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Although they would like to deny it, Gen Zs and Millennials have one essential thing (for you!) in common: just like the Millennials before them, Gen Zs are highly motivated by travel. They will spend as much of their disposable income on it as possible.

Don’t believe me?

Check out these stats from a recent article by Morning Consult:

“52% of Gen Z adults are frequent travelers, taking at least three leisure trips in the past year. That share is significantly larger than it is for higher-earning Gen Xs and Baby Boomers, and it’s on par with Millennials… Gen Zs will likely outpace travel-happy Millennials as they age and grow in spending power.”

This makes Gen Z travellers a hugely valuable demographic for today’s hotels, especially when inflation is leading to skyrocketing prices, and a looming recession can make other demographics feel uncertain about booking travel. If you correctly set up your hotel’s offerings and tech stack, these avid travellers could be your sweet spot (revenue-wise) for the coming months and years.

So, what are Gen Z travellers looking for, and how can you give them more of what they want?

Literally… Just give them what they want.

Even more, than past generations, Gen Z is motivated by customized, authentic, social media-worthy experiences, much more than luxury or possessions, which is why travel ranks so highly on their favourites list. So, your role, as the savvy hotelier you are, is to create reasons for Gen Z travellers to choose your property over others by creating packages or on-site offerings that they can’t say no to, like The Jupiter Hotel in Portland, Oregon, does.

The Jupiter Hotel has done a fantastic job of creating a space in which Gen Zs will feel right at home, from the décor to the creative package offerings – think stays devoted to weed, sexy time, music/festivals, etc. – and the strategy has worked wonders for their bottom line:

“We’ve seen fantastic results since implementing our new Gen Z-friendly packages and experience-focused service offerings,” said Nick Pearson, General Manager at The Jupiter Hotel. “Gen Z, as hotel consumers, are really interested in what makes your property different and unique, but also really price conscious. Growing up with the internet, they are accustomed to total price transparency and will book wherever they find the best rate + experience combo. To capture this market and drive loyalty, parity becomes incredibly important, along with interesting experiential direct booking incentives.”

Another essential part of Gen Zs’ lives is their dog babies, and, as dog babies, they often travel with their Gen Z parents. This is another HUGE opportunity for your hotel to attract Gen Z travellers and their beloved pets: dog-friendly stays. I don’t just mean the old school “yes, bring your dog, and it will cost you $50” experience; I mean a real immersive experience that integrates the dog into their trip and offers extra perks for their furry best friends.

Pup welcome packages (treats, a ball, a list of dog parks nearby, etc.); an adorable dog bed that fits your room’s décor and begs for a social post; and dog-friendly activities, such as dog yoga and dog-friendly cafés and restaurants, etc., are all things that will make Gen Z’s dogs feel welcome and, in return, Gen Zs will love you right back!

And the best part… these specialized packages are only available through the direct channel, giving potential guests an excellent reason to click away from the OTAs and book directly for these extra perks and packages. Win/win/win!

But to make all these package options and perks available, your operational technology needs to support this type of customization, which brings us to…

Booking engine basics

Of course, your booking engine is how you make all this customization possible; a legacy solution doesn’t have the flexibility and the back-end customization necessary to make all these Gen Z-friendly options possible. You need a sophisticated booking engine that can create customized packages, multiple room types and add-on optional upgrades while creating a very user-friendly booking experience (Gen Z travellers won’t wait for slow-loading pages or go through an endless checkout process).

Part of giving potential guests the best booking experience is showing them that they are getting the best deal for their room; that’s why your booking engine should also offer an OTA rate comparison tool, which shows the current rates offered for your rooms on the top OTAs to show the potential guest that they are making the right choice in booking, directly, with you.

Finally, we mentioned earlier how social media is an integral part of how Gen Z travellers research and plan their trips, so you should be linking directly to your booking engine from your social media posts, making it easy to inspire lookers to become bookers with a single click.

Taking sustainability seriously… No, seriously, really seriously.

It’s been widely discussed that Gen Z travellers are very conscious of the environmental impact that their travel choices have on the planet, but just saying that your hotel is “going green” and making small, non-impactful changes isn’t enough; in fact, you could be turning them off by launching a massive marketing campaign about your sustainability measures (a.k.a.“greenwashing”) – unless you are the real deal.

Gen Z often scrutinizes the hotels where they stay to ensure that they are sustainable – especially if it’s being splashed all over their marketing materials – across all aspects of their operations, from enabling guests to opt out of washing towels daily, to removing all plastic from room service and restaurants, to making facility updates to maximize energy efficiency, and more.

TL;DR: Take sustainability seriously, or don’t use it as a marketing message because it will only work against you with Gen Z travellers.

Now that you know how to close the deal with Gen Zs, you have everything you need to attract this valuable demographic. So, get started today; after all, who can say “no” to consistent profitability, no matter how the economy changes over the coming months and years?!