This week, we found that all the best articles in hospitality were revolving around a central theme: opportunity.
From the chance to build more direct bookings to ways to step up your revenue management game, these articles are all about growing your hotel. Some of these are easy hacks. Most of them will take you a little more work. We think they’re all well worth your time, though. There’s thousands in revenue and marketing to be made, and you don’t want to be left out!
So, keeping that in mind, here are some of the hottest opportunities for your hotel in 2016:
The Battle for Direct Bookings: How Hotels Are Stepping Up
Finding a hotel room online has never been easier. In fact, 60% of all hotel bookings are now done digitally and the online travel database continues to grow (failteireland). Getting caught in the middle of the booking battle between OTA and hotel is the new reality for travelers. As travelers become more time sensitive with their travel planning, OTA’s become the convenient choice for speedy booking but many are forgetting the hidden perks of booking directly with hotels.
There is now a significant challenge for independent hotels who are not only competing with big brand names but OTA’s as well for direct bookings. By designing marketing campaigns around unique incentives for booking direct, these hotels show that catering to travelers needs is the first step to winning back loyal customers.
4 Revenue Management Opportunities for Hotel Owners
Technology has become an influential player in the development and refinement of hotel business strategies. And while the practice of revenue management may sometimes find itself branded as “micro-level” from an owner’s perspective, it provides many opportunities to increase asset performance and value.
Below are four opportunities that revenue management brings to the table for today’s hotel owners.
Convert OTA Guests to In-House Bookings: 5 Ways to Succeed
Fuel Travel recently met with a hotel whose occupancy was comprised nearly 50% by OTA bookings. One out of every two guests was costing them at least 20% commission. Aside from the obvious hit to their RevPAR and issues maintaining a competitive ADR, they were also missing out on building their most valuable asset: their guest history.
Unfortunately, this property is not unique. Too many hotels and resorts rely on the OTAs for too much of their occupancy. Even the properties succeeding with in-house bookings could benefit by chipping away at their OTA percentage.
Here are five ways you can make an impact on your RevPar, reduce costs, grow your database, and improve guest satisfaction. Implement these and we guarantee you’ll find your OTA percentage drop while occupancy grows!
The Case for Email Segmentation in Hospitality Marketing
Segmentation is a given for some resorts and hotels. A campaign directed at their entire list is a rare exception rather than the rule.
Others, however, are exactly the opposite.
Does sending to multiple smaller groups instead of one large list change the performance of those emails? Or, in other words, is there any correlation between campaign size and its open rate? Here’s what we found.
What’s Your Analytics Data Worth?
For most companies, data doesn’t have any inherent worth. No one comes to your site and says, “Hey, I see you’ve got a nice web analytics setup. Can I pay you for your data?” It also takes work to get value out of your analytics data, which is why so many companies don’t set up analytics or don’t use their analytics setup.
However, the data most companies are ignoring has value—a lot of value.
Analytics is valuable in two ways: 1) it shows you where you are wasting money and 2) it reveals new opportunities for growth.
Let’s look at a couple of case studies that demonstrate the value of analytics data in each of these areas.
