Tips to Boost Hotel Bookings

1. Tips to Boost Hotel Bookings One of the common questions which every hotelier has in his mind is ?How to get maximum bookings and boost in the revenue?? This question sounds very simple but it is often a challenge to get the answer. This becomes quite a challenge when one gets immersed in management of other day-to-day operations. With the hotel industry growing at a rapid speed, there are new competitors entering the field which makes the battleground tougher hence one should lay down strategies to attract customers to their hotels. The most important of it being the booking stage wherein lies all the decision making in the hands of the customers. Below are certain tips which can helps in bringing out the best in the process of hotel bookings. Identification of the customers: The most important for any hotel is to identify who are their guests. Whether it is those who are travelling for leisure or enjoyment or those who mostly travel for business purposes. Once you answer this question and develop a solid guest identification criterion, you will then have a powerful data wherein you can focus your marketing and sales strategies. Creating of a Unique Selling Point: There is always a question on the customer’s mind as to why should I go for Hotel A instead of hotel B or C and so on. Here comes the main factor of ?Unique Selling Point?. Why should a customer select your hotel instead of the multiple other options it has? When the guest carries out a lot of search via google or their own networks, narrowing down to one hotel is based on the USP of the hotel. If the Hotel has a strong USP then it would not take much of an effort for the client to immediately book your hotel. Ensure that the hotel’s value proposition is very much strong as compared to your competitors. This value proposition can be in various forms such as providing loyalty schemes. Various basic amenities, good infrastructure or well-maintained room, polite staff and good food, discounts on online bookings and many more. Add on value to the hotel website: In this age of modern technology, most of the work gets done on a click of a button. Similar it is for bookings as well. Now customers need not wait in long queues at the reception for bookings or dial the number multiple times so as to get through the call for booking a hotel. All of this can be easily carried out at the comfort of their home or office. For this one should ensure that they speed up the hotel website. Make the website very user friendly for the customers to browse through. The icons, font size, color, pictures should all be very much placed in a such a way that it makes the website look attractive rather than making it look as if it has been filled with unnecessary clutter. Mostly the booking section should be simple for a layman to go through it without any hassle. Remember even if you have a strong proposition but if these basic things are not done well the customer can switch back to their second choice. The gallery section of the website should have all genuine good quality pictures of the hotel, its room, its food and so on. It is kind of a visual guide to the guests wherein they get to know more about the hotel. Get the hotel listed or make its presence felt on major OTAs: Today every business has to make its presence felt whether online or offline. Without any presence it becomes difficult to discover a good option. Hence one of the easiest and cheapest ways of getting discovered is by getting oneself listed on major OTAs. These platforms provide for free traffic as well as visibility to the property. OTAs are

2. basically online travel agencies who have a website of their own wherein they provide the customers with travel related services such as flight or train bookings, hotel room stay and so on. They are basically third party agency. There has been a rise in the OTAs from the past couple of years. Encourage customers for reviews: Listing is enough for the hotel to boost revenue. One should also get some good positive reviews from their guests who have been part of the hotel. Hence it is advisable to provide some positive feedback and get them updated on the hotel bill boards, the OTA websites, the social media websites. These feedbacks act as an oral marketing strategy wherein by reading the reviews the potential customers also decide their booking. The higher and more number of reviews leads to increase in the bookings. These reviews tend to have more of an impact or influence than any kind of advertisements. There are various ways one can reach out to their guests for a good feedback. SMS, social networking platforms, email and surveys can be used for garnering feedback. One can setup an automated email wherein the moment a guests has checked out they can write something about the stay at the hotel. Take care of the pricing: Ensure that the pricing is in par with other competitors. This becomes a major task for any revenue manager. They have to ensure that the prices should not be too high else they would lose out on business or it cannot be too low else it would not turn out to be profitable. During the period of low occupancy most of the hotels maintain an optimum level of pricing. Hence based on the season and the guests the hotel can look to get the pricing amended accordingly. However, one should note that the hotels should develop a competitive pricing strategy to stay ahead of the race always. Win the confidence of the guests: It becomes extremely important to gain the confidence of the guests. Try to win the trust of those guests who have made an effort for online bookings, mostly the ones who have carried out first time bookings. The confidence can be gained by ensuring that all of it has been carried out on a secure platform and providing them the best price or discounts. Reply back to your guests: If the guests has taken their time out to provide you some valuable feedback. Appreciate their efforts by replying back to their emails. This can help in two ways, it helps in calming down a customer who is not satisfied with the service wherein they would be reassured that the hotel cares about them and secondly if there are any feedbacks wherein the hotel needs to improvise then it should be serious and welling to carry them out.