Every hotelier wants to get the best possible rate for rooms and services offered by the hotel. Unfortunately, what people want and what the market demands are not always on the same page. While 2019 has obviously started, there is still plenty of time to make some much-needed adjustments to your revenue management strategy to ensure the hotel maximizes its potential for profit.
#1 – Understand Your Market Segments
This is about as basic as it gets, but something that still needs to be stressed. What does the local market dictate and demand? What types of travelers are using your property during the week and weekend? What is the competition, even if not in the same area, offering these guests that you are not or are unable to offer?
Knowing the answers to these questions will enable your sales team to develop an appropriate pricing strategy to maximize room rates for each specific niche of traveler. It will also enable the team to dial in specific advertising campaigns and offers for each market segment. The idea here is to offer each segment value and consistency, which should in turn lead to more customer loyalty.
#2 – Improving Search Visibility and Rankings
Hopefully, you paid specific attention to the wording of that sub-header. While rankings are obviously important, so is the overall online presence and visibility of the property. Everyone wants to be at the top of search engine results, but there are obviously only a few slots on that first page. Lower rankings, however, can be offset with a strong online presence.
This can be done with a focused social media strategy, a proven and tested online advertising campaign, as well as better content management. Assuming marketing has the ability to contribute and manage some aspects of the website, a steady stream of quality content that offers real insight for travelers can be extremely beneficial in terms of the property’s online presence.
Something else we have discussed numerous times is encouraging guests to leave reviews and being interactive with them. We actually discussed this topic in-depth in our last blog post, which you can read here.
#3 – Direct Booking Incentives
There is far more benefit in getting guests to book directly with the property than relying on outside booking sites like Hotels.com and Travelocity to sell rooms. First, there is no need to pay a commission to a secondary outlet for providing room sales, but that is far from the best benefit.
Because commissions are not being paid, hoteliers can offer significant benefits to guests booking directly with the property. This can come in the form of bonus points on frequent traveler accounts to discounted rates to special amenities and perks. However, it also provides the property with the opportunity to offer these guests upselling opportunities not necessarily available when using outside booking sources.
For instance, certain Hilton properties offer the opportunity to check in early or secure a late checkout when booking directly. Properties can also offer a variety of packages, such as a room and dinner package. It enables you to drive sales in other outlets of the property, something that is not likely to be available when relying heavily on outside booking agents for the bulk of room sales.
#4 – Interdepartmental Cooperation
This point actually plays off the prior point. If you want to tie benefits and selling points outside of room sales, it is imperative to work with the other departments rather than force feeding these department heads and directors your ideas. The last thing you want is to create a wedge between sales and another department that can create significant animosity and problems moving forward.
For instance, if you want to create a book and dine package, consult with the Food and Beverage Director to ensure the package offered also helps the food and beverage department meet its goals. I can go back to my experience in the industry of having sales managers who knew nothing about F&B costs randomly offering packages where we actually lost money in our department on every sale. In essence, offers created to help these managers meet their goals were preventing my department from meeting our goals.
Every aspect of the operation needs to be profitable with these offerings or they simply do not work. Point being, sit down with the people that make the decisions for these departments BEFORE offering a package to guests.
#5 – Mobile Optimization
In all likelihood, at least for major flags, this is something that may have to be addressed with corporate offices, as it is unlikely a local property will have complete control of the design, programming, and hosting of the hotel’s website.
Having said that, it is imperative for the website to be optimized properly for mobile traffic. With each passing year, more and more guests are relying on their mobile devices to research and book rooms. In fact, the pendulum has already swung in favor of mobile device bookings. Point being, if the website is not optimized for high performance on a mobile device, at the very least, you are losing out on direct bookings and worst-case scenario, you are actually driving potential guests to your direct competitors.
As you can see, the new-age of revenue management for hotels requires a very diverse and well-educated manager. Driving sales is no longer a matter of cold calls and placing newspaper and magazine ads. A significant portion of the position requires some savviness in regard to today’s technology and internet platforms. If you are trying to find the top talent in the industry for your property or hospitality organization, it is time to call Joseph David International hotel recruiters. For more information about our recruiting services, please click here.
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