Tricks for handling hotel occupancy during down-times
Every hotel goes through a phase of low occupancy during down-times.
But one should not lose hope, as this phase will pass.
Firstly, to tackle this problem, you have to understand the root cause of this problem.
And then plan strategies accordingly to boost your hotel occupancy.
With careful marketing planning and strategic ideas, you can keep your hotel from suffering the loss of revenues during difficult times.
So here are few tricks for handling hotel occupancy during down-times which prevent your hotel from incurring losses.
Find out your hotel downtimes
The first step should be to research the past occupancy trend of your hotel to assess the periods when the occupancy was low.
Researching your off-months will help decide what are its causes and come up with a solution to counter it.
Thus, enables you to properly train management in terms of performance control across different hotel units.
Hence, making it easier for you to implement company goals and plan strategies accordingly.
For instance- A hotel near beaches will face downtimes during the monsoon.
Analysis of Customer Relationship Management
Knowing your guests play a crucial role here, and Customer Relationship Management will help you in this.
With the database, you can know guests who frequently visit your hotel.
Thus, those are the ones who can turn out to be valuable during down-times also.
Also, collect data about your past, present and future guests and learn about their behaviour and booking patterns.
Further, connect with those who more likely to be your hotel guests through emails, messages, social media.
Offering exciting vouchers and discounts for a limited period which, may attract them during down-times.
Know that your repeat buyers are the greatest source of extra profits in your company at any given time
Events and partnership
Events play a major role to drive revenue during down-times.
Because, even during the period of down-times, there are chances of occupancy in your hotel.
Various events like carnival festival, comedy events, marathons, and many more events are taking place in the area.
When the period of down-times is going on, you can tie-up with local businesses to promote your hotel.
To become the official sponsor or host hotel for the event, contact the local authority or the event organisers.
Eventually, it will draw guests to your hotel.
Such gatherings are hosted with several visitors, and they are also very profitable because they can book several rooms at a time.
Additionally, some events take place more than once in a year, so there are chances of it becoming a safer source of revenue.
Further, you can offer locals of the area few hotel services like access to the games room and swimming pool of the hotel.
This makes them feel welcome and enter your hotel in their good books which will benefit your hotel in future.
Pricing strategies to tackle occupancy during down-times
We know there is less or no occupancy during down-times.
Hence, you must focus on filling your rooms.
Charging less during downtimes will encourage more guests to your hotels.
Planning is essential in this and your first step is to segment market as per the location, geography, etc. into established groupings.
The basic price of the room is only one aspect of pricing.
Consider other factors like guest’s likes and dislikes, their booking patterns, past booking prices, prices of competitors, the total number of guests to form an effective pricing strategy.
The prices which you charge from guests must be low to attract your guests but also high enough to cover your hotel expenses.
You can take the help of a cost accountant or a person who knows cost accounting well.
You can also mix this pricing strategy with loyalty and bonus programs to attract more people during downtimes.
Showcase offers and invites guests
Below are three mediums through which you can showcase your offers and invite guests.
Digital Marketing
With some practices, your hotel can increase hotel revenue by-:
- Taking appropriate action to reach a higher ranking on Google Advertising and Metasearch Engines.
- Increase investment in search engine marketing through the acquisition of brand-neutral keywords.
Hotel Website
- Update your website gallery and cover photos to attract guests.
- Update calendar so that no potential guests misses out an opportunity to book an available room.
- Promote your offers and rates of rooms.
- Mention all the special activities your guests can enjoy.
E-mail marketing
Send e-mails to your past guests about the special rates and offers your hotel is providing.
It acts as an effective tool to attract more guests to your hotel.
Also Emphasize services such as pool, yoga, gym, etc., as well as showcase the numerous local activities to make them book your hotel easily.
All these will attract new visitors and retain old visitors. Thus, helping your hotel to earn Return on Investment.
Regenerate the Operations and Procedures
During the period of downtimes, you can utilize it for training your hotel staffs on revenue-generating strategies.
For instance- bar and restaurant employees may benefit from product cross-selling and upselling training and education.
You can take care of the visitor experience and their reviews by actively encouraging them for feedback and reviews.
Further, you can also take an in-depth analysis of your services where you might be lacking and take corrective actions.
For in-depth analysis of root causes of low occupancy, you can also carry-out updating of websites, branding and social media pages.
And then collect feedback from both your guests as well as staffs.
After that give special emphasis on those areas where service has fallen short of expectations.
Conclusion
The hard fact and the most defining characteristic of the global hospitality the industry is the difficulty with attracting visitors and achieving full hotel occupancy.
When the hotel is enjoying full occupancy then everything is working fine.
But when they face a difficult time then it hit them hard especially when they are not prepared for it.
This article lists out a few tricks which one can implement when their hotel is facing low occupancy during down-times.
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