7 Strategies For An Independent Hotels To Compete With Big Chain Hotels
To compete with big chain hotels is not an easy job for an independent hotel. For survival in the industry and to compete with big chain hotels staying competitive is essential.
Independent hotels have more flexibility and a greater chance to explore.
Independent hotels can easily customize their strategies specific to their location and specially designed for their target audience.
They should plan and implement listed down strategies to compete with big chain hotels-:
- Stand out from the crowd
- OTA connections to improve your hotel bookings
- Maximizing metasearch
- Automate your hotel operations
- Build-up your online ratings and reviews
- Make your guests feel special
- Optimize your website
Stand Out From The Crowd
Identify what you are best at and brand it. Your hotel must have some competitive advantage over others in the market.
Hence, find out what makes your hotel unique and special than others.
If you are not finding anything special then you can take help from following points-:
- You can offer any amenity to your guests, like throwing events to attract guests.
- With the help of local musicians and singers showcase their talent at your hotel.
- You can provide a travel guide for guests to view local attractions.
OTA Connections To Improve Your Hotel Bookings
Independent hotels are not so popular among the crowd.
Tourists nowadays depend on online reservations as most of the tourists need to confirm a reservation before going to a certain place. And for that, they book hotels online.
Hence, you need to strengthen your hotel brand position across online portals, especially on Online Travel Agencies.
It will help your hotel to fetch bookings from across the globe.
On Online Travel Agencies you can list your hotel free of cost.
For taking full benefit of OTA, make sure you have a cloud Hotel Property Management System and channel manager.
Maximizing Metasearch
It displays the current rates of many different hotels in a given destination.
Ultimately, this makes the booking process more convenient for travelers as they can compare rates at a glance.
While metasearch engine display information they don’t sell inventory.
Some metasearch engines like TripAdvisor, Google Hotel Ads are now displaying instant bookings buttons that allow travelers to book directly from metasearch results.
Thus, Metasearch sites help you derive more direct bookings at a lower cost of acquisition that help independent hotels compete with big chain hotels.
While big chains have the advantage of metasearch with more bidding power you can play it smart on your bidding strategy.
You can use the bidding system to control when and where to show up on the list of hotel prices.
There is a lot of freedom to change strategy and increase Return on Investment.
Automate Your Hotel Operations
With a high degree of automation, you can easily take care of day to day operations. This will help you stay competitive by saving your time.
When day to day operations are done manually, there are chances of errors.
Adopt cloud PMS to automate and streamline daily operations with ease. As a result, your staff gets enough time to focus on your guest’s requirements.
The Hotel PMS system helps you manage to ensure the real-time flow of information between departments. It will help you manage check-ins, check-out, manage reservations, billing, and many more with accuracy.
Yes, we know that independent hotels cannot afford that high-end automation technology which is very expensive like big hotel chains.
But we suggest that they should embrace the entry-level technology which is affordable and then upgrade themselves according to their business needs.
Feel free to contact us to discuss more of this.
Build-Up Your Online Ratings And Reviews
Online reviews play a major role in increasing your hotel sales.
Most of the people are likely to spend more on a hotel that has positive hotel reviews.
Bad reviews harm your hotel’s business.
Claim and update your profile on key review sources. Ensure content is accurate and add descriptions and images.
Set up reminders about your hotel ratings and mentions on rating sites and social networks.
Pay attention to reviews and share them with staff. So that proper action is taken to improve your hotel service quality.
Make Your Guests Feel Special
What makes your guests feel special is the quality of the relationship you create with them and whether they want to come back to see you.
Ultimately, hospitality is all about relationships.
Staff should be responsive to guest’s needs, who listen and try to understand the guest’s problems by stepping into their shoes.
Pay attention to little things like a welcoming attitude, maintaining the hygiene of the hotel, polite behavior.
All these things make your guests feel as you care for their comfort and happiness.
With the help of the cloud Property Management System, you can have your hotel earlier visited the guest’s data collection like- contact details, gender, special preferences, etc.
The more you understand your guests, the better service you can provide.
Optimize Your Website
Make sure you use high-resolution photos of your hotel on your website.
Link your website to your social media assets so you will rank better in search engines.
By adding google 360° images your hotel potential guests can virtually roam your hotel.
Make your website mobile-friendly.
Display credibility proof on your website which includes SSL certificates and credit card security badges. It increases direct bookings as visitors will feel safe.
Conclusion
From above we can conclude that having a clear brand strategy is important to compete with big chain hotels.
If your hotel is best at something then you should brand it. Optimize your hotel website and list it on Online Travel Agencies to increase your bookings.
Giving special attention to guests is crucial to increase the ratings of your hotel.
For details on, things independent hotels should learn from big chain hotels you can check this blog.
Please share views in the comment box.
If you want to learn about the functionality of QloApps then you can visit this link: QLO Reservation System – Free Open-Source Hotel Booking & Reservation SystemIn case of any query, issue or requirement please feel free to raise it on QloApps Forum