Marketing – Page 3

Optimize your online booking process

Posted on 21 May 201930 March 2023 by Claudine Vio

Online booking tools, primarily created to optimize conversion rates, require some help in order to properly carry out their mission. Here are a few variables you should keep in mind to guarantee your online bookings.

optimiser-processus-reservation-en-ligne

The notorious Book now button

The first step for an online booking is to click the Book now button, which will then lead the potential client to your booking platform. While browsing through various hotel websites, one can notice how this button significantly changes from one website to another. Indeed, it varies by colour, size, location on the website, and also by its accompanying text. This button, which serves as a bait for the booking process, plays a significant role and should thus be conveniently located on your website. It needs to quickly catch your potential client’s eye and must stand out from the other content on your website. You must never assume that your Book now button is clearly visible. You may find this button conveniently located, however if you were the one who set it up and designed it, it might be more obvious to you than it is to your clients. It is therefore important to carry out a series of user tests before taking a final decision.
The Book now button must also follow the user while they browse through your website. For example, your client should never have to go back to the home page to find this button again. In the best case scenario, the button should always be visible on your client’s screen.

Your hotel’s presentation

The potential client has clicked on your Book now button and must now continue to have a pleasant and convincing experience to finalize their booking. Even on a booking platform, you must take each opportunity to show your hotel under its best angle. Each room you wish to sell online must come with specific, good quality pictures. You could also consider showing your client pictures that are not already available on your website. The potential client will then have a better idea of the type of accommodation you can offer.
It is also efficient to customize your booking platform so that the buttons’ colours are the same as the ones used on your website. The potential client should never experience a significant difference throughout their online experience, when going from your website to your booking platform. To showcase your commodities on your booking platform, consider choosing simple icons which are complementary to your visual identity.

Marketing stress

Marketing stress can be a useful technique when you only have a few rooms left to fill and you wish to optimize your occupancy. Marketing stress consists of notifying the potential client that there are only a few rooms left for the specific dates that they have chosen and thus creates a certain notion of urgency. This implies that the potential client should not wait too long to book should they wish to stay at your hotel. Marketing stress will also give your client the impression that many other clients have already chosen your hotel, and that therefore they will make the right choice by also choosing to stay with you.

Promotional codes

Offering promotional codes is an excellent way to improve your clientele’s loyalty and increase your hotel’s occupancy rate. By offering them a promotional code which gives them a discount on their next stay, your clients will be more likely to stay at your hotel for their next trip. In fact, if they already know that a cheaper rate is available to them at your hotel, other options will not seem as interesting to them in comparison (and they will have already experienced a stay at your hotel). This promotional code can be valid for a couple of years or you can pre-determine a limited amount of time for which it will be valid.

Using options

When your potential client is well into their booking process, it is time to offer them options which can increase their final transaction amount. You can thus offer them, for example, on-site parking, a wine bottle upon arrival in their room, breakfast, lunch, dinner or even Wi-Fi, all of these services being for a certain fee. In reality, any additional service a client can purchase on the phone should be available to them online. This will increase the average final transaction for your clients and will also provide you with more accurate forecasts as to which products will sell each day.

Offer online packages

Packages are probably the most delicate thing to market online, especially due to the uncertain availability of various factors: the staff availability when it comes to a package with a massage and material availability when to it comes to a package with equipment rental. Nevertheless, marketing your packages online is a great opportunity if your inventory management is offered by your hotel management software or your booking platform.
You can also decide not to market all of your packages online, however you should still keep the most popular ones in order to allow your potential clients to book them online. This way, the person looking to book their stay at your hotel will be able to do so online at any time and will not have to call your front desk. Marketing your packages online will allow you to conduct more efficient marketing campaigns. For example, when you send a newsletter promoting your newest package, you will be able to add the package’s booking link, so that your clients will be able to book the package online directly without having to call you.

In order to optimize your online bookings, your PMS software and your booking platform must obviously be linked to avoid overbooking. You will be spared of any manual tasks involving rate and inventory adjustments, allowing you to focus on optimizing your online bookings using all the techniques mentioned above.

