of voice into the present day with a more modern feel.
This can be observed throughout The Journey's content. The tone is aspirational, yet relaxed and avoids being overly formal. The posts are easily understandable, which is crucial in promoting engagement. This laid-back tone is evident in wordplay like: "If the world is your oyster, then think of The Ritz-Carlton, Kapalua as your shining pearl."
The luxury aspect is emphasized by highlighting the concept of exclusivity and one-of-a-kind experiences, using phrases like: "Allow our experts to lead you on a journey of well-traveled living. Enchanting destinations, significant moments, and immersive culture.
SEO elements
While the quality of the content is considered by search engine algorithms, Ritz-CArlton also introduces other key SEO elements to help position its content.
Each post features a strong meta description, which is the little snippet that appears below a web page title on Google search engine results pages.
Ritz-Carlton’s meta descriptions are precise and informative, and they contain keywords, helping to boost their ranking.
The brand also uses alt tags for every image. These are pieces of text that help search engines categorise and rank content online.
Why the blog posts are so effective
Diversity of content
Far from just relying on traditional hotel marketing techniques, Ritz-Carlton is mixing up content and bringing a range of travel blog article ideas, from features on the art of sushi to guides on European art and everything in between.
In-depth guides
Each destination guide features a Ritz-Carlton hotel, as well as authentic experiences that highlight the unique cultural identity of a destination.
UX
The Journey blog is a joy to navigate. It’s easy, fluid, and intuitive, and it was designed to be explored and savoured.
Evocative imagery
Each picture tells a story. From sweeping panoramas to action shots, images are high quality and inviting, making you wish you were there.
Potential improvements
It’s difficult to find many weaknesses in Ritz-Carlton’s Journey blog, but there might be a few areas that could be improved upon.
Firstly, there’s a lack of travel advice. You’ll find interesting offbeat guides, such as how to arrange flowers courtesy of the head florist at the Ritz-Carlton in Naples.
However, those kinds of articles offer little value to travellers, so backing them up with tips and advice readers can put into action will help people visualise planning their trips and drive them towards making the booking.
For example, travel blog post ideas that include advice on how to make the most of a quick city break might be more informative.
Furthermore, some destination guides show a lack of expertise or perhaps incorrect translations. For example, referring to ‘The Tibidabo’ in Barcelona demonstrates a lack of local knowledge since the hill overlooking the city is known simply as Tibidabo in English.
This highlights the importance of using local experts and journalists for your hotel bog post content, as well as native-speaking translators, who are familiar with a destination.
How to create your own travel blog
Hotels have a significant advantage when it comes to creating a blog, as there is a wide range of content that can be covered. They can focus on local culture guides, things to do in each destination, wildlife information, in-depth explorations of local restaurants, stories about the history of hotels, and weekend itineraries. The possibilities are endless.
You can even interview staff about their favourite travel experiences, work with influencers or speak to local experts about the history and natural surroundings of a destination.
Once you’ve struck gold with some well-thought-out travel blog ideas, you can start creating your content. Remember to keep SEO in mind, with a focus on using keywords and implementing a dedicated keyword strategy. There are lots of free keyword research tools, such as Google Trends and Semrush, which can help you narrow your focus.
Also, try to work within a content calendar, so you have a plan for your writing and when you’d like to post it. This prevents you from having to think of an idea every time you want to publish an article. You can also easily link the content to major calendar events, such as festivities and parties.
The importance of great travel blog writing
As the success of Ritz-Carlton's Journey blog demonstrates, having quality travel blog posts helps to showcase your brand, build bonds with your audience and drives traffic to your website.
When it comes to creating an effective hospitality industry blog, it can be hard to stand out from the competition. That’s why it makes sense to turn to expert travel blog writers.
Peregryn has worked with some of the world’s leading luxury hotel and travel brands, helping them to create SEO-rich content that inspires their audiences.
Our expert services combine data-driven insights with creative expertise, which can help brands like yours build trust and authority online.
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