What’s one of the top buzzwords over the last 5 years, in, let’s face it, pretty much every industry? Collaboration! To be fair though, it’s a buzzword for a reason. We’re all so busy – it’s too easy for teams to be siloed and not align on thought, strategy, plans and results. This doesn’t really layer down a solid ground for breeding smart, fully optimised campaigns built to convert, now does it.
We live in a far from perfect world, but let’s put that aside for a second – in your day to day world as a hotelier, you’ll watch things get pretty close to perfect if your revenue management and marketing teams are committed to working seamlessly together. Like a strong couple, they need to know each other, support each other, and align with each other. Work off the same business plan! Communicate regularly like it’s second nature! Here’s what to do to make that happen.
Here’s a bit more… taking advantage of organic search
Your marketing team can get really valuable and insightful statistics from the likes of Google Analytics. This data is exactly what your revenue management and marketing teams need to identify upcoming opportunities. Where are your website visitors coming from? Do they come from organic or direct search, or do they all come from paid activity? being able to answer all these questions equips your revenue management team with the knowledge they need to build the right package that will attract the right guest!
Optimising your packages
As we know, the magical Google Analytics provides your visitor’s location, age, demographic and sex. This is crucial data to be shared with your revenue management team in order for them to be able to create the perfect package. Once the right audience has been established, the package then needs to be optimised correctly. While your revenue manager knows the right time to create a package from demand forecasts, a basic package is not enough in today’s chaotic market! Your potential guests are exposed to so many special offers, add-ons, deals, everything. A basic two-night break just won’t cut it! In order for your offer to be eaten up, your package needs to offer what your guest wants, and it needs to be sold to them in a way where they can see that – cue marketing! #payattentiontome
Once the perfect package has been created, it’s time for revenue management’s analytical skills to shine. Their knowledge of transaction level data and trend detection will be what helps optimise the promotion of the package. They can let marketing know which online forums their guests use and don’t use. Equipped with this knowledge, the marketing team can go ahead and decide on the best methods of promotion.
Benchmarking
One of the tasks of revenue management is to make sure the hotel ranks highly against its competitors to maximise potential return. To ensure this, they need to be able to complete a fully comprehensive competitor analysis. This is where benchmarking comes in! As well as this, your marketing team can look into online reviews for your hotel and your competitors. Ratings of your hotel across social media platforms can’t be underrated! By collating these and being aware of what people are generally saying, your revenue management team can establish how the reviews are affecting demand, and they might decide to adjust pricing accordingly. More on the importance of reviews here!
Collaboration
Stop, collaborate and listen!
How important is effective communication, in pretty much every aspect of life? It doesn’t become any less important in this case. Effective communication between your revenue and marketing teams cannot be stressed enough. Exchanging data together will provide a more integrated, results-driven approach. If decisions being made by both teams are done with full access to all data and analytics, it will ensure that the right guest is being attracted to your hotel at the right time. Goals!
It can also help to prevent resorting to panicked, last minute deals. If revenue management forecasts a period of low demand, the sooner they inform the marketing team, the better! If enough time is given, marketing can create and optimise effective targeted campaigns to encourage bookings. That all sounds pretty perfect to us.