How to market your hotel at a low cost

Posted on 2 May 20191 October 2021 by Laura Yee Kui Choi

Newsletters

Email marketing is the method with the best return on investment (ROI). You should prioritize this method if you want to market your hotel at a small cost. In order to engage in email marketing, you obviously need email addresses. Your PMS software becomes your best ally as it continuously collects your client’s data. The only thing left for you to do is to use this data to segment your newsletters. Every piece of data collected by your PMS can be used for an email marketing campaign. The more segmented and personalized your newsletters are to meet your clients’ needs, the more efficient they will be.

By knowing who you want to send these newsletters to, you will be able to advertise your hotel easily by carrying successful email marketing campaigns. When the time comes to write your newsletters, make sure you have a catchy subject, carefully pick which pictures you wish to use and do not forget your call to action button (CTA). Your newsletter subject should be short and intriguing, while giving a good insight as to what the reader can expect to read in the email. Your pictures should be high quality and your call to action button needs to attract the reader into clicking and thus bringing them to the next step. You also need to respect email marketing laws, avoid spelling errors and make your newsletters responsive.

Social media represents an essential platform when it comes to promoting your hotel. Make no mistake: not only young people are using social media. While Facebook is present in every age group, Instagram and Snapchat are more commonly used by the 18-34 age group. On the other hand, LinkedIn is a social media aimed towards professionals aged between 30 and 64. In order for you to pick which social media are best, think about which clientele you are trying to reach. If you want to promote a deal for business travellers, LinkedIn could be a better platform than Snapchat.

Once you have decided which social media platform you wish to exploit, you need to decide which content you will promote. Social media posts tend to work better when they come with a picture. The hospitality industry is known to be a dreamy industry, so make that work for you! Show some pictures of your hotel and services, ask your employees to take selfies, and encourage your clients to share their pictures on their own social media. You can also post about awards your hotel recently won or share pictures of the fun activities available in your surroundings. All of this is free and easy to create content which can fill your profiles. You should also encourage your clients to follow you on social media. You can do so in numerous ways, such as in your thank-you email, on their bill or where you display the Wi-Fi password.

Do not forget to create some contests where one needs to like, comment and/or share your post in order to boost your number of followers. It is also crucial to answer any comment left by your guests and respond to all posts where you are mentioned. This way you will reach a broader audience and it will show your friendly touch.

OTAs

If your hotel is not present on OTAs (online travel agencies), you can be sure that your competitors are. People go on these websites to compare hotels, especially when they are looking for hotel somewhere they have never been before. You therefore must be on these websites, and also be able to know your competitors in order to be able to market your hotel better than them. Optimize your profile by picking high quality pictures, writing a hotel description that makes you stand out and keeping an up to date list of all you services. Your rates and availabilities need to be updated continuously. A yield management module and a channel manager can be of great help here. Potential clients often visit OTAs to read about other traveler’s comments. It could thus be of interest to ask your guests to leave reviews when you send out thank-you emails and/or have a contest for clients who left comments, whether they be positive or negative. Responding to these comments/reviews using your hotel’s account will make a good impression and show that you care about your guests’ opinions and well-being.

Search engines

Search engines play a great role in your hotel’s visibility. If you only appear on the third page when you type “Hotel Montreal”, you significantly reduce your chances of being seen by potential guests and thus you may be losing many bookings. Fortunately there is a free way to counter this: SEO (search engine optimization). SEO allows you to insert key-words throughout your website’s pages in order for you to be in the first suggestions in the search engines.

Google set up a free tool called Google My Business. This allows you to enter information about your hotel in a template created by Google in order for people searching your hotel to able to have a quick summary of any information they could need. Potential guests can book directly on your website, or call you by clicking on the Google My Business call to action buttons. It is therefore very important that your Google My Business page be optimized and up to date.

There are plenty of platforms for you to market your hotel on. However, by starting with newsletters, social media, OTAs and search engines, you will achieve the visibility that you need to boost your hotel’s presence without breaking the bank.

