What are the key trends for hoteliers on Black Friday and Cyber Monday?
After analysing which hotels enjoyed the most success during the biggest sale event of the year, we’re sharing our top tips for hoteliers to replicate in 2024.
Keep reading to find out which hotels benefitted from the latest deals, and how you can follow suit:
Simplicity Sells
At Net Affinity, we analysed this year’s booking data across the hundreds of hotels within our client base, in order to identify emerging trends and the key considerations for hoteliers to take into 2024.
Data reveals a 15% improvement on hotel bookings when compared against 2022 — and room offers received the most attention.
For room offers, simplicity is best; basic discounts of a minimum of 15% ( although preferably higher) garnered the best results for hotels.
Monetary Value Rules
When it comes to voucher offers, deals such as percentage discounts, room upgrades, spa treatments, and activities proved far more popular than fixed monetary add-ons.
Offers with 10% added value saw an 87% average revenue increase (when compared to an average November day) and a 40% increase year-on-year.
Broaden Your Reach
While nurturing and maintaining a relationship with your database is crucial, exclusive offers that are solely restricted to the database may result in diminished performance.
It’s critical to strike a balance between database engagement and wider market reach if you’re to maximise revenues.
The average daily revenue over the 4-day weekend surged by 41%, highlighting the importance of offering a specific deal for Cyber weekend.
Failing to get involved in Black Friday and Cyber Monday meant some hotels missed out on a key opportunity to increase their revenue.
Similarly, hotels running closed offers exclusively to their client database saw a 50% drop in performance year-on-year — highlighting the need to broaden their reach to a wider consumer base.
Increases and Decreases | Black Friday and Cyber Monday
Whilst there was a 15% year-on-year increase in revenue, which was a broadly positive sign for the hospitality industry, the data revealed significant fluctuations within this figure.
Revenue variances ranged from as low as -61% to 200%+ increases—something that underlines the importance of perfecting your offer.
Overall, three out of four hotels participating in Black Friday and Cyber Monday witnessed a lift in revenue over the weekend, even with discounts factored in.
During November 24th to 27th, overall traffic decreased by 6% compared to the previous year. This drop was due to motivated consumers seeking deals, leading to increased conversion rates.
Hotels offering both room and voucher deals simultaneously observed a 10% revenue increase compared to an average November day, but experienced a 33% decline year-on-year.
Founder and Managing Director at Net Affinity William Cotter, spoke on the hotel revenue results across Cyber Weekend 2023, he said “Cyber Weekend is an important time of year for retailers – and that applies to hotels as much as anyone else.
“It’s evolving every year in hospitality, so we wanted to explore our latest data to establish what worked well for hoteliers this time around. By doing this, we can highlight the most effective marketing strategies as we look to help hotels maximise revenue increases for 2024.
“Despite our 2021 and 2022 data actually highlighting a slight drop off in Black Friday and Cyber Monday engagement, this year, there has been an overall positive trajectory, certainly for revenue, which just goes to show the importance of getting involved.
“The lessons around the offers that work best don’t just apply to Cyber Weekend either.
“Hoteliers can take them and apply them all year round when looking to bring in a revenue boost – especially if they fix them to a specific date or event in the calendar to take advantage of the wider chatter around it.”
To learn more about Net Affinity, please contact a member of our team or book a demo, https://www.netaffinity.com/book-a-demo.html
Alternatively, why not learn more about how to improve your hotel website through the importance of having a bespoke website design?
