There are many different types of hotels, either individual or as part of a group, located across the world all catering to different needs, budgets and locations. As a hotel owner one of the biggest challenges you will face is to fill and maximise on capacity of your hotel on a Sunday evening/ low demand times. Sunday evenings, or low occupancy times are notoriously difficult to fill as they are between the leisure and business stayers, plus who wants to be away from home? We wanted to share our 5 marketing ideas for hotels to help get you thinking what might work for your hotel’s location and low occupancy challenges:
- Write your marketing strategy. To overcome any business challenge you need to start by identifying what it is and your approach as to how you solve it, this is where the marketing strategy and plan comes in. Once you know where you wish to go and how you are going to get there, the rest becomes a lot easier. Understanding who your target audience is and what motivates them will help you with the second point – building a package. To learn more about what you should include in your marketing strategy CLICK HERE to read our recent blog.
- Build a package. It is important to connect with your target audience and give them a reason to come and stay with you on a Sunday evening, or low occupancy timeframe – recognising that different locations and venues experience different capacity demand. To achieve this we first need to understand who our target audience is and what package might resonate with them. Creative marketing Ideas for hotels could include: Pamper/ relaxation package; Art packages; Yoga and relaxation retreats; offering business people the chance to come early and start their business week with a fresh start for example.
- Build a loyalty programme. It is cited that it costs five times more to attract new clients vs retaining your existing client base. Why not take advantage of this and give your current customers a great deal to come and stay with you, or perhaps even up selling those customers who have already booked to come early and stay one more night.
- Its all about content. As with most marketing today when we are working across blogs, websites, email and social media it is all about providing useful and relevant content to your target audience. It sounds easier than it is sometimes. Try to think about what your target audience might like to hear from you about or answer the questions and queries that they raise. Customer feedback can often be a great source of content generation. Don’t forget that if you are based in an amazing location then to give them a reason to visit Cancun for example and also stay with you, will definitely help support your marketing activity.
- SEO and customer reviews. In today’s world digital marketing ideas for hotels form a very important part of the mix. Ensuring that your website is up to date, your SEO is in place and you are being know for the search terms which are right for your business is essential.
In Conclusion
There is no magic wand to help overcome the challenge of filling the low Sunday night occupancy challenge. But with a good, solid marketing approach you can definitely try to impact and improve occupancy. Putting the customer at the heart of everything that you do will enable you to sit in their shoes and understand what they might need from you.
If you would like some help in generating some marketing ideas for your hotel please CLICK HERE to arrange your initial consultation.
Sources:
- https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2018/09/07/hotel-marketing
- https://www.siteminder.com/r/marketing/hotel-marketing-ideas-tips/hotel-marketing-this-year/
