The wedding business can be very lucrative for a hotel. If you’ve been hosting as a venue, you know catering represents a significant portion of your revenue. In addition to room sales, you are more than likely going to see the highest prices per head compared to any other type of banquet you will have booked at the hotel. However, many properties do not spend nearly enough marketing on this specific segment of the industry.
To boost your catering sales and ultimately increase your catering revenue, you need to focus on better marketing strategies.
Why It Matters
While a wedding will generally bring significant food and beverage income for one night and room sales, they are also considerably high maintenance. The wedding party and parents, at the very least, all need to be treated like VIPs, and the function itself is very labor-intensive. Depending on the level of service, you are booking servers at a 10:1 to 15:1 ratio for a sit-down dinner and 15:1 to 25:1 for a buffet or station dinner, far more servers than you would use for any other type of function.
In addition to the cost of the servers, you generally want a significant management presence at the front desk and in banquets. Finally, there is the setup cost, which generally involves more banquet housemen to ensure every aspect of the setup is perfect prior to the wedding, kicking off even more so if flips are required during the function.
Even with all those additional costs, though, weddings are still highly profitable for the hotel. It also happens to be an event where you get to show off everything the property has to offer to a network far larger than the individuals in the room at the time of the function. Think about how many of those guests attending the wedding will be firing off social media posts all night and how many of their friends will be liking and sharing those posts. An event of 200 can quickly reach thousands of people.
Partner with Local Vendors
Collaborating with wedding vendors is a great way to increase your visibility and reach. Partner with local florists, photographers, and wedding planners to offer bundled packages. These packages will not only attract clients but also increase your catering revenue by offering services along with venue rental.
Offer customized menus
Most wedding couples today are looking for unique dining experiences. Offering customized menus that cater to their individual tastes and preferences is one way to stand out from the competition. Work with your catering team to create personalized menus that showcase your versatility and creativity.
SEO and Web Presence
Before you ever get started on digital marketing, you need to know what specific keywords you should be marketing that can be used on your hotel’s website.
Search engine optimization (SEO) can help you attract more traffic to your website and increase your visibility. Optimize your website’s content with relevant wedding-related keywords to help potential clients find you online. Use Google My Business to improve your online presence and attract more local clients.
Ads are a no-brainer here, but you can also build pages on your website and create blog entries to attack these different keywords. You should have a dedicated landing page on the website specifically for wedding inquiries that both collect information and directs potential clients to the various pages on the website that offer more information on your wedding services. Included in these pages should be snippets of reviews from prior wedding guests, videos, and of course, photos.
Hire a Professional Photographer
Photos are obviously going to be the key selling tool on these pages and on social media, so you are going to want to use a professional to ensure they are done right. Honestly, though, this should not be an added expense for this project. Most wedding photographers would be more than happy to trade out their services to become a preferred hotel vendor. Furthermore, photographers being used during events will generally let you use their photos if you give them credit because it is free adverting for them.
If you don’t have a TikTok or Instagram for the property, this is a good time to start. In the case of weddings, nothing will be more powerful than a video tour of the wedding as it is happening. Again, this should be professionally done for the best effect.
Social Media
Social media will also play a major role in developing a presence as a local wedding venue. Every time a wedding is held on the property, with permission from your guests, you should flood your accounts with photographs. As stated above, this offers the potential to reach tens of thousands of guests with every post over and above your own fan base.
You should also clear approval with the wedding party to ensure they don’t mind you posting their pictures online during the function. Here, you can have a banquet manager or other manager take and post videos in real-time or even possibly take the event live on Instagram or Facebook with the permission of the guest.
Combined, all these marketing techniques will create a buzz about your hotel as a local wedding venue and your catering revenue will inevitably increase!
Need managers that can help improve your marketing efforts? Then let JDI help! Joseph David International is ranked among the top hospitality recruiting firms in the country because we work hard to find the ideal fit for both the client and the candidate. For more information about our hotel management recruiting services, please click here.