Are you worried about your declining sales? Do you want to predict your future sales to optimize your price per room?
Hotels business is not anymore an easy business, as the competition is rising in the market and your product is very much perishable. Once the sales are foregone, you can’t get your revenue from it again. In this scenario, it becomes a headache for traditional hotel business player and also for new entrants to have a robust sales management solution in place. These are few of the solutions you can easily integrate into your business.
- Invest in Data Management
If you have a large chain of the hotel business, it becomes very necessary for you to collect your sales data about customers. It will help you in multiple folds:
- Provide customized service to repeat customers for better experience
- Give offers in case of if the visit to other hotels of your chain
- Get an idea of Supply Demand for different months.
These ideas will eventually help you to the improvement of sales.
2. Social Media Marketing is the Key
People are more in to showcase their leisure trips in multiple social media like Facebook, Instagram, etc. Hence a social media page with attractive pictures of the places and hotels are a must for now to provide sales management solution for hotels. A popular hashtag to go viral if possible and an external link which will help the customer to book your service directly. Also, you can offer deals if they use your hashtags or mention your name after availing your service.
3. Know your customers
Depending on the location and your former business you know how to divide your customers into different needs. Some of your customers can be Family group, solo travelers, Party Groups. Depending on your capability you need to decide your offering criteria. Like if you give a party group room beside a family group room, and then apparently one of them may not feel satisfied as they have a different lifestyle altogether. Also, party group may want a late night entry, and you need to keep your security in place for that.
4. Differential Pricing
It is a common fact that hoteliers supply room in low price if it is booked in advance. But here you need to understand that if you have any empty rooms than the end of the day, you are losing your sell. But again you don’t want to lose any chance of selling the room in higher price. In this regard, you forecasting of expected travelers is needed. Depending on that you can increase or decrease your price offerings. Hence a correct pricing strategy is essential for sales management solution for hotels
5. Sales Management Software
There are several sales management software available in the market like IDS, GDS, CRM etc. It helps you to enable multiple parallel booking, profile management, accommodation management, mobile applications, payment processing, audit management, Rate Management, etc. This software will cost you a considerable amount and you need to train your front desk people to use it properly. Overall it has been proved that sales management solution software are a must to the improvement of sales of hotels.
6. Offer packaged deals
One of the popular sales management solutions for the hotel is offer packaged deals. Most of the time customer wants to do sightseeing at nearby locations, and this is the best option for hotel and resort service providers to offer packaged deals to customers. As customers highly depend on your past ratings/reviews at social media and hence you need to be extra careful while providing such service. Customer Satisfaction and sales increasing both should be equally on your mind.
7. Increase your visibility
In tourist destination, there will be a high density of hotels, and you may lose your competitive advantage among them. Hence it is paramount for hoteliers to involve in multiple activities in association with local government bodies to increase their visibility nationwide. That will buy them enough name to improve their sales.
8. Train your people
Your employees are the one who radiates your hospitality to the customers. Whether it is front desk clerk or Housekeeping or room service: they all are crucial as one mistake by them will cause you your reputation. Hence hotelier needs to incentivize its employees such that they behave and serve in their best way which will eventually result in improvement of sales.
Conclusion
Managing the sales does not mean managing the sales force only. Instead, we can see it is the integration of multiple factors which result in the improvement of sales. Again the ways explained are not the only ways, but it will surely give you a head start than others. And obviously, there is no shortcut there. Every improvement will require a careful process implementation. The question remains here is that do you have that enigma to follow it?