The hotel industry depends on various factors, such as raw materials, room Inventory, product inventory, staff, and amenities. However, the only way one can manage these factors is through hotel revenue. For any viable business, revenue is the first step towards profit. The hospitality industry is no different. More bookings can increase hotel revenue, and thereby, profitability.
We have devised some ways to increase hotel revenue through more bookings! With these methods, you will be able to make your business more profitable.
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Ways To Increase Hotel Revenue Through Hotel Bookings
There are several ways by which you can increase hotel revenue. We have listed some ways by which you can boost hotel bookings to increase revenue.
1. What Are Your Hotel Guest Personas? Identify Them!
Before you approach potential guests to increase hotel revenue, you need to step back and ask yourself - "Who are your hotel guests?" and "What are they like?" This is where hotel guests' personas come into play.
For that, you will need to understand your target audience thoroughly. Hoteliers deal with many types of guests - couples, families, solo travellers, business travellers, corporates, groups, students and so forth. Identify which demographic to target and research their ages, income, location, lifestyle, personality and the seasonality of their bookings.
By doing this, you will be able to connect to your guests better and will be able to generate more hotel revenue through targeted marketing. It is the first step in the strategy to increase hotel revenue.
2. A Strong Hotel Value Proposition To Attraction Customers
After you have identified your guests, you need to convince your guests why they should choose your hotel over the other. Hotel Value Proposition is a promise that a hotel gives to potential customers for their services and customer experience. This will also help in increasing hotel revenue.
If a customer lists down three potential hotels, you should be able to convince the customer as to why they should choose your hotel over the other three. A strong hotel value proposition will help increase hotel revenue by encouraging customers to book your hotel.
3. Optimize Your Hotel Website
We are in the age of the internet, and your hotel website is the main highlight of your hotel marketing. You need to ensure that your site is optimized to deliver the best customer experience. It is one of the best ways to increase hotel revenue.
You need to ensure that your website is snappy. Loading delays will make a potential guest leave your website immediately. Boasting loading speed will require some technicalities, for which you can identify a specialist or learn yourself.
4. Simplify Your Website And Use Good Images In Gallery
Keep your website design simple and easily navigable. Ensure that each webpage is properly labelled and is reachable by the guests. Add content according to your offering.
Show off your image gallery in such a way that the customers immediately feel like staying in your rooms and enjoying your Amenities!
5. Don't Confuse Your Guests
Don't confuse the customer by giving too many choices. Limit your choices and packages on the website to the flagship ones. Your landing page needs to be specific and focused. A good landing page can encourage the visitor to complete the action that will increase hotel revenue.
6. Use Visual Storytelling To Connect With Hotel Guests
Human beings relate to visuals better than words. Make your hotel website visually appealing. Use appropriate designs, high-quality images and proper labelling.
Your hotel images should tell a story. If you own a beach resort, make your potential guests experience the vibe of the beach and the various services they will be getting if they visit the property. Make them feel the hotel before they book the stay. This will encourage bookings and in turn, increase hotel revenue.
7. Offer Early Check-in And Late Check-out
Many hotel guests want early check-in and late - check-out. Many hotels are honouring these requests by charging an additional fee. It's better to charge a premium for additional services rather than offering everything for free. Always keep an option open for offering additional services at a premium rather than ignore them.
These fees can increase hotel revenue to a great extent. However, you should offer these special concessions only during the off-season, because doing so during the peak season can lock room Inventory for longer hours and decrease your revenue. Always keep a flexible strategy based on the market situation.
8. Promote Your Food And Beverage Options To The Guests
To generate additional hotel revenue, you should promote your food and beverage options throughout the stay of the guests. When the guest checks in, you should tell them about your food and beverage offerings and why they should choose them over outside food.
You can offer them food menus from your hotel restaurant and room service. You should also keep the menus of the food and beverage offerings in the rooms. Also offer good deals on restaurants at the time of booking, especially on hotel websites, so that you can increase direct bookings and generate more hotel revenue and profits.
