Choose the Best Instagram Giveaway for Your Hotel

After analyzing your hotel’s Instagram, you decide it needs more engagement. You’ve done some research, and you think it might be useful to host a giveaway, but you’re not sure where to start. So, what kind of giveaway should you do? What will benefit your property the most?

It’s easy to get overwhelmed with all the different possibilities. No need to worry, though, because we’ll help you sort through the options. This guide will help you choose the best Instagram giveaway for your hotel, including exploring different types of contests, the level of difficulty for the user, the individual success rates, and what size account is a good fit for each giveaway type.

Instagram’s giveaway rules:

Before we talk about the different kinds of giveaways, let’s make sure you fully understand Instagram’s rules. This is only a summary, so please make sure you read the complete rules and regulations before proceeding with your giveaway.

1. The first thing is to make sure you post the official rules of your giveaway.
2. Next, outline the offer terms and eligibility requirements.
3. Lastly, Instagram requires you to include something stating that they are in no way associated with your giveaway, and they cannot be held responsible for any wrongdoings during the contest.

Best Instagram giveaway:

I love winning free things, and I’m sure you do too, which is why hosting contests can be a fun way to engage with your audience. The best place to start a giveaway is by having a goal. Your goal can even be as simple as increasing your followers or driving more traffic to your hotel’s website. Once you’ve chosen a goal, it becomes easier to choose the right contest.

Now let’s go over some of the best giveaways. The contests are broken down into sections below and are based on how many Instagram followers your hotel has. The first step in creating an Instagram giveaway is choosing the right photo to post. Either use a photo from your hotel, the prize you’ll be giving away, or a generic photo saying something like “giveaway.”

Category 1: Small Accounts with Less than 100 Followers

These types of contests are best for smaller accounts with low profile engagement because they are very easy for users. Since it’s so easy, it will have a higher success rate, and encourage more activity on your Instagram feed.

• Giveaway 1: Post a photo with rules telling your followers to like the picture.
• Giveaway 2: Post a photo with rules telling users to follow your hotel’s Instagram page.
• Giveaway 3: Post a photo with rules telling followers to tag two friends in the comments, such as the Robin Hood Hotel in Norwood Australia. They hosted a giveaway asking their followers to tag a friend (Make sure you mention they tag only friends or people they know to prevent spamming).

Category 2: Medium Accounts with 100 – 10k Followers

These three giveaways are best for medium-sized accounts with fairly good profile engagement because even though they are simple, they do require the users to be more proactive. Since it’s of medium difficulty, not as many people will partake as in Category 1. Therefore you can offer bigger prizes and accumulate more serious followers.

• Giveaway 4: Instruct your followers to post a photo on their Instagram of themselves in the hotel, in the city, or of their dream destinations. Creating your hashtags will help you track the entries. For example, if your the Hollywood Hotel then you could use #HollywoodHotelGiveaway #HH10Y
• Party #HHphotocontest. Setting unique hashtags will allow you to search through photo entries easily. Another way to track giveaway entries is to ask users to tag your hotel.
• Giveaway 5: Post a photo with rules asking users to make specific comments on the giveaway photo like their favorite food. You can also ask them to comment on other images in your feed.
• Giveaway 6: This giveaway is specifically for those hotels looking to gain direct traffic to their website. This can be accomplished by posting a photo with rules telling users to enter a giveaway on your hotel’s website like signing up for your newsletter or use Google Docs to create a giveaway form. An excellent example of this is the Hotel the Dylan in Amsterdam Netherlands, as shown in the above picture taken by @lofficielnl on Instagram.

Category 3: Large Accounts with More than 10k Followers

These contests are best for larger accounts with high profile engagement. Since your account is more substantial, it’s best to engage with your current followers instead of trying to increase your account size. Your giveaway can include bigger prizes like multiple night stays since fewer people would enter.

• Giveaway 7: Create rules telling people to repost your photo on their Instagram by using a unique hashtag and tagging your profile.
• Giveaway 8: Post a photo with rules asking users to follow your Hotel’s other social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, etc.… Warning! This type of giveaway adds extra difficulty in managing entries because you have to track the same users throughout all social media platforms. The benefit is cross-promotion, which can give a boost to your other sites.
• Giveaway 9: Tell people to share your giveaway post on other social media sites e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, etc.… Make sure you tell them to also tag or hashtag your hotel on all other platforms making it easier for you to manage the entries.

Once You’ve Found the Right Contest.

You can also combine these different giveaways since Instagram lets you customize everything. Here are some of my favorite combinations. (Warning! The more rules you add, the harder your contest becomes, which will reduce the number of users who participate..)

1. Good combinations for smaller accounts are 1, 2, or 3.
2. A good combination for medium accounts is 1, 2, 3, or 4, 5, 6.

Once you’ve found the best Instagram giveaway for your Hotel, then you can start having fun with it. Come up with great prizes whose value should correspond with the difficulty of the contest, and make sure you pick the winners randomly. You can finish up the contest by posting the winner and tagging them on Instagram. Celebrating the winner will encourage others to partake next time.