The hospitality industry is heavily season-dependent and there is only so much one can do that will change this. This makes corporate travelers even more attractive to hotels as they can bring you business round the year. This being the case, how can hotels increase corporate bookings? What are some of the definite ways to appeal to the corporates and win them over?
NB: This is an article from Hotelogix
You might be tempted to think about how a hotel can tailor-create an experience for corporates that will get the job done. And you aren’t wrong. Corporate travelers are almost always on a tight schedule, possibly hopping in and out of meetings. Making their stay a pleasant and convenient one, of course, make a difference. But in today’s world, offering free Wi-Fi, a workstation, etc in the room is basic! Even the smallest of hotels offer free Wi-Fi and a desk and a chair. If your goal is to create a lifetime customer out of corporates, then basic will not cut it. You need to address a problem that is deeper than that.
You need to fix pre-arrival and post-departure issues, as well. And this is only possible with the right cloud-based Property Management System in place.
Let’s consider a corporate’s typical journey with a hotel on a timeline. When there is the need for Mr. A to visit Singapore on a work-related trip, the facilities team gets cracking on planning the trip. Air tickets, hotel stays, logistics, etc need to be sorted. Typically, the facilities manager would email a hotel asking them about availability, requesting them to reserve a room for the specified dates, negotiate a price, etc. And this would take a few email exchanges before the final reservation is made. These exchanges could range anywhere between a day to a week. And this is certainly not the most efficient way of going about things.
Here’s how a right Hotel PMS will make everyone’s life easier.
1. Corporate login:
With a PMS in place, you can assign separate and unique login credentials to your corporate clients. Like, a corporate booking console for hotels. This login gives them access to real-time inventory of your hotel, from where they can themselves select rooms, dates and make a reservation for their employees. A confirmation email gets sent automatically to the registered email id. Reservation is so much more simplified this way. This arrangement works perfectly for the hotel as well as the corporates, since there is no dependency on emails. No more waiting, no more fear of losing out on a booking due to negligence, etc.
2. Corporate Profile:
A PMS should corporates to create their own corporate profile or (contractor trait). This profile will contain all details of the arrangement that the corporate has with the hotel. This includes discounting details, billing details, billing address, payment details, etc. Every time you get a corporate traveler, the front desk staff just needs to key in the name of the corporate and voila! All the details relating to the billing get auto-filled.
3. Guest History:
Apart from company profile, there is also the feature of guest history which immensely simplifies the check-in process. Once the company profile is selected, the front desk staff will then have to quiz the corporate traveler by name, the type of id they are carrying and other details which again can get very tiresome. With the guest profile feature, if the corporate traveler is a return guest, this data gets picked automatically upon typing out the guest’s name. As simple as that.
4. Billing:
Often, corporate travelers are in a hurry. Minimizing formality and doing away with unnecessary processes can go a long way in improving their experience. Checkout is one such process which needn’t always be as hectic. With a good PMS in place, a corporate traveler can just present his corporate id at the front desk to check out. The invoice can get emailed to the company directly, automatically. ‘Billed to Company’ if you will.
5. Allocated inventory:
Apart from all these features which are from the traveler or the corporate’s perspective, here is one other PMS feature that helps hotels. While the option of allocating a certain amount of your inventory to your corporates is handy, the hotel still has the convenience to entertain walk-ins with the rest of their available rooms. This way, not only does the hotel serve the corporates but also has scope for other bookings. This is important because one needs to diversify the sources of bookings for maximum occupancy.
