Here are some simple tips and strategies to give your hotel’s bottom line just the rev-up it needs.
You may always have hotel revenue management top of mind, however, it’s important to review and update your strategies to optimise performance and boost your incremental revenue.
While room rates are a good income source, focusing on the hotel expense ratio is a good place to gain traction on revenue growth. Read this blog for tips and tricks to bolster your revenue and boost your bottom line.
1) Get staff support
Your champions on the floor, your staff is key to improve guest satisfaction. Happy guests = good reviews = more bookings. Keep your staff happy with good working conditions, pay and environment. You’ll see the benefits of this on your bottom line.
Once you have their support, your staff is best placed to upsell the room and additional services, Incentivising staff to upsell room upgrades, room service packages or late check-outs typically yields good ROI. Keep track of availability and offer deals when room availability gets low.
2) Partner with the locals
Whether it is Gen Z, millennials or baby boomers, the post-pandemic traveller is seeking experiences more than just a place to stay. More than ever before, people want to feel connected to the place and the culture.
Partnering with local businesses and regional tourism boards to promote local attractions is a good way to attract bookings. Consider creating deals and packages that include a stay + attractions.
3) Get more online guest reviews
More than 90% of travellers check out online reviews for a property before making a booking. In fact, OTAs and meta-search engines boost your listing’s visibility if it has good reviews.
Don’t shy away from giving your guests a nudge to leave an online review. Make sure you are responsive to guests who leave you a review – negative or positive. Investing in a review management tool is highly recommended.
Read an in-depth guide to reputation management tool here
4) Timely offers
You cannot eradicate low-demand days, but you can reduce their occurrence by incentivising users to book now through deals. It is important to review the data in your booking engine, channel manager and property management system to anticipate your slow days and have a packaged offer ready to push out through relevant channels in a timely fashion.
5) Be available 24/7
Establish an online presence via a responsive website with a booking engine widget so your guests can make a booking anytime and from anywhere. Besides being a platform to book, your website must also be easily findable. Make sure you follow good SEO practices in order to rank on search engines for keywords relevant to your property. Google Hotels is another key platform to improve findability along with listings on relevant OTAs. Chatbots are another digital tool picking up on popularity with hoteliers due to the instant nature of responses to users.
6) Audit your tech stack
The hotel technology landscape has changed dramatically, with software automating many tasks – from booking to managing operations, everything is much more efficient. The result is not just increased profitability as decisions are more data led, but also lesser human time spent doing admin tasks, freeing up hotel staff to do what they do best – serve guests.
Keen to understand how efficient your hotel technology stack is? Is it geared up to deliver to modern guests’ demands? Book in a free consult with the STAAH team today – no obligations assessment of your technology stack.
