Your hotel group might have the best of the amenities and grandeur, but without a well-thought-out sales strategy, you won’t be able to attract the right guest at the right time to earn more. We are trying to say here that it is essential for you to consider several possible ways to sell more rooms to increase your occupancy. And this should not be your aim for some specific time of the year. Instead, it would be best to achieve optimal occupancy at your properties throughout the entire year. So stay with us. We will walk you through some of the crucial and proven strategies for sales promotion that you can adopt for your large hotel group.
Importance of hotel sales
“Hotel sales” is a carefully crafted activity that you roll out to promote or create awareness about your properties spread across locations. It is all about increasing your brand value and attracting more customers by tactfully saying why you are a better brand than the competition down the road. It is all about letting the guest know how you plan to make their stay memorable.
Now let’s look at some of the hotel sales promotion methods –
Efficient hotel distribution
This is one of the most critical factors of your overall hotel sales strategy. As part of your online sales, you need to work with OTAs. These third-party channels generate indirect sales for your property by selling your rooms to their end customers. Connecting to OTA does not only help you sell rooms. It also increases your online visibility across your target regions. GDS connect is another way to attract corporate guests through large global travel agents. Plus, you also must adopt an online booking engine to generate more direct bookings via your website and social media pages.
However, it would be best to have a cloud-based hotel property management software like Hotelogix that seamlessly integrates with a channel manager. It’s because, without this technological arrangement in place, it would be challenging for you to update rates, availability, and restrictions across all your sales channels. And when there are discrepancies related to your rates and room availability, you will have to deal with overbooking and double-booking issues.
Here is a piece of important advice:
Keep your website up-to-the-date with relevant images and information. Especially when you plan to sell more directly, make sure to translate your website content into the native language of your target region. Leverage the power of well-written content while targeting a range of keywords (from broad to specific) to capture user attention at all stages of their booking journey. Please give them a website that is mobile-friendly and loads in a jiffy.
Attract MICE travelers
Do you know that you stand to make more profit if you can efficiently target and attract MICE travelers? It’s because they spend more than leisure travelers. So it would be best if you targeted them with a special sales strategy. To do this, showcase your location and other elements, including meeting and conference halls, lighting, audiovisual equipment, in-house restaurants, Wi-Fi connectivity, and how well you can assist them in organizing their events and meetings. Send out regular emails to your corporate clients highlighting why they should choose you over others. They not only book your meeting spaces or banquet halls, but they also book your rooms. You can also collaborate with event planners or list your hotel amenities on venue booking sites/venue marketplace to enable event planners to see your unique differentiators.
Leverage the power of destination
This is another effective hotel sales strategy by highlighting important details of your locality while promoting your hotel brand. Here, talk about the local attractions such as an upcoming century-old carnival. Have your revenue management team estimate the forecast like what could be the footfall in your city for that particular event. Look at your competitors, their rates, and packages. You have to foresee the demand and then let the sales/marketing team take over from there. Create special rates/packages, write to your existing customers, let them know why they should not miss the event this year, and how you thrive on helping them enjoy the event in every possible way. If you have multiple properties, implement the same strategy in other locations.
Attract groups
Your sales team should know how to attract groups. Think local and promote local attractions like some events to attract large or mid-size groups. Highlight your special group-only rates, packages and let them know that you plan to offer them special/customized benefits like complimentary breakfast or gym access if they confirm their bookings a little earlier. Most importantly, you need to ensure an easy online group reservation experience for your target audience. However, if there is a group walk-in or the reservation is made over the phone, our cloud Hotel PMS can help you. It lets you book multiple rooms under one group reservation.
Roll out loyalty programs
Rewarding your guests through specially designed loyalty programs helps you with increased room sales. Look at other successful big hotel groups and learn how they have done it. Personalize your loyalty programs and make your guests feel valued. Know your guest segment and create a relevant, desirable, diverse range of reward programs. Stand out and stay away from those regular, run-of-the-mill loyalty programs that don’t commensurate with your guests’ loyalty toward your brand. Make the claim process simple.
Don’t forget to upsell
Entice your guests to upgrade their room to a bigger room or suite by paying a nominal extra amount. Give them a reason to spend that extra amount to opt for a better room. Or, in case of a group reservation, you may offer them an additional room with a say 20% on the spot discount. Plus, let them know that they could avail the 5th night’s stay with a special discount if they confirm their booking for four nights. Do remember that it is up to your guests whether they want to opt for that upgrade or not. Please don’t force it on them. Instead, present it as a choice. Be polite while physically approaching your guests to upsell. Aggressive upselling will irritate them.
When we are talking about upselling, how can we not boast the usefulness of your Hotel PMS? Configure and offer a long-stay discount, early-bird discount, last-minute discount, and promo code to sell more.
Before we bring this to an end, we would like you to keep this in mind – your strategies for sales promotion should have one, only one objective – to sell more rooms, generate more bookings, and earn more revenue. See what works well for you, and then implement the same hotel sales strategy with the required tweaks and personalization for your other member properties.
