From battling established competitors to creating meaningful experiences to driving guest loyalty, hospitality is a difficult industry to break into. Post-pandemic, however, hoteliers are faced with the additional challenge of navigating a mercurial and increasingly digitized landscape. And change, although not always welcome, has brought an opportunity, which, if tapped into, can help increase your hotel revenue.
Let’s dive into the “how!”
10 Tips To Increase Hotel Revenue and Get More Bookings
It takes time, effort, and careful planning to realign the goals of a venue to match the demands of a challenging market. Customers want a fuss-free booking experience, reliable service, and affordable prices, and as venue owners, we need to find innovative ideas to not only increase guest spend, but also improve guest experiences. Here are some tips and ideas on how you can highlight the best aspects of your hotel and management while increasing revenue:
1. Use valuable customer data
It’s important to know your guests and their preferences. One of the ways to do this is to gather customer data and use that data to enhance your business-customer relationships.
So how do you use this data to your advantage?
● Update your CRM: Update your customer relationship management system to understand online customer behavior and use that understanding to improve customer service and increase sales.
● Customize messages and deals: Skip the generic approach and add a personal touch to your customer interactions by using the data to send tailored messages and offers.
● Personalize campaigns: Refocus your sales and marketing strategies to target the right groups or categories of customers based on their preferences, stay frequency, and booking history.
● Follow up with customers with incomplete bookings: It’s natural for customers to abandon the booking process midway or towards the end. Actively follow up with such visitors to get an idea of why they would abandon your website. It’s imperative to track such behavior to address issues from the get-go.
● Refine upselling and cross-selling tactics: It’s wise to be discreet instead of bombarding customers with add-ons. Suggest the best offers, upgrades, or add-ons that don’t dilute the customer’s attention but grab it.
2. Aim to achieve direct bookings
An online travel agency (OTA) will not be as profitable as compared to direct bookings through your website. Direct booking can increase your hotel’s profit margins since there are no commissions paid to an OTA, the hotel’s acquisition cost per guest falls. Direct booking also allows for upselling opportunities, which generates more revenue for your hotel.
It can also help you build a direct relationship with your customers, allowing you to nurture brand loyalty through incentivized efforts such as loyalty points, great deals, and unbeatable offers.
3. Shift to 24/7 business hours
Invest in a multilingual chatbot that can address local and international customers when your staff are offline. This can help resolve queries quickly, convert bookings, and engage with customers at any time of the day.
4. Enhance hotel reviews
If there’s one thing that can make or break a potential booking, it’s hotel reviews. Customer reviews that highlight one’s experience can greatly influence another’s booking decision.
As a business, be sure to respond to negative reviews and use them as crutches for improvement. Thank customers for their positive reviews and urge them to return soon. Hotel reviews should go up on your website to cultivate a trustworthy reputation for your venue.
5. Be active on social media
Social media is a powerful tool to rely on for engagement and valuable customer data. Regularly schedule and plan posts on your social media platforms. This can drive engagement to your page, particularly when content is posted or promoted by/with collaborators.
Be on top of comments and direct messages to address queries or drive customers to make bookings on your website.
6. Rely on featured snippets
Featured snippets (from a website) appear in position #0 on a search result’s page to answer a question that a customer directly enters. This can help to drive traffic to your website and boost sales. To do this, website content should be complete, regularly updated, and optimized (think SEO). Additionally, rely on structured data and an AI-powered FAQ section to feature content at the top of search results.
7. Investigate abandoned bookings
As mentioned earlier, following up with customers who abandon their bookings should be a priority. First, ask relevant questions about what went wrong or if they need assistance to complete their booking. Then, use that learning to improve your customer journey.
8. Prioritize customer loyalty
Converting leads is great, but retaining them is even greater. Attract old customers through exclusive deals, upgrades, or offers to get them excited to come back. You can also use the PouchVENUE Free Credit feature to give out complimentary items to reward loyal customers.
9. Adapt to new search behavior
Providing support to customers who search for you directly is paramount in converting leads. Investing in a chat feature allows customers to reach you through the search results. In addition, capturing customers when they’re curiously browsing can help them decide on bookings with active venue support.
10. Offer specialized packages
Deals that appear too good to be true often get the most attention and leads. For loyal customers, use tailored packages, special perks, or freebies to keep them hooked to your venue.
We hope this list of tips and ideas could help boost your revenue and set a solid foundation for a profitable future for your venue. Have an idea or a proven revenue-building strategy that we can add to this list? We’d love to hear from you!
