Use These Six Tips to Grow Your Hospitality Business
The global pandemic is a knee-jerking episode for all businesses, but the hospitality business has broken its spine.
The vertical fuelling almost 3% of the world’s gross domestic product is now empty for months. We’ll show you what are the 5 sectors of the hospitality industry, other say 7 sectors of the hospitality industry, and some hospitality business examples too.
But the ravage does not seem to cease anytime soon. Research from McKinsey suggests it may take until 2023 for the hotel industry to recover fully.
First, the pandemic hit, then labor shortages, and now inflation is taking out small businesses because the profit is not there.
So do you give up until things go normal? Hell no.
The future of the hospitality sector looks completely different. It is agile and flexible. If you wish to see yourself in the hospitality industry’s future, you must get creative now. So how do you get back on your feet?
How do you start your sales machine again? Read on to find out.
Top 6 Hacks To Growth Hack Your Hospitality Business
Your business directly harnesses its power from your customers.
Whether your goal is higher annual sales or business expansion, everything roots in your audience. The more desirable and valuable you become to your target audience, the higher your chances of sustaining uncertain times.
But what do your customers want from you?
Here are a few preference parameters that today’s guests expect from their service providers:
- Meaningful experiences
- Customer service
- Higher engagement
- Safe environment
- Cleanliness
Let’s find out how you can surpass all these top expectations of your borders.
Steer to experience-driven services.
The travel and leisure business is all about building relationships. Tell stories. The key to maintaining positive customer relations is communicating with customers regularly through stories related to them.
Be open to feedback at all times. It will help you understand them better. Make sure that your communications are clear, polite, and professional. By doing so, your travel and leisure business during 2023 will be well on its way to success. Following are a few ways in which you can achieve so.
- Utilize the power of technology: Today’s tourists want a break from everything but technology. Tailoring your hospitality services with a technological engagement like AI-powered geysers to mini-bars and voice assistants like Alexa, you’re already on your customers’ list of favorites.
- Invest in interior and architecture: Design and architecture play an essential role in the overall experience of your customer’s short stay with you. If your hotel is located in a location with a rich history or is a place of cultural importance, feature that in your interior design. Draw your design inspirations from your immediate locality. Remember, in interior design, thinking global, but acting local is the ultimate mantra.
Rethink your marketing strategies.
Marketing can be a huge breakthrough for an industry that is predominantly experience-driven. Today’s tourists want their staycations to be everything memorable. This means they are now conscious about how you present as much as the what. But to do this right, there are a few elements that you need to pay special focus to.
- Website: The hospitality industry is all about rendering superior experiences. Your website is the first-hand experience that your potential customers have with your brand. This means your hotel website design needs to be on point.
- Give your customers a solid reason to choose you over your competitors. Keep an eye on the SEO of your site at all times. Make extensive use of high-quality content and photography to engage your audience. Using a third-party vendor for photography is a smart decision here. You can use a commercial photography contract template to collaborate easier. Also, keep your website’s design and information architecture aligned with your target audience’s taste.
- Pro Tip: Make it easy for customers to book spaces with you. Integrate vacation rental management software into your website to make it seamless.
- Social media: If you lose social media’s power, you are losing money on the table. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Yelp are essential networking tools you should use throughout the year. You should post information on these sites regularly to show your clients that you are active and are there to do business. Your business will likely return with a bang when you are more active with meaningful, relevant content.
- Email Marketing: One of the essential tools you can use for your travel and leisure business is an email marketing campaign. Whatever your target, special promotions, announcements about discounts, and newsletters, everything can be personalized here. It’s also essential to keep your client list updated and current. This way, you can easily direct them to any information they may be interested in.
Get creative with your sales efforts. Marketing can turn your audience’s eyeballs towards you, but you must offer what is in demand to see the money flow. What worked before Covid-19 may not work today at all. To cut, you need to work on how you present your products and offers.
Remember the following points while brainstorming your service ideas to cater to your customer’s needs.
Branding: If you thought your branding was only meant for higher market exposure, you are wrong. In such an uncertain time, your brand can save you a lot of long-term harm. Harnessing the strength of your brand equity is probably the best move today than ever. Your brand is the answer to why your customers choose you over others. And the answer is they trust you. All other factors follow this element.
Repackaging: After you win your audience’s confidence, you need to retain it for a long time.
But how? Your selling strategy should be based on what is in demand, not what you already deliver. Your operational systems need to be agile to adapt to the present situations.
Think of what value your resort can provide to generate a bundle more attractive to guests than competitors.
How do you put yourself apart in the crowd? Think about daily happy hours outside or within a socially remote setup, free massages, fitness packages with yoga or exercise classes, or personal dining choices. All these can give your sales the desired boost.
Upselling: It is much easier to win an existing customer’s trust than someone who has never done business with you. A study says customer acquisition is 6 times costlier than retention. This means you cannot afford to lose customers.
Upselling is a definite way to add value to your existing client base. But this strategy can only work when you keep your upselling services contextual to your client’s existing service.
Rethink your business ROI model.
Covid-19 has changed how the world travels and meets completely. This means it is high time you rethink how you generate money from your business. The traditional monetization channels would take some time for all hotels and restaurants to recover. So what can you do to generate the money your venture needs to float?
Asking a few critical questions here can solve your problem to some extent:
- What will fit the requirements of today’s attendees and travelers?
- What are the top priorities of today’s travelers?
- Why are the emotional states of post-covid-19 traveling?
Revenge traveling and pent-up visits are the top reasons your audience would like to visit you. Cater your services to meet their emotional and psychological needs.
Here are a few ideas you can utilize:
- Workspaces: Renting your hotel spaces as workrooms and meeting rooms is an excellent solution for the work-from-home squads. It is a means to acquire alternative revenue for your premises.
- Rented space for local sellers: Renting your reception or commonplaces as a pop-up area for local sellers can prove immensely profitable. It helps your venture to float and saves small businesses from falling apart.
- Kitchen rent-outs: Food tech is perhaps the second vertical that saw the maximum boost after the entertainment industry. But here is your opportunity. The most significant pain point of food start-ups can prove to be your biggest asset. Rent out your kitchen place to start-ups with maximum sanitation. You would be surprised how profitable this can be for your hotel.
- Video shooting rentals: Content creators often require spaces for their shootings. Renting your spaces to creative ventures can give you a steady flow of income here. From video bloggers to OTT channel creators, you can tie up with anyone to whom you can cater your services.
Ace your customer service
One of the best ways to show your customers that you care about them is to offer them the highest quality service possible. A well-thought plan for your customer’s success is essential for on-point delivery.
Always have hotel employees greet customers as they arrive at the front desk. Make sure you have room service waiting at their table when they arrive. Have a form on your website to be filled out by your customers to fill out. All these minor changes add up to the final experience for your customers.
You can utilize a few elements to improve your customer service.
- Inbound calls: You should always plan on making time to connect with your customers face-to-face if at all possible. The easiest way to do this is by making inbound calls. You can even include audio files to provide more personalized customer service.
- Focus on building trust: Trust will be crucial in the global recovery of the hotel industry. This means before you start to think of sales, you need to think about how to gain your customer’s trust. Invest in deep sanitation and cleaning programs. Air filtration systems, mobile check-ins, and QR scanning for restaurant menus can ensure you deliver the highest safety standards to your customers.
How robust is your partner program?
Staying open to collaborations will only help you earn better. Partner with event planners, marketing agencies, and other companies to optimize each other’s networks and capabilities.
- Hybrid events: The future of social mixing isn’t only in-person. Virtual events are now a permanent thing of the future. This means there will be numerous times when you see a hybrid event taking place. Getting yourself ready for the future of events can give your venture an immediate sales boost.
Providers would gain from capturing the house’s flexibility through movies, highlighting precisely what a secure event experience appears like, from orientation to contactless audio-visual to the main event to departure. You can produce a video detailing a hybrid occasion hosted by your hotel.
Reveal how your distances are flexible along with your audio-visual capabilities. Show your audience’s experiences both offline and online in real time. All this can set up a strong case study for your potential customers.
Wrapping up on the travel and leisure business
The above tricks and sales tips will give you an overall boost in your hospitality venture. But you must understand that no matter the decision, keep your customers at heart. Do exactly what leads to a blissful customer experience.
The future of the travel and leisure business depends a lot on how sensible and trustworthy you can prove to be to your customers. Go that extra mile. It’ll only make you grow stronger.
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General FAQs
What are the best strategies to increase hospitality business sales?
The best strategies to increase travel and leisure business sales include offering personalized customer service, engaging with guests on social media, creating loyalty rewards programs, leveraging online booking and review sites, using targeted marketing campaigns, optimizing your website for mobile use, utilizing digital technology in the guest experience, and regularly measuring customer feedback.
How can we use customer reviews to increase hospitality business sales?
We can use customer reviews to increase travel and leisure business sales by leveraging them to showcase positive experiences with our services. Customer reviews on websites, social media pages, and review sites such as TripAdvisor help provide a reliable source of information that potential customers can use to assess our brand.
How do loyalty programs help increase hospitality business sales?
Successful travel and leisure businesses should use technology that can enhance the customer experience, streamline administrative tasks, and help create new opportunities for marketing and sales. Technology includes online reservation systems, guest check-in applications, inventory management software, customer relationship management programs (CRMs), loyalty programs, and point-of-sale (POS) systems.
What technology should be used for a successful travel and leisure business?
Thriving hospitality companies should use sales and marketing techniques that can enhance the customer experience, streamline administrative tasks, and help create new opportunities for marketing and sales.