How you hotel management software can influence your marketing campaings

Posted on 6 March 20191 October 2021 by Karine Thibeault

A software full of information

If your hotel management software can provide you with statistics, you are already one step ahead regarding your marketing campaign. However if your software is unable to provide you with statistics, you will either have to manually compute a significant amount of data, or build a campaign based on estimation rather than precise data. It will be extremely hard to determine whether or not you will have made the right decisions, depending on the target clientele and period of the year.

Your hotel management software can help you when making these marketing decisions, and help you visualize which clientele type is the most profitable for you and has the highest booking frequency, as well as the times at which each clientele type is most likely to book. This will allow you to know when to launch your marketing campaigns to be the most successful. An efficient marketing campaign cannot be built without precise data.

An easy to use software

Marketing campaigns are usually very time consuming for the front desk staff. Indeed they need to answer questions from potential clients who call the hotel, and also take bookings. The hotel management software is easy to use and plays a critical role when it comes to simplifying daily tasks.

Firstly, if your package or deal development is difficult to implement within your hotel management software, the person in charge of the project could easily be discouraged and give up. You also need to minimize the time spent on configuration in order to maximize the time spent on the next set up steps.

Your booking platform also needs to be connected to your hotel management software in order for your online bookings to be directly entered into your hotel management software and for your inventory to be automatically updated. The online booking platform must be easy to use and efficient so that your marketing campaign can promote easy and quick bookings. The complementarity between your hotel management software and your booking platform is therefore vital when it comes to marketing campaigns. In fact, this complementarity allows you to offer a competitive and efficient online experience for your clients.

A software which gives you access to precise data

Clients who have already stayed with you are already aware of the quality of your services, so it can be beneficial for you to make them loyal customers. Did you know that the customer retention cost is on average 10 times smaller than the customer acquisition cost? You can use newsletters to communicate all sorts of information in a simple and effective manner.

In order for you to carry out successful marketing campaigns, it is important for you to be able to retrieve your client database to then transfer it into a newsletter platform or another platform connected to your hotel management software. Any hotel management software contains information regarding your client database, but a successful marketing campaign is more often based on targeting rather than on scale. Indeed, the first name and family name are often not enough. The type of stay is one of the elements compiled by some hotel management software, and it will make the difference if used for a marketing campaign. You will be able to run many different marketing campaigns simultaneously, as each clientele type can be targeted by specific offers or packages. You can also launch a marketing campaign for last minute bookings. This type of campaign would be a better fit for a local clientele rather than an international one. It could be wise to filter this campaign by postal code in order to reach your local clientele.

The success of a marketing campaign almost solely rests on data you are able to extract from your hotel management software. The more clientele data that is available, the better your chances to create a successful and profitable campaign.

Overall, the tools you use will have a great impact on your success rate for your marketing campaigns. If you discover that your tools are not optimal, it might be time to re-evaluate your software functions according to how you potentially want to use and exploit them.

Social media and the hotel industry

Posted on 19 October 20181 October 2021 by Laura Yee Kui Choi

Since social media is well established in most people’s daily life, it offers a not-to-be-missed opportunity to attract new guests and retain those who are already loyal.

Newsfeed content is often a source of inspiration for users. Having a social media presence makes it more likely a potential guest will see a photo of your hotel and want to book a stay. Social media’s power also lies in its ability to provide visibility with people who don’t know about you or don’t follow you yet.

With social media, you can also set up contests and get greater visibility since users who follow you will share your posts with their friends and family. With contests, you get the chance to collect email addresses and improve the quality of your mailing lists.

Social media users like things to happen fast. Tap into their need for instant gratification by inviting them to book a room directly on your Facebook page.

When choosing an online booking engine, pick one that lets you use social media platforms such as Facebook. An online booking engine that offers a direct connection to social media is a must-have as you won’t need to connect online travel agencies’ (OTA) booking engines to these platforms. Seamless integration between your hotel PMS and online booking engine is key to displaying accurate room availability and pricing on social media.

your e-reputation is a vital asset

Internet users are mostly responsible for building your online reputation. When they share pictures of a vacation spent at your hotel, leave reviews and comments and tag your hotel in their posts, social media users project an image of your hotel that matches their perception. And their perspective spreads quickly.

Moreover, when you respond to user’s posts and thank them for sharing their thoughts and experiences, you feed the post and keep it active. As a result, the post rises to the top of the newsfeeds of the people you want to reach, and you boost your visibility.

