How to Manage and Market the Hotel during Recession

                                                                                         

Just hearing the word ‘Recession’ makes us act like ostriches, we need to stop sticking our heads in the ground and ignoring the situation. Yes, we are facing a recession but not all is lost. The first step is not to give into the temptation of cutting back on your marketing and promotion activities, while this may seem like a sensible course of action; it has the potential to harm your business in the long term. Instead of cutting back on marketing, you need use your current resources to boost your business. Here are 3 online marketing ideas that will make surviving the recession easier:

Display the Best Rates on your Hotel Website: It is extremely important to offer the best rates on your hotel website as travelers compare packages and rates from all sources – agents, travel websites and hotel website before making a booking. If your third party intermediary is offering your hotel room at a better price than your website, you will lose sales to your own agent and you will end up paying for this miscalculation in commissions.

Optimization can Increase Sales: A majority of guests use search engines to look for hotel accommodation online. So, you need to optimize your website, so search engines can find your website easily, thereby, making it easier for guests to locate you on the internet. The process of optimizing your website for search engines is known as Search Engine Optimization. It is a process of developing or re-developing your hotel website to attract traffic by securing top ranking on the major search engines for selected search terms and phrases. For example, your website should be optimized for brand and location searches. So, when the guest enters a location into a search engine, your website appears on the first search page.

Don’t Ignore Your Biggest Income Source: Return guests can be your biggest source of income. So, while running campaigns to generate new business, don’t ignore this potential market base. These guests are familiar with your brand and are happy with the services you offer, so converting them is much easier that persuading those unfamiliar with your hotel brand to become guests. One effective way to encourage previous guests to return is by running customer loyalty programs/campaigns year round.

Always remember - existing guests can carry you through a recession and losing loyal existing guests for the sake of new business will only cost more in the end.

To summarize, challenging times lay ahead for the hospitality industry, but if your website and online presence are in order, the internet sales channel can be an area of revenue growth for your business in the upcoming year.

About the author:
A hospitality industry website should be equipped with a hotel booking engine to make it easier for customers to book a hotel. The absence of such system might cause a loss of customers affecting overall revenue and ultimately kill you in recession.

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