Are the weekday room doldrums getting you – and your revenue – down?
Weekends will always be the busier times for the holiday-maker market. But Mondays through Thursdays can still generate substantial revenue. You just need to get creative, strategic, and employ the right tools to address the right target market.
This is where you can leverage the powerful combo of data and strategy for the win. By getting the right business intelligence and using it to gain a thorough understanding of your market, those midweek rooms can bring in substantial revenue.
Let’s review some of the key strategies.
Personalise for better guest relationships
With the abilities of marketing technology to track guests’ experience and preferences, personalising offers is a no-brainer. By tailoring offers to echo past customer behaviours, you’re more likely to attract bookings, and this applies to the midweek as much as any other period. The retiree demographic will probably like certain conveniences and offers, like early dinner specials, that will be different from a younger traveller, who might want nightlife deals.
By using personalisation, you’ll be able to offer dynamic pricing and promotions that accommodate their tastes and are almost irresistible to your guests.
Use historical performance data for today’s advantage
Time to take a dive into some data. Your business intelligence will illuminate historical KPIs – such as occupancy, ADR and RevPAR – that you can then use to inform decisions now.
What’s worked in the past? Who bought last year in terms of segment and business origin? Which channels did they come through? How far in advance were they booking? For example, do US guests book an average of three months in advance and via Expedia? A good revenue intelligence tool will help you answer these questions and more.
By analysing these historical KPI performances, you’ll be better placed to assess your midweek high points accurately. This will help you set up an efficient strategy to target clients based on their buying behaviour, and you’ll reduce missed opportunities.
Create irresistible offers
Plenty of hotels offer midweek deals to help punch up those slow times. But the key is creativity, strategy and technology – create interesting packages with enticing add-ons and extras that guests can’t find elsewhere. That means using data on guest preferences and past behaviours to tailor offers. But don’t forget to check your prices against your competitors’, making sure you’re comparing like with like.