9. Use Upselling And Cross-Selling To Your Advantage
The best way to encourage customers to purchase your products and services is to offer higher-end services and/or more services at an additional smaller price. Selling a high-end product/service is Upselling while offering additional services is cross-selling.
During the off - the season, you can increase hotel revenue, by offering an upgrade of rooms at an additional price. The cost of the upgrade should be lesser than the difference between the current room and the upgraded room. This will encourage the hotel guest to book their room. This is an example of upselling.
For cross-selling, you can offer breakfast with rooms for a small additional cost. This will encourage the customer to book your room over the others. However, you should keep these offers based on seasonality to not lose out on hotel revenue.
10. Offer Promos During Off-Season To Encourage Hotel Bookings
The best way to encourage hotel bookings during the off-season is to offer promotions. You have a chance of losing out on revenue during the off-season. To avoid that, you need to encourage customers to visit your hotel during the off-season. Less revenue per sale is better than no sale during the off-season times.
You can offer several offers and promotions such as free breakfast with a stay, free upgrade or upgrade with 15 - 25% of current room cost etc. Ensure that these promotions don't adversely affect your hotel revenue.
11. Make Your Website Mobile Friendly
Most internet users are on their smartphones. Why build a hotel-friendly website, you will be able to tap a significant audience to book hotel rooms from your website. This will encourage them to choose your website over OTAs and reduce the commission given to third parties. This will save money and generate more hotel revenue.
Make your mobile website responsive and customise it to suit the medium. Don't fit too many elements on a small screen and ensure that it's not a shrunken version of the desktop site.
12. Use Retargeting Effectively
Many visitors check the website but leave it without completing any action. Retargeting can be of great help. You can effectively retarget the audience by taking their email addresses and sending them notifications and newsletters of their schemes, offers and updates.
Google uses cookies to track users and with these cookies, you can effectively identify and retarget the audience that has visited your website. With Retargeting, you can get the customers that almost slipped out of your hand and increase hotel revenue
13. Customer Testimonials: Can Make Or Break Your Hotel
The best way to ensure that customers are good at your hotel is to encourage them to give good reviews about your hotel. The only way to ensure a good hotel review is by offering great services. Google My Business, Hotel Websites and OTA sites are places where customers give reviews.
You need to showcase the best reviews to attract customers and generate hotel revenue.
However, ignoring negative reviews is foolish. Identify negative reviews, solve the issues and make your service better. The only way to increase hotel bookings is by consistently offering good services.
14. Use Analytics
One needs to use Analytics to understand their market. Google Analytics is a great way to understand the age, gender, and location of your audience. You can also identify from where the audience has visited the site.
Increase Hotel Revenue With The Help Of Professionals
The best way to increase hotel revenue is by working with professional revenue management. Hotel revenue managers can be in-house or outsourced. Revenue managers will help your hotel by:
Identifying which room inventory should be sold to whom - matching the right guest with the right room.
Setting rates on different OTA platforms based on seasonality. This way, you can increase hotel revenue for all seasons.
Identity with OTAs is generating the most revenue and determining how to get more revenue from others.
Identifying the perfect combination of sales and revenue i.e more sales will lead to more revenue and not the other way around.
Provide you with expert advice on hotel business operations based on pricing, season and room inventory. This information will be helpful for hotel marketing.
There are several advantages of choosing an outsourced revenue manager over an in-house one:
Outsourced revenue managers have more experience than in-house revenue managers since they have managed many properties. They can help you increase hotel revenue efficiently.
Outsourced revenue managers have access to more data since they deal with more properties. They have an industry-wide perspective and are hence more helpful for marketing and hotel revenue management purposes.
Outsourced revenue managers can strategize better since they have more insights into various properties in different locations. They can also manage 2 or more properties at the same location and hence more helpful in determining the best rates, according to demand.
With these steps, you can increase hotel revenue and make your business profitable. With additional revenues and profits, you can even expand your business.
Bigfoot Hospitality is a hotel revenue management and hotel marketing company - a one-stop solution for all your hotel business needs. Read our blogs to know about the hotel industry.