7 Sure-Fire Revenue Management Strategies for Guaranteed Increase in Hotel Sales

If you want to attract the right customer on the right day and at the right price, consider optimizing your revenue management strategies with these 7 tips:

Understand Your Target Market
This is the very first step to achieving sustainable hotel growth, and it starts with defining your target audience. Spend time to understand the market mix of your hotel so you can sell the right product (rooms, banquet, and business lounge) to the right guests (business travelers, leisure travelers, honeymooners, families with children, tour operators, government guests, or professional sports teams) at the right time (weekdays, weekends, vacations) at optimal room rates. Once you’ve zeroed in on your target market, you can set appropriate room rates and start tracking your business performance.  

Know Your Competitors and Plan Ahead
Your revenue management strategies and ARR are dependent on your hotel’s performance in comparison to competitors. Small hoteliers need to analyze the sales of different competitor sets according to seasonal factors, locality, mid-week and weekend occupancy rates, etc.

Moreover, you also need to understand the needs, wants and preferences of your audience and accordingly make strategic decisions regarding discounts and pricing if you want a competitive advantage.

Come up with a Competitive Pricing Strategy
Competitive pricing will put your small hotel in direct competition with other big brands during peak seasons and a value-added approach that includes deals, freebies and extras will attract guests year round.

Know the buying behavior of your guests and their booking patterns and accordingly allocate your staff and resources during peak seasons and slow times. This will enable you to come up with sound revenue management strategies and ensure that you are better equipped to cater to all demand patterns.

Meet Millennial Expectations to Generate an Assured Business Flow
Since millennials value a personalized experience, hotels can meet their expectations by customizing their stay according to their tastes, preferences, comfort, and convenience while keeping the offers consistent. Incorporating technology is an easy way to market to tech-savvy millennials who are not looking for a service but a lifestyle. Using hotel management software that integrates reviews management module is an efficient way to project a customer-centric culture that highlights the uniqueness of your brand and subtly suggests that your hotel offers a memorable travel experience.

Unlock the Potential of Analytics to Anticipate Future Demands
One of the most critical aspects of hotel revenue management is demand forecasting because it allows you to anticipate demands and enables you to make the adjustments necessary to maximize bookings. But accurate forecasting requires accurate records of your room rates, booking patterns, consumer, and occupancy rates so you can spot the right trends and accordingly change your room rates. For this, you would also need to track your competitor’s performance and your current bookings while keeping constant tabs on local events and the latest industry trends.

Use Automation Solutions to Your Advantage
Your guests love to see their favorite hotels advance with technology. So make sure your website is mobile-optimized and loads instantly on all devices. Also, you also need to ensure that the pictures display correctly, all the buttons are fully functional and the booking engine offers a seamless booking experience even on mobiles, without requiring people to switch to a laptop.

Incentivize For Direct Bookings
Online travel agencies like MakeMyTrip, Tripadvisor, Kayak, and Trivago allow your customers to browse through a number of hotels, compare prices, read customer reviews and pick the hotel that best suits their budget and travel needs. While OTAs plays a vital role in increasing hotel sales, they also mean commissions need to be paid if you want to maximize hotel revenue.

This is where having a hotel revenue management system helps a great deal. It equips your own site with a seamless booking engine that drives direct bookings and helps save significantly on OTA commissions and distribution costs.

The Benefits of Automated Revenue Management
Small hotels looking for sustainable business growth and a guaranteed increase in bookings can deploy software hotel revenue management software to automate their pricing system. Hotel revenue management software is a fully automated; an all-in-one solution that uses advanced data algorithm to dynamically set room rates based on factors like seasonal demands, booking patterns and local competition to boost occupancy rates and attracts guests 365 days a year. It also integrates a real-time dashboard which the hotel staff can use to manage operations, bookings, commissions, reviews, and revenue while leaving nothing to chance.

Aiosell uses artificial intelligence to grow your hotel business and leaves no room for human error so you can always be sure of charging an optimal price for your rooms. Try it today and pay only when you see results!