Online review platforms also play an essential role in building and maintaining your reputation, and your revenues derive from your reputation. During the choice-making phase, a web user planning a trip is in the habit of reading the opinions of other travelers. These reviews can be decisive and may tip the balance in your favour if potential guests read positive comments about your hotel.

It’s essential to manage your online reputation astutely by keeping a few things in mind, including future guest reviews posted to platforms such as Trip Advisor.

If you consider your e-reputation a valuable asset worth investing in, software exists that can help you by serving as your social media information and processing hub.

Social media can help you reach your target audience with pinpoint accuracy. Posting exclusive promotions that feature a dedicated code is one of the best ways to leverage social media and give certain users precedence. Some booking engines even allow you to create user-specific codes that confer a special discount on guests who redeem them. Suppose you offer a promotion at your hotel in Montréal. You can offer a discount code to all people whose postal code falls within the Montréal area to encourage users to visit your direct booking site to book a stay at your hotel.

Social media can be incredibly useful for targeting initiatives because platforms possess a phenomenal amount of data about each user. Indeed, the display accuracy of your ads based on user profile data is unbeatable.

Sell the experience before selling the service

Photos and videos are the best way to share an experience on many social media sites. On Instagram, for instance, publications must include a photo or video, so you are selling an experience before a set of services. When web users see beautiful images that appeal to their emotions, they can picture themselves living the experience, which sparks their interest in booking a similar stay.

This approach works well to attract new guests and show off your services while enhancing your hotel’s reputation.

Using the right platform for each target audience

While it may be tempting to post identical content on all social media sites, doing so isn’t the most effective strategy as the average user age and type varies according to the platform.

The age of Facebook users falls mostly between 18 and 44. Keep in mind that users also connect more often to Facebook than to other sites, so they are more likely to see your posts. On Facebook, you can post links to your website and promotions and share photos of your hotel. If you want to post contests, Facebook is the forum you should use.

To promote your hotel’s aesthetics features, Instagram is the platform of choice. As you can only post photos and videos, you can leverage these to showcase your hotel’s atmosphere and charm. Hashtags are essential so that users who don’t follow you can find you easily. Most Instagram users are between the ages of 18 and 44, so keep these demographics in mind when you post to this platform.

The immediate, ephemeral nature of Twitter makes it your best option for some types of promotions. About 40% of Twitter users are between 18 and 29 years old, while 27% are between 30 and 49 years old. With a 140-character limit, Twitter doesn’t allow for lengthy posts. Make sure your offers are catchy, in your face and, most importantly, timely.

In addition to publishing content on your social media page, share posts and photos of your guests that also showcase your hotel. Doing so doesn’t require much effort and lets potential guests in on the guest experience at your hotel. This strategy increases your notoriety and credibility; you aren’t selling anything directly, only sharing in a transparent manner details of a pleasant stay at your hotel.

While it’s always great to attract new followers, don’t take the ones you already have for granted. Remember to post event reminders and create relevant content on a regular basis to pique the interest of your existing followers. Also, consider offering discounts to your most loyal guests or those who share your posts or tag you in their posts the most to cement your followers’ and guests’ loyalty.

Finally, be sure to respond to your guests’ posts and comments. Thank those who make positive comments and be understanding and receptive to comments that are more negative in tone. There’s always a way to work things out and make a bad situation better.

8 easy steps to boost direct bookings

Posted on 12 July 201729 August 2022 by Nicolas Audiffren

augmenter-reservations-directes — Augmentez vos réservations directes en 8 étapes faciles

1. Make the reservation process easy

To encourage people who visit your website to book directly through your booking engine, make sure a “Book now” button is easily visible and accessible from all pages of your website. Remember, though, that a booking isn’t guaranteed until the reservation process is complete. According to SalesCycle, 81% of travel reservations are abandoned mid-process. Potential customers often quit because the booking process is confusing, too complicated or too long. To guard against this phenomenon and boost your direct bookings, you must ensure the booking process is fast and easy.

In short, make sure potential clients have the minimum amount of information to provide and the fewest pages to navigate. It’s also a good idea to include clear and visible calls to action that guide the customer through each step of the booking process.

