What are the Various Methods to Increase Hotel Sales?

Last updated on March 23rd, 2020 at 11:03 am

In today’s era, it is a more complex matrix and requires lot brain storming to innovate new marketing ideas in order to increase the net revenue and hotel sales through other mediums and various approaches and streamlined revenue management practises. Hotels try to get more and more direct booking from hotel booking engine rather than depending on some aggregators or on travel agents for their business.

It is a vastly debated topic as everybody has a different way to approach in order to increase hotel sales. Unlike earlier times where increase hotel sales or revenue does not only mean by increasing your room tariff only, the modern times where hotel has to face fierce competition and aggressive sales approach by competitors making it more difficult for the hoteliers to increase their room tariff frequently.

In order to increase their sales hotels try to channelize their own sales force and enforce aggressive sales techniques and need to regulate new hotel marketing ideas from time to time in order to be in the competition. Nowadays, it has been a common practice for hotels to have their own decentralized sales force stationed at varied location of the country/world to target and restore their presence in the market.

In order to increase the hotel sales there are certain guidelines that are normally followed by the sales force.

1. Coming up with creative hotel marketing ideas.
2. Generating new ideas to increase hotel sales.

Coming up with Creative Hotel Marketing Ideas

In this competitive era it is most important to do something different in marketing your property and to be ahead of your competitors, it is one of the base important factor in laying a foundation for better sales results and thus, one needs to come up with new hotel marketing ideas at regular intervals.

As a good hotel marketing idea helps you to mark your presence in the market and provide you a stand out position among the given cluster.

In lieu of coming up with great hotel marketing ideas it is very important to carefully select your set of competitors depending on various factors such as room tariff, location, service standards, Available amenities etc.

Once you have a well decided set of competitors it gives you an insight peek to the actual market scenario and helps you in up in developing creative hotel marketing ideas.

Few of the general marketing practices are as follows:

Hoardings and Flex Boards

It is very important and an easy way to mark your presence in the market, but it is also important to strategically select the areas where you need to feature your hoardings, as a good hoarding helps to increase your website footfall and chances to get more direct bookings from hotel booking engine. Now, it is important as every hotel has a set of facilities that cater to a particular persona and your targeted market. A hotel may cater to leisure travelers or to business travelers depending on these variables one can select their location as on entry points as Airports, Railway station, Shopping Malls, entry points of famous market areas etc.

For eg. If we travel to various destination in of Goa we can find various hoardings and banners of different properties but depending on the location the persona of the property changes as in Airport area one can find both businesses as well as leisure hotels, but if go towards Panjim or Vasco Da Gama we can find majorly business hotels featuring out there.

This is how the hotels choose their location of advertising so they can focus on their targeted market and make most out of it.

Good Website

It is very important for a hotel to have a good website with aesthetic appeal with a good hotel booking engine as in today’s internet generation almost everybody is connected with internet and they spend most of their time in browsing a good website can fetch you deeper reach directly to your potential customer. Also, a good website works as a decision-maker as a potential customer always visits your website to get a final confirmation of if your hotel suits his requirements and is a good choice for him. For eg., If a customer searches for hotel accommodation and after his research, he narrows down his search and your hotel is one of them then the customer goes to your website to get brief about your property and to see if your property is the one suitable for his stay if you have a good website here it can turn your potential customer into a sale.

Synchronize your Values with Guest Utility

It is very important to have proper content in the website and which also translates the exact utility to the guest which gives an exact idea to the guest as what he is about to derive out of the amenities that one can list their amenities in paragraph style rather than as pointers in order to synchronize them with the guest as for eg. Mini-fridge, Flat-screen television, Spa, Board room, etc instead of pointing out them it can be explained as.

1. Mini fridge equipped in all rooms which allows you to choose from your favorite drinks and snacks at your convenience.
2. All our rooms have flat screened LCD tv so that you can watch your favorite blockbusters the way it should be.
3. We have a well-equipped gym and spa where you can relax and rejuvenate your senses after a hectic day schedule.
4. We have a well-equipped board room where you can conduct your meeting at a peace and make your presentation more impactful with our projector and V.A. systems. Rent out some rooms for business meetings and as Meeting Rooms for the corporate meetings.

Focus on Having Swift Website

It is very important to have a swift website and should be designed in such a way that one should avoid in having large and heavy files which slow down your website navigation experience which hampers the guest experience and the guest leaves your page in the middle of the journey, thus one should have a website which should have all the required information in a crystal and clear way without overloading your website to give a smooth transition experience, smooth navigation helps the guest to decide faster and presence of hotel booking engine helps to get an instant booking.

As a normal example even we as a browser try to open a website and if that website takes long to navigate us to other categories or even upload a page we generally walk off that website. As per a recent study it is been seen that more than 75% of people get irritated with the delays in website opening and avoids going to that website.

The above chart clearly shows as how a heavy website can hamper the marketing strategies and the sales diverting from the expected hotel revenue.

Generating New Ideas to Increase Hotel Sales

Apart from setting a good marketing approach, it is also important to have a systematic sales approach is also important. There is a very little difference between the two as marketing is targeting the mass, in general, it is mainly concerned with the research of the market, understanding and creating new needs in the market, developing new product marketing is mainly concerned creating awareness of the product in the market and generating leads. Whereas, salesforce work is to keep following up with the generated leads and converting them into actual sales.

In process of converting the leads into actual sales, the sales force creates new ideas and new ways to boost their sales few of the general techniques used by hotels to boost their sales and increase hotel revenue are as follows.

Organizing Various Events

As we can see various events are organized by the hotels to attract more customers and guest but before taking this there has to be proper marketing research have to be done as what is the most promising event, what kind emotional notions are prevailing in the market etc. for eg. During New year time every hotel has an event called “Gala Dinner” and every hotel comes up a different theme as some organize Bollywood night, comedy night, couple dance night, and one hotel organizes a special theme night as “Night of humanity and forgiveness” and it is communicated through advertisement as it is the night to say sorry to somebody who means a lot to you and to forgive the old deeds and write a new beginning with this new year night.

Decreasing Dependency

In order decrease dependency on OTA’s and it is important that the hotels should maintain a smooth hotel booking engine on their website it is important to keep a simple booking engine with all information mentioned in a categorical manner so that it gives your guest all information at the same time it should not confuse the guest with too many information and choices.

Creating Online Promotion

It is an important tool of hotel sales to create promotional offers and packages on hotel booking engine to lustrate the guest to book directly and without hassle to make it more attractive hotels add pictorial representation of actual amenities, rooms etc. for eg If a hotels booking engine have packages and promotional offers but if does not have actual photograph it creates a state of dilemma in the customers mind as how the services would be and if they can view the actual photograph if gives a sense of confidence into the customers mind about the services.

Thus, it shows how hotels are streamlining their marketing and sales forces to synchronize their activities in channelizing their revenue management and increasing hotel revenue.