Planning to Succeed
Tamie Matthews
Revenue, Distribution, Sales & Marketing Support for the Independent Hotelier
Part 2 - Did you read Part 1 yesterday? Pop back to my profile to find the first article.
With the implementation of travel restrictions, our wonderful industry came to a grinding halt. I know some of you are still receiving the odd few bookings here and there but on the whole, we are all down below 10% occupancy.
People are isolated at home, they are learning how to manipulate zoom and conduct meetings online. They are not thinking or considering travel right now as none of us know when we will be able to leave our homes again.
But, we need to keep our customers close and keep in touch with them to ensure they remember us without flooding their inbox with yet another Covid-19 email.
When the travel restrictions are lifted, we are going to have to start from ground zero again, it will be similar to opening a new hotel. No occupancy, 100% of our rooms empty. How are we going to build momentum again?
Statistically speaking, the average website converts at 3%.
If you want to sell 30 rooms per night to achieve 100% occupancy
We need 1000 people looking and dreaming and thinking of staying at our hotel.
Where are we going to get that 1000 people from per day?
Now is the time to start thinking about how we are going to bring our previous guests closer and create a new pool of potential customers.
But first, what do you think will be important to people once restrictions are lifted? When we get told we can leave our homes, what are you going to do first? What will your friends do first? What will your potential customer do first?
General consensus in the industry is that the following will happen:
- Domestic short drive leisure travel will kick off first
- We will be craving time with friends and family
- Cleanliness will be incredibly important
- Places with low population density will be popular to visit
- Domestic corporate travel will kick off next
- International travel may not start again until we have a vaccine
- There will be a recession
And that takes me back to the above statistic, 1000 people need to visit a website per day to create 30 bookings.
We need to be planning our reopening now.
Marketing Consultant & Strategist. I find the missing piece ?? Marketing Infrastructure, Digital Marketing & Growth.
4 年Great post, Tamie. I’m actually of a different view right now. It’s extremely difficult for anyone to do any long term planning at this moment because everything feels so uncertain. The best thing businesses can do now is nurture their existing customer base. Communications must be highly in tune and relevant, but consumers are more engaged now than ever with more time on devices. This is also my view because I think advertising and any sales related messaging can seem extremely insensitive in the current climate. Consumers can’t commit to plans when they have no idea when life will return to normal, if at all. Hotels need to shift their comms strategy and work to keep their brand top of mind.
Groups Conference and Events Manager at Hilton Liverpool City Centre
4 年Great Part 2 and yes its all in the planning now, take the time to look over who your customers are what they will want different and find them new customers too.
Revenue Management the right way | Founded 2 companies that optimize hotel & restaurant/bar profits through software, consulting & coaching | 50,000+ took my Revenue Management training
4 年Very nice part 2 Tamie Matthews. Whilst those numbers re website visits are generally accepted in the industry I have a big problem with those as it really just means we are trying to get everyone. How cool would it be if we could actually just get the ones that really want us and the ones we really want? a win win :-)