2. Guarantee the best rate

OTAs (online travel agencies) continuously compete with you for bookings. You must convince your potential customers to book their stays directly through your booking engine instead of through an OTA. Why not offer incentives directly to your future customers!? For example, you could offer free Wi-Fi, a room upgrade, free breakfast or even early check-in or late check-out. Note that, for this approach to work, incentives must be highly visible on your booking engine.

3. Offer special packages

Offering exclusive value-added packages on your website could go a long way to convincing potential customers to book directly through your booking engine. Exclusive packages, special promotions and preferential rates are very attractive to website visitors. Such unique features could very well trigger direct bookings.

4. Don’t offer too many options

Too much choice can be stressful and become a hurdle to decision-making. That’s why it’s important to strike the right balance; offer neither too many nor too few options. To leverage direct bookings, keep different room types to a minimum and avoid offering too many packages on your booking engine.

5. Upload relevant images

Photos of your hotel on your website and your booking engine should make a good first impression. These photos offer a unique opportunity to impress potential customers and show them what they can expect from a stay at your establishment. To show your hotel in its best light, make sure the photos convey your establishment’s personality and are relevant, of high quality and taken by a professional photographer.

6. Show some personality

Does your website really communicate the essence of your property? The personality of your property is a unique element that allows you to differentiate yourself from your competitors as it cannot be copied. By showing the personality of your property using words and language that represent it, you connect with your website’s visitors. The authenticity and emotion captured by your potential guests could convince them to book directly from your booking engine.

7. Back up your claims

Don’t expect people who visit your website to believe everything you say. Potential customers are much more likely to believe what your previous customers have to say about your hotel. That’s why it’s essential to include customer opinions on your website. You’ll gain credibility and authenticity and win the trust of your potential customers. By extension, the trust you’ve built will translate to direct bookings through your booking engine.

8. Make the most of remarketing

Remarketing leverages ‘cookies’ technology to target potential customers who have visited your site without booking directly. If a website visitor starts booking a reservation through your booking engine but doesn’t complete it, you may be able to recover their email address and send them special offers to encourage them to follow through on the booking. If you can’t access their email address, you can still target this potential customer through online ad campaigns.

Boosting direct bookings through your booking engine is a challenge you can meet! These eight easy steps will not only help you increase direct bookings, but they will also update your best practices when it comes to online bookings.

10 Digital Marketing Tips to Differentiate Your Hotel

Posted on 25 August 201630 September 2021 by Nicolas Audiffren

1 – Embrace your specialization

Your hotel should appear in the distribution channels most relevant to your market segment. For example, if you have a boutique hotel, try to get listed on tablethotels.

2 – Make the most of your website

Votre site web doit être constamment mis à jour, accessible à partir de tous les appareils mobiles et refléter les caractéristiques uniques de votre hôtel. Du contenu incluant des photos professionnelles attrayantes pourra considérablement augmenter vos réservations directes.

Your website should be constantly updated, available on all mobile devices, and reflect your hotel’s unique features and characteristics. Content with professional, attention-grabbing photos can significantly increase your direct bookings.

3 – Stand out from the crowd

Be personal and tell a story! Hotels have so many things to tell; even a fifteen-room motel along the highway can have a great story.

4 – Customize the guest experience

Provide additional options for customers making a booking. Create partnerships with local attractions, tours, restaurants, and offer them as add-ons after the customer has booked with you.

5 – Differentiate your booking packages

Innovate with room types as product offers. Use your booking engine to offer promotions and special offers that you do not offer on the OTAs (e.g., a package with a day at a nearby spa or a free meal in your restaurant).

6 – Rewarding loyalty

Reward returning guests that book directly through your website. This can be easily achieved by offering, for example, a 10% discount code for any returning customer, which is still much less than the commission paid to OTAs..

Have a presence on the most popular social platforms. It isn’t just a way to increase your online presence; it is also adds new communication channels. With social media, you have a platform where you can communicate with customers on a more informal level and take advantage of your distinctive traits in order to transmit a friendlier feel to your guests. Social media is a driver of brand awareness, customer relationships and retention.

