3 Harmful Practices for Hotel Business

The hotel business is not an easy affair to do. It requires a lot of skills, inter-team coordination, and awareness to run this business.

The competition is fierce in this industry and it is increasing with every day that passes. The industry is growing and hence attracting more and more people to invest in it.

On every traveling location, you will find a bunch of hotels. Almost every traveling spot is overcrowded trying to capture a similar type of guest.

So, if you want to thrive in this industry then you will have to keep a watch on your competition, be introspective and keep expanding your knowledge.

Furthermore, customer expectations are also very difficult to follow. With advancing technology the customers are also expecting more luxurious and hi-tech stay experience.

With so many issues to answer a hotelier cannot afford to commit mistakes. So here are some practices that hoteliers do but they should not.

After all, no matter how difficult the industry is, it is the most growing one. The influx of bookings is increasing. People are willing to spend more on travel. And the share of the hospitality industry in the global economy is increasing.

Ergo, let us now check some of the Harmful Practices for Hotel Business.

1. Improper Marketing

It is agreeable that there is a certain rise in the number of travelers. But still, we cannot just expect them to walk in our hotel without know in us.

This is something like throwing noodles on the wall and hoping something to stick.

So if you do not have a marketing strategy then your doom is near.  You will have to ask yourself a simple question that how will a traveler know that my hotel is there to host him.

And of course, the option to this question is not that the traveler will visit the traveling location and see my hotel.

We have to analyze that we are living in a digital era. People plan their journey. So when they come to your location they already have a booking.

You need to place your hotel as an option when they doing their research or looking on the web for a hotel.

The internet has enabled us to outreach a large audience in no time. You need to be aware of digital marketing practices like SEO, social media marketing, content marketing, and email marketing.

Get yourself a digital approach and start exploring new possibilities.

2. Milking your loyal client base

It is said that most of your sales should come from your existing customers, actually 80% of it. And we all know it. But that does not mean that you start exploiting our loyal client base.

The pricing is an important factor that determines sales. And due to overpricing you can lose your loyal client base.

Customers are loyal to you because of a reason. They may like your services or they are attracted to your pricing strategy.

But when you start trying to push the margin a little too far things start getting counterproductive.

Till the point your customers see your pricing reasonable, they will bear with you but then there will come a break-even point where they will leave you.

So you must run loyalty programs for your loyal customers. Your loyal customers deserve a bit more importance and care. It feels good for a customer when you get a special discount or an extra service for being loyal to you.

This will increase their affection for your brand. Also, they will become your cheapest source of marketing as they will create a word to mouth for you.

3. Implementing fancy looking but the wrong technology

Many times we get allured to things that we do not understand.

Yes, technology is a necessity of your business at every point but please don’t overdo it. First, understand the need of your business then choose the right tool for it.

There are many tools like Property Management System, Hotel Reservation Systems and Channel Manager available in the market. These tools can have many features to allure you. But do you need it?

Over-investing is not going to do any good.

For example, if you are a small boutique hotel. Then you do not need a high-fy cutting edge technology that a big chain hotel needs.

Technology is not your USP. You only need technology to manage your hotel. Then why invest in a fancy and expensive system.

This will put pressure on your revenue generation without any reason.

The best solution is to turn towards the open-source community for your technological needs. The open-source solutions have more to offer than what meets the eye. Many solutions like QloApps are free.

You do not have to invest much then you can scale the system as per your business needs. Grow your system according to your business, not your business according to your system.

Conclusion

These are the three harmful practices that are detrimental to a hotel business. Hoteliers have to show a lot of grit, smartness, and patience to run a successful hotel business.

And in between if anything goes wrong then it just breaks the motivation. So we should avoid any such mistake.

There will be more practices that are harmful to a hotel business. If you know one then please drop it in the comment box.

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