Other industries use massive sales at the end of the year to push their profitability from the red to black, the reason behind the term Black Friday.
NB: This is an article from Travelboom
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Even among the massive success in other industries, far too many resorts and hotels aren’t taking part in this giant annual shopping spree. Millions of dollars in bookings are lost yearly. The sooner hoteliers can make Black Friday sales work for them, the sooner revenue projections and rate yielding for the following year can take place.
Launching Your Hotel’s Black Friday/Cyber Monday Strategy
The value of running a Black Friday/Cyber Monday is clear, though how to create an effective Black Friday sale strategy for your hotel can be a bit more confusing. We are here to demystify building a strong hotel sale strategy, step by step.
Our first recommendation is to start your planning early. Give yourself and your team the time you need to build an amazing program, and you’ll see the results in bookings, revenue, and ultimately a higher RevPAR.
Meet With Your Revenue Management Team
Getting your revenue management team and the other teams at your hotel on the same page is critical. Meet with them to clearly understand your early-year pace, anticipated rack rates for the upcoming year, and how they plan to yield rates throughout the year. This is how you’ll determine a correct and reasonable starting point for your rates, and decide how aggressive of an offer you can promote.
This revenue management meeting will also be fundamental in ensuring that your Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale offer is the best possible for the entire year.
Develop Best Offer Possible
Once you have met with the revenue management team, you need to develop the best (the very best) offer you can put together. Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales are most effective when you can create urgency and a fear of missing out.
This is the salient point of the entire sale. Your offer must be the best deal your property is going to offer all year. If you break ranks later in the year, you risk destroying your guests confidence and ruining any chance for future Black Friday success.
Your offer doesn’t always have to be about the price. Your hotel can find success in offers and deals that go beyond price. For instance, we have found the following can work very well for hotels looking to offer sales that aren’t rate-based:
- Value adds, such as gifts with purchase and discounts at on-site amenities
- Complimentary room upgrades during the sale for guests who have already booked their stays or even guests already on the property
- Resort credits for future use
- Gift card sales with bonus value (purchase $100 gift card and get a $10 bonus card)
This is why advanced planning is important — give yourself time to craft the perfect offer for your audience that will wow your guests and encourage them to whip out those wallets.
Monitor The Competition
Whether you’re a seasoned Black Friday marketer or diving in for the first time, it is paramount that you keep a close eye on the competition. Take note of the offers they have run in the past, what their pricing strategy looks like, and how they promote their sales. Competitor monitoring for Black Friday and Cyber Monday can be difficult since everyone will be launching their sales at roughly the same time. However, these strategies can help:
