6 Hacks To Help Grow Your Hospitality Business During 2024

The global pandemic has profoundly impacted businesses worldwide, and the hospitality industry has been particularly hard-hit.

6 Hacks To Help Grow Your Hospitality Business During 2024.

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. 

So do you give up until things go normal? Hell no.  And you might be wondering what the AI buzz is about and if it can help you/

Let’s put it this way: Imagine being a chef with a secret recipe. You’re cooking up a storm, but your restaurant isn’t buzzing as much as you’d like it to. Now, picture a culinary wizard (that’s us, the consulting firm) swooping in, sprinkling some of that AI magic into your strategy mix. Suddenly, your kitchen is working like a well-oiled machine, your dishes are hitting the spot, and the restaurant is packed every night.

As a CMO, deploying AI-driven marketing strategies with a consulting firm is like having that culinary wizard on your team. We bring our expertise to maximize marketing efficiency, personalize customer experiences, and get real-time insights, helping you whip up the perfect recipe for business success!

The landscape of the hospitality sector is undergoing a profound transformation, brimming with agility and adaptability. If one aspires to be a part of this industry’s promising future, embracing creativity becomes imperative in the present moment.

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. 

Regardless of your objective – whether it’s increasing annual sales or expanding your business – everything ultimately comes down to your audience. The more you can make yourself appealing and valuable to your target audience, the greater your likelihood of weathering uncertain times successfully.

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 service

The hospitality business is all about building relationships. The key to maintaining positive customer relations is communicating with customers regularly. 

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 hospitality business during 2021 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 span of 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 with the what. But to do this right, there are a few elements that you need to pay special focus on. 

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.

Did you know that:

• 93% OF ONLINE EXPERIENCES START WITH A SEARCH ENGINE.
• OVER 70% OF CLICKS GO TO ORGANIC SEARCHES THAT RANK ON THE FIRST PAGE OF GOOGLE.

Give your customers a solid reason to choose you over your competitors. Keep an eye on the SEO of your site at all times. 

To captivate your audience effectively, harness the power of compelling content and stunning photography. Entrusting a third-party vendor for photography is a strategic move. Simplify the collaboration process by utilizing a commercial photography contract template. Let the seamless fusion of creativity and professionalism elevate your endeavors.

Also, always keep the design and information architecture of your website aligned with your target audience’s taste. 

Pro Tip: Make it easy for your customers to book spaces with you. Integrate a vacation rental management software in your website to make it seamless.

• Social media: If you are losing 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 that you are there to do business. The more active you are with meaningful, relevant content, the more likely your business is to come back with a bang.  
• Email Marketing: One of the essential tools you can use for your hospitality business is an email marketing campaign. No matter 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 back to any information that they may be interested in.

Get creative with your sales efforts. 

Marketing can turn your audience’s eyeballs towards you, but you need to 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 what you present your products and offers. 

Following are a few points that you should remember while you brainstorm your service ideas to cater to your customer’s needs. 

Source

• Branding: If you thought your branding is only meant for higher market exposure, you are wrong. In such an uncertain time, your brand can save you much 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 and not what you already deliver. Your operational systems need to be agile to adapt to the present situations. Think of what value can your resort provide to generate a bundle more attractive to guests than competitors? 

How do you put yourself apart in the crowd? Think about things such as 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 six 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 the existing service you offer your client. 

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 to recover for all hotels and restaurants alike. So what can you do to generate the money that 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 why 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:  

1. 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.
2. Rented space for local sellers: Renting your reception or commonplaces as a pop-up area for local sellers can be immensely profitable. It not only helps your venture to float but saves small businesses from falling apart. 
3. 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 much profitable this can turn out for your hotel. 
4. 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 to 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. Having a well-thought plan for your customer’s success is essential for on-point delivery. 

Always have hotel employees on hand to greet customers as they arrive at the front desk. Make sure that you have room service waiting at their table when they arrive. Have a form on your website to be filled by your customers to fill out. All these minor changes add up to the final experience of your customers. 

Following are a few elements that you can utilize 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 if you want to provide more personalized customer service.

• Focus on building trust: Trust will be crucial in the recovery of the hotel industry globally. 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. Use air filtration systems, mobile check-ins, and QR scanning for menus at restaurants can ensure you deliver the highest safety standards to your customers.  

Staying open to collaborations will only help you earn better. Partner with event planners, 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, right 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 as a very strong case study for your potential customers. 

Wrapping up

The above tricks and sales tips will give you an overall boost in your hospitality venture. But what you need to understand is no matter what the decision is, keep your customers at the heart of it. Do exactly what leads to a blissful customer experience. 

The future of the hospitality 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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Updated in 2023.

 

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