The hospitality industry adds more than $3 trillion to the world economy each year; stats show that every 2.5 seconds a new job is added to the industry. With such monumental demand, however, come immense challenges, especially in revenue opportunities.
Providing guests with a comfortable experience might be your number one goal as a hotel manager, but the fact of the matter is that you are running a business. You’ll need to sell more rooms and get more footfall to ensure profitability in the long run.
As such, your sales strategy should undoubtedly reflect your commitment to providing a stellar experience to the guests. However, there should also be an emphasis on booking as many rooms as possible at any given time, be it off-season or peak season.
The most critical aspect when weighing new revenue streams is having solid knowledge – of your market, prospects, and the brand identity you want to build.
Remember, the most significant revenue opportunities happen when you leave money on the table due to inefficient processes, which, in turn lead to lost prospects.
The first step in ensuring that your hotel or venue makes money is to take a step back and inspect your overall business. Make sure you aren’t making any of the following mistakes:
Not Using A Hotel CRM
A hotel CRM with dedicated pipeline management features provides sales managers and directors better visibility into their revenue opportunities.
In turn, this improves the number of bookings and venue deals as they can track and visualize their pipeline, thereby improving their closing percentage and venue deals.
In a nutshell, a dedicated CRM lets decision-makers manage and oversee customer interactions – fact is, having such a solution can increase revenue by up to 41% per sales representative. Other benefits include:
- Improved revenue
- Lower costs
- Growing customer satisfaction
- Identification of more opportunities
Not Tracking Leads And Sales
Unfortunately, hotel managers fail to return most sales queries; as per a survey, 28 percent of group sales inquiries are lost, ignored, or abandoned by event sales managers.
Your prospects may be headed to your closest competitor if that’s the case. Use a mix of technology, for example, hotel CRM and Venue Management Systems to help streamline leads and sales to make sure that customer queries are answered on time.
Not Using Available Info Properly
Data is the key to better profitability in this day and age – but event managers and hotel operators often fail to use details and information such as opportunity amount changes, close date changes, etc. in a form that can be reported on.
Data can also offer insights into the stay and spending habits of guests, enabling hoteliers to create loyalty pricing and offers that act as a great incentive.
A reputable Hotel CRM can be your platform for storing, retrieving, and analyzing data to get the information you need to make smart decisions.
Not Having A Sales Process
A well-established sales process leads to smooth customer interactions; use technology to help you streamline the process and make it as pain-free for the guest as possible.
For instance, why not use web forms to take in leads from your websites and send them straight to the sales funnel?
Create event proposals that showcase the strengths of your brand – similarly, sign and collect electronic signatures so bids can turn into contracts faster. Your invoice and payment system can also be automated, thus enabling clients to pay via credit card online.
Failure To Conduct Regular Meetings
Research shows that 72% of managers hold regular sales review meetings with their teams.
Make sure you get more from the team you have by creating a culture that motivates your representatives to make the most of every lead and revenue opportunity.
A weekly or bi-monthly meeting can help them open up to you about what went well and what needed more work. This will help the team gain some perspective, get the necessary guidance and avoid repeating their mistakes down the road.
In Conclusion
As the hospitality industry gets more crowded and the ever-evolving tastes of consumers demand more unique experiences, sales managers need to get on top of every deal, every number, and every stat generated under their command.
No wonder hotel CRM tools are fast becoming an essential software for groups and businesses across the industry.
