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Once your doors are open, keep a daily pulse on profitability per traveler segment and corresponding booking trends. Prioritize which activities are revenue generating and remain flexible and open to making rate changes. Continue logging and documenting data about what is driving travel demand. Encourage your front desk staff to update guest profiles upon check-in with information guests share about their trip, and consider implementing more of the following best practices from thriving hoteliers:
THINK CREATIVELY about how you are segmenting travelers and competitive sets, so you ensure you are always targeting the right guests at the right time during recovery.
MEET FREQUENTLY with the sales and marketing teams to gain alignment on which travelers will book first and what to offer them. This may include the development of a promotions plan, strategy, or campaign to jump-start bookings and let travelers know your property is open, clean, and ready to welcome them. Once your local region starts to stabilize, begin evaluating the successes and failures you see in comparison to your competition.
MODIFY DISTRIBUTION CHANNEL USE and focus mainly on the channels providing the highest yield. Deprioritize channels where the cost of acquisition outweighs the benefit of guest acquisition. If you see that OTAs are offering the highest yield, then work more closely with marketing and sales teams to try and drive more direct booking traffic.
PRIORITIZE ENGAGING with local partners as they begin to reopen as well. They could be a valuable source of incremental or ancillary revenue during a recovery. Some examples include:
- Commerce boards
- Travel and tourism boards
- Event hosting and production companies
- Convention bureaus
- Local businesses (restaurants and bars; salons, barber shops, and spas; retail outlets; tour operators, etc.)
Excerpted from Planning for Hospitality Recovery – Revenue Management, a new playbook available from HSMAI and Amadeus. For additional information, insights, and tools, visit HSMAI’s Global Coronavirus Recovery Resources page.