As odd as it may sound, but managing your health and managing your revenue has many things in common; both if followed by proven strategy, gets you great results. To start planning your hotel revenue management strategies for the year, you need to decide how much to spend on digital marketing, which channels to optimize, and where to make investments in new technology while keeping up with the budget allocated for the financial year.
So, how to actually plan your hotel revenue management strategies?
Now, most businesses don’t have an adequate budget to fully invest in all aspects of digital marketing. That’s why in order to initiate planning the hotel revenue management strategies, there is an ongoing struggle to optimize the expense between the practical reality of running a business and a wide array of marketing options. Everything you do from a budgeting perspective must start with your business goals.
At the very outset, you must decide what is of most importance for you:
- Are you trying to drive more revenue?
- Do you care mostly about customer acquisitions?
- Do you wish to maintain or grow your brand?
- Are you interested in building brand loyalists?
Depending on your goals, the hotel revenue management strategies you implement and technology you deploy may differ.
Knowledge yourself with market segments
The first step to hotel revenue management strategies is defining your hotel’s relevant target audience. A crucial step towards more control over your business, it is the market mix of your hotel, which makes it worthwhile for you to spend time and understand this. Once you zero in on your market segment, it will let you set up appropriate rates for the right inventory in order to maximize revenue from various areas of business. Plus, you need to constantly ensure that your budget is used in the most logical method to track your business performance and success.
Begin by looking into which category of guests you mostly cater to, what is their buying behavior, why are they booking with you and how’re they doing it. All of this will enable you to apply valid and targeted actions to your business and measure your profits from time to time.
Relevant market segments will differ for each hotel, but they will surely deliver the advantage of being able to drive more business and monitor your performance regardless of where your hotel is located and which type of hotel it is. This is where the actual hotel revenue management starts, which will gradually take your hotel business to new heights of recognition and success.