Tips to Improve Your Hotel Occupancy from Monday to Friday

The day to day distribution of the hotel consists of a constant struggle with the balance in the reservations.

The shadow of seasonality becomes very long and the fact of achieving a rhythm of reservations that allows us to “live in peace” becomes a beautiful story difficult to fulfill.

Depending on various factors such as destination, location and season, we become interesting for a certain market segment. Unless we are in urban areas with a high turnover of travellers, we will always have moments in the valley that will keep us awake at night.

When it comes to occupation, staying calm is complicated. For this reason, it is convenient to enter into dynamics of value generation on audiences that have a potential demand in that specific period. From this point on, we can adopt some strategies to promote the reserve without having to touch the price. In this article we present the most interesting ones we think you can adopt today:

• Create and promote special packages.

Disguising prices in the form of special packages with offers for different days of the week can be an interesting action. If the hotel offers additional services such as fitness classes or spa treatments we can differentiate ourselves for different traveler profiles. These will not be as price sensitive as the attractiveness of the offer.

• Focus your hotel’s weekly campaigns on a determined radius of distance with the center.

We can devote part of our efforts to attracting travelers for a two-night stay within a radius of about 200 kilometers from the lodging location. Collaborating with local tourist resources and centralizing campaigns conditioned by the geographical area will help us to limit budgets and focus supply.

• Use different mailing lists.

This allows us to structure email lists by stay preferences. For regular customers who book on weekends we can send emails reinforcing the booking message from Sunday to Thursday. The key will be to offer them different alternatives to what they are used to booking. Special offers and discounts for such unusual times may result in accommodation benefits.

• Use creativity through special events, poetry readings, art exhibitions and other cultural events during the week.

The activities on customer segments with specific needs make an offer attractive that a priori should not have to be. Holding events with customers in mind who have the possibility of booking at certain times will make it possible to make reservations outside of the normal days.

• Promote the hotel space to local companies that can use it for their meetings and events.

In case of underutilized spaces, there is the possibility of obtaining a profit from them. In addition, special accommodation promotions for attendees and participants can be generated in parallel to certain events.

• Promote weddings during the work week. 

As the number of people working on their own or with flexible working hours increases, this type of event also begins to take place on unusual days of the week. This trend is most often seen in second marriages or in older couples who see added value in intimacy.

• Suggest to weekend guests that they extend their reservation. 

Don’t be afraid to create discounted offers for this type of guest. Also, you must make sure that the client
knows about it. Notify them by email prior to arrival and in person when they arrive at the accommodation.

• Agreements with the most important restaurants in the area.

It consists of establishing a relationship, which may even be associated with events, with important local restaurants. In this way, making joint offers at times of the year, such as Christmas, for business dinners, would be in the interest of both parties. The commissions or the own consumption in the establishments will be benefits gratefully received between businesses.

• Agreements with local property managers.

There are hundreds of people daily in cities who travel to visit a new home or to find an office. These people need a place to sleep. Therefore, this relationship can provide you with interesting bookings during the typical work week.

• Loyalty program with discounts from Sunday to Thursday.

Focused on a work audience, you can take advantage of loyalty programs to offer interesting discounts from Sunday to Thursday. In this way, the customer’s recurrence will be rewarded and, in turn, the seasonality of the declines in demand during this period will be cushioned.