How to optimize the occupancy in hotels during the low season?
Every hotel finds it difficult to optimize the occupancy in hotels during low season irrespective of its size.
During high season, it’s not difficult for hotels to earn revenue.
But the low season can cause stress and challenges for hotel owners who are genuinely struggling to make ends meet.
Low season is the perfect time to indulge in upgrading your websites, and social media accounts.
Train your staff to brush off their skills, like train front desk employees to promote booking upgrades.
With proactive strategic planning, you can improve your hotel improve brand image.
Hence, all these will benefit you in the peak season when a large number of bookings will be made.
Let’s have a look at a few strategies which you can implement to optimize occupancy in hotels during the low season.
Improve length of stay restrictions
Hoteliers must be flexible enough in low season to adapt to the needs and demands of guests.
Hence, length of stay restrictions is one such need, especially in this time of the pandemic.
People are looking for staycations and other places to stay for some hours due to various reasons like someone is ill or;
They are working from home but not finding a suitable environment in their home to work.
So, length of stay restrictions can be an effective promotional tactic for enticing visitors
To book a room at the same price for every time they plan to stay.
It aids in the establishment of demand for a longer period, thus increasing the guest’s loyalty to the hotel.
The longer your visitors last, the more chances you’ll have to win them over.
Pricing of the length of stay
Pricing of this is a variable pricing technique that considers the guest’s arrival date as well as the number of nights they plan to stay at the hotel.
This ensures that the visitor will be charged the same flat rate every night for the entire duration of their stay.
It’s a tactic for increasing sales and encouraging guests to visit longer.
Focus on your marketing
The low season is the time you should invest in marketing tactics to improve it and eliminate a poorly performing marketing plan.
Revise your website, make a courtesy call to a long-time client to see how they can provide you with fresh leads.
Moreover, maximize your sales with digital marketing strategies.
Increase your search engine marketing investment by purchasing brand-neutral keywords.
And take steps to improve your position on Google Ads and Metasearch Engines.
You may also allow previous visitors to return to your hotel for a second stay at a significantly reduced rate that is only exclusive to them.
Pricing strategies
In this season, one must focus on filling your rooms rather than charging a high price.
You should charge a price which is low enough to fill the rooms and high to cover the cost.
There are many strategies you can implement to invite guests to your hotel.
One such way is to use loyalty cards to provide rewards and concessions to guests.
Thus, loyalty card encourages repeat business and frequent visitors.
Large price differences between room types in low season produce contrasting results.
You can combat this by examining conversion patterns by room group and comparing them to higher demand periods
To see if higher room categories are underperforming.
Moreover, remaining active on social media platforms will maximize bookings.
Manage online reputation
To maintain a positive image of the brand and attract guests to hotels, maintaining an online reputation plays a crucial role.
Maintaining a strong online image is essential for businesses,
Given the growing proliferation of social media, third-party review websites, blogs, and other digital platforms.
Visitors look at online reviews before booking any room, hence hotels must place priority on the guest experience.
Cleanliness, convenience, venue, services, personnel, accessibility, and maintaining value for money.
These are only a few sure-fire ways to deliver a better experience to hotel guests and increase hotel occupancy rates.
Moreover, not only managing but constant monitoring is also required to know what is being said about their hotel online.
Since online content circulates so quickly, people’s perceptions of brands will shift in a matter of seconds.
Target different segments of customers
The low season is the time, you can expand the reach of your hotel.
If you remain too confine to your target market then it becomes difficult to optimize occupancy.
There are different market segments that you can target like millennials, wellness travel, family trips, bleisure travellers( mixing both business and leisure in a trip).
Create offers according to different age groups that appeal to everyone.
Moreover, analyse customer data and organise events, meetings weddings which the majority of customers are interested in.
Don’t forget to advertise the services you are providing for different customers.
Use different social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter to advertise services.
And another way to advertise them is on your website. Use news ticker block on your website.
To know more about news ticker click here.
Working with the revenue manager
Last but not the least, even after applying many strategies you find it difficult to optimize the occupancy in hotels during the low season.
Then you may take the suggestions and work under the guidance of the revenue manager.
They use historical data to forecast future demand and make revenue-boosting recommendations.
Moreover, revenue managers use automated systems to show hoteliers their performance across different channels and market segments every day.
They understand the technology and provide insights on rates competitors are changing at the low season.
Ultimately, helping hoteliers to decide the optimal rate to sell their hotel rooms.
Conclusion
Listed above are the strategies which hoteliers can implement overcome the challenges of low season.
We are sure implementing strategies what suits best your hotel will surely increase occupancy during low season.
Ultimately, it will benefit your hotel business and increase revenue.
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