8 – Targeted market campaigns

In order to provide relevant offers and experiences to your guests, you need to know not only who your target market is, but also what they do and what they want. Helpful resources to find such information include surveys, online reviews, Google Analytics, and Facebook and Twitter insights. As you explore existing data from various sources, you will start to see similarities. Use these similarities to better understand your guests, then give them what they want. Targeted marketing becomes much easier when you have a better understanding of the needs, desires and behaviors of your audience.

9 – Have a digital marketing strategy

Part of knowing your target audience means knowing which tools they use to plan a trip, like search engines, specific websites, social media sites, and reviews. The more your hotel appears in searches and social channels, from the beginning of the customer journey (initial planning) to the end (reviews and post-stay socials), the bigger edge you will have.

10 – Make booking easy

Make booking on your hotel website as simple and efficient as possible. If people can check availability and book a room on any page of the website, regardless of the device they are using and whenever they want, you will be less likely to lose them.

Having a presence on social media platforms is essential if you want to promote your hotel online. By following these tips you’ll be able to differentiate yourself from your competition and attract new potential customers.

The 5 best ways to promote your hotel on a limited budget

Posted on 12 July 201620 May 2022 by Laura Yee Kui Choi

1 – Create a captivating web experience

One of the pillars of a solid marketing strategy is having a well-adapted website. Making a strong first impression is your best chance to generate direct reservations, and your website provides the key to making this impression. Invest in your website to make navigation more intuitive, ensure faster load time and include images that will sell your hotel. Create a web experience that encourages visitors to reserve through the website, and you’ll be sure to get a return on your investment.

2 – Recover aborted reservations

Nearly three out of four consumers abort their purchases. In the hotel industry, the abort rate is higher still. Therefore, reservation recovery procedures are essential since the target audience consists of qualified potential customers interested in staying at your hotel. To recover potential customers, it is crucial to ask for their email address as soon as possible in the reservation process and to include a newsletter subscription checkbox. As soon as potential customers abort their reservation, send them an email to try to convince them to follow through with their aborted reservation. A second email can include a small discount to drive the sale. Don’t let a revenue source slip through your fingers!

3 – Measure your email campaigns

Gauge the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns. To do this, check out the conversion, click and rebound rates as well as subscribe and unsubscribe rates.

4 – Pay per click

By choosing the pay per click (PPC) option, you don’t waste your money. Instead, you invest it in customers that will bring a return on your investment. Pay-per-click advertising makes it possible to specifically target the audience you want to reach.

5 – Test your campaigns

Each hotel is unique. Therefore, it’s important to test your strategies and tactics before implementing them. To ensure your campaigns are successful, you must have a documented strategy and a plan for the different tests you want to run. In short, the key is to run tests, follow up and make changes as needed.

Wether they are implemented individually or as a whole, these marketing strategies can be beneficial to your property. Furthermore, it is important to use these performance indicators to measure their effectiveness in the long term.

8 great reasons to create a customer satisfaction survey

Posted on 28 June 201626 August 2022 by Nicolas Audiffren

raisons-creer-questionnaire-satisfaction

To make sure the service you offer matches your customers’ needs/expectations

Where striving for quality is concerned, the goal is reached when customers are satisfied. Asking them if they are satisfied lets you know whether the service you offer meets their needs and expectations. In a competitive context like that of hospitality, meeting customers’ expectations isn’t optional, it’s essential.

Identify sources of satisfaction and dissatisfaction

Satisfaction surveys are mostly used to identify satisfaction and dissatisfaction factors within a continuous improvement approach. Surveys generate information to be used operationally. Using satisfaction surveys gives you a way to satisfy more customers by detecting the reasons for dissatisfaction.

Anticipate expectations and market developments

Knowledge makes it possible to better anticipate what will need to be done. Which is why it’s important not to limit yourself to asking your customers whether they are satisfied (or not) in a survey, but to also encourage them to make suggestions or submit comments (in answer to an open-ended question at the end of the survey, for example).

