According to the latest statistics, the global hotel industry is expected to reach 211.54 billion USD by 2025, at a CAGR of around 4.6%.However, due to increased competition, hotel growth is being hindered from experiencing diminishing group sales, meeting events, and conferences as other players in the space gear up to take a bigger chunk of the market share.
This has levied increased responsibility on hotel managers to optimize their processes and manage their sales pipeline more effectively.
3 Things Hindering Hotel Growth
While some have deployed a hotel CRM, most hotels are still utilizing obsolete forms of registration and booking software – such as static spreadsheets and notes to record data.
Not only is this process prone to errors, it is also highly ineffective in identifying underlying pipeline opportunities.
Here are three crucial pipeline mistakes that are hindering your hotel growth.
Are You Integrating Modern Sales Tools?
Your salespeople form the backbone of your business, continuously vying to bring in more consumers. However, they need to have access to modern-day tools in order to reach their maximum potential.
Tools such as a hotel CRM and advanced venue management systems provide real-time prospect information that helps salespeople track prospects throughout the pipeline.
Consider this: enhanced data accessibility helps shorten the sales cycles by 8-14%. Not only does this boost growth, but it also allows salespeople to prospect more leads. When compared from period to period, reps with access to modern tools outperform those without it.
Simply put, a comprehensive hotel CRM allows you to manage your sales pipeline effectively – from managing your leads to identifying high potential opportunities in your pipeline that would otherwise fall through the cracks.
How Do You Record Your Data?
In the 21st century, data is the new oil; as progressive hotels continue to adopt newer methods to exploit organizational data and draw valuable insights into consumer behavior, some are still relying on outdated methods.
In comparison to modern alternatives, such as an advanced venue management system, traditional reservations or plain Excel sheets don’t allow you to look into consumer data much beyond their name and phone number.
Modern software allows salespeople to delve deep into consumer profiles; allowing access to social media profiles, pain points, information about the last point of contact amongst other things.
A salesperson, for instance, can track when a lead enquired about a meeting space while simultaneously making use of social media to check for related information.
The result is a closed deal in lesser time; in fact, the addition of social networking (and mobile access) can boost sales by as much as 26%. That’s a significant revenue increase in such a highly competitive industry.
As such, this equips your sales team to form a well-defined pipeline that offers complete visibility into the state of prospect and opportunities.
Do You Have A Pipeline Management Solution In Place?
There are multiple benefits of having a pipeline management solution, such as a comprehensive hotel CRM, in place. For instance, it allows sales managers to answer questions crucial to the future growth of the hotel.
Other benefits include:
- Managers can pair their experience with statistical data to allow an estimate of future revenue
- By breaking down the sales process into various stages in the pipeline, it is easier to identify and improve any weak spots in the sales process
- It can help identify aggregate sales velocity – the average time it takes for your team to convert a lead into a customer
- It allows deeper analysis into the consumer journey so salespeople can differentiate between prospects, opportunities and leads
As hotels continue to adopt a ‘niching’ strategy to customize experiences for their target audience, the level of insight provided by a pipeline management solution becomes a necessity, rather than a luxury.
Overall, as the hospitality industry continues to evolve, pipeline management has emerged as an important component of a successful hotel. A clear overview of your lead’s journey can allow your salespeople to cater to them more effectively, resulting in a higher degree of conversions.
In short, a hotel CRM with pipeline management can allow you to make use of valuable data that would otherwise just get lost if recorded through traditional means.
