A few weeks ago I called it and now it seems the travel associations and press agree. Hotel bookings may be soft in 2019. (check out the links at the bottom for independent opinion)
This means what you do now in the area of group bookings is critical to ensure you have good occupancy rates and thrive in any downturn that comes our way. We sell a million group bookings a year and have identified 3 actions that the best sales directors always do to win business:
- Get visibility and ranked high in the right places
- Respond to business fast
- Price right
Here is why:
Why you need to focus on high visibility or rankings maybe pretty obvious but I urge you to focus your attention and marketing dollars on web sites where group planners are. Unless you are Booking.com’s Glen Fogel, meaningful Google marketing is probably too expensive, so you need to know where your group clients love to be online. We have spent years and millions of dollars doing just that. The result is over 5000 affiliate partnerships and whilst I can’t tell you who is our best (my boss may kill me) it may surprise you to know it’s not always our big OTA relationships, especially in leisure markets. So, analyse who your booking clients are (this is often made harder as the one that pays for the group may not be the one that chooses where they stay) and then find out where they come from and why and how they found your hotel. Once you have a good idea of your hotel’s core group booking clients, adjust your HotelPlanner lead filters in your account settings section to target more of these types of groups. For help doing this please contact me.
Why you need to Respond to business fast – our data clearly shows that our Instant offers outperform traditional RFP by 100%.... that’s right an instant offer will get twice as much business confirmed than a FRP. The days of RFPs are not over but this data proves that Group planners don’t and wont wait. We have plenty of tools available for you to make instant offers easily available for when the hotel needs business and thus free up your time to target the time-consuming groups that need hand holding.
Why pricing is vital. Don’t just price for the best market. Right now you need to price for balance. Late corporate cancelations will happen in a downturn, that’s just a fact. Birthdays, weddings, sport events will not. For 2019 get a good balance in place now.
Once again, I would love a call to run through how we can give you more business through our preferred membership or training to make the most of our platform or our new advertising products. Let’s work together and have a brilliant 2019 despite what these experts say:
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