Follow customer satisfaction over time

A satisfaction survey makes it possible to assess customer satisfaction at a point in time. However, by regularly sending satisfaction surveys, you can take stock of the evolution of your satisfaction indicators. Are your customers more and more satisfied with your products and services? Do they become less satisfied over time? It’s essential to know the answers to these questions at all times.

Stay in touch with your customers

Asking your customers questions to determine whether they are satisfied or not testifies to your receptivity and capacity to listen. By doing so, you are showing your customers that you are interested in them, that their opinion counts and that you care about keeping them satisfied. In addition, maintaining a strong relationship with your guests will help you retain them over the long term

Inspire your team with a new customer-oriented approach

The purpose of the satisfaction survey is also to inspire your team with a new customer-oriented approach. Continuously monitoring your customers’ satisfaction and regularly letting your team know the status of satisfaction indicators gives you a tool to mobilize your teams to respond to issues regarding customer satisfaction. Satisfaction indicators are management tools. Listening to what customers have to say is a philosophy that must be shared by everyone that plays a role in the business. By creating teams that participate to one degree or another in ensuring customer satisfaction, a business gives itself a decision advantage over its competitors.

Optimize decision-making

Satisfaction surveys are helpful tools in the decision-making process. Analyzing the results and determining satisfaction indicators allows management teams and managers to prioritize and rank actions as well as make informed choices.

Increase your sales revenue

The purpose of satisfaction surveys is to contribute to your business and its sales revenue. Knowing your customers’ level of satisfaction means being in a position to continuously improve it. Satisfied customers will stay with you more often, but, more importantly, they won’t hesitate to speak well about your hotel wherever they go. And word of mouth will lead to new visitors. In this way, you’ll generate potential new customers and retain your current ones.

9 Ways to Boost Hotel Bookings and Increase Revenue

Posted on 12 May 201630 September 2021 by Claudine Vio

Tip 1: Solidify your hotel guest personas

With the help of your hotel database, find out who your guests are, why they’re staying with you and for what purpose, i.e., business or pleasure. Then, develop one or two guest personas so that you can properly tailor your marketing efforts to meet their needs.

Tip 2: Use a strong value proposition to resonate with guests

Clearly state what makes your hotel unique and why potential guests should stay with you rather than anywhere else. Be sure to emphasize the fact that you can meet their needs better than your competitors can.

Tip 3: Speed up your website loading time

Research shows that the slower your website speed, the more likely visitors are to leave it for a competitor’s site. To avoid this, make sure that it does not take more than 3 seconds for your site to load.

Tip 4: Make your photo gallery shine

Having a spectacular photo gallery is essential for any hotel website. Since potential guests visit this page to see what your hotel looks like, it is the ideal place to showcase your most beautiful rooms, features and amenities. Always ensure that your photos are high quality and up to date.

Tip 5: Keep your site simple

Simplify site design and navigation. A quick and easy-to-use site allows potential guests to better navigate the information and continue exploring your site.

Tip 6: Avoid overwhelming potential guests with too much choice

People who visit your website might be discouraged if faced with too many choices. Make sure you limit your packages and navigational options to the bare essentials.

Tip 7: Appeal to guests through visual storytelling

Images pack a huge emotional punch with potential guests. Fill your website with beautiful, powerful images that tell a story and convey strong emotions. You might be surprised to see just how positive an effect this can have on hotel reservations.

Tip 8: Think mobile friendly

Optimize your website for mobile. Ensure that your potential guests can book their stay with ease, without ever having to touch a computer. Also, be sure to include smartphone functionality on your mobile site so that guests can call you or get directions to your hotel with just one simple click.

Tip 9: Get down with your data

Website data can reveal a lot about your hotel and your guests, so take advantage of it! These informations are an invaluable personalization opportunity for your property. Whether it is to tailor the customer experience or offer them a personalized arrival, the use of this data helps to exceed their expectations. Certain information about your establishment can also be useful to analyze your performance with indicators such as the occupancy rate, the status of the rooms, your average monthly revenue and others. So what are you waiting for to take advantage of it!

Whether it’s by getting to know your customers, improving your website or your social media, all of these can contribute to your hotel’s reputation and therefore increase your profits. You will not only improve your reputation in the eyes of your customers, but also your position against your competitors through differentiation.