As events return and travel volumes normalize post-pandemic, now is the time for hoteliers to make the most of planning their sales strategies to capture as much business as possible. Here are 3 key steps to take today that will set you up for success in the year ahead.
Spending and staffing on hotel sales and marketing have reached pre-pandemic levels, but the quality of salespeople has dropped, executives said.
In this article, we'll explore a range of proven strategies that hotels can adopt to enhance their room sales in hotels. From using digital concierge services to making the most of upselling and cross-selling hotels, each strategy contributes to boosting hotel room sales.
A hotel sales strategy is a plan of action designed to increase hotel revenue and bookings. It involves identifying target markets, setting sales goals, and creating a plan to achieve those goals.
Whereas most sales conversations these days happen in email and in-app message exchanges, personalized video emails allow salespeople to stand out.
The saying 'time is money' is especially true when it comes to sales. For a hotel sales team to be effective, they need to have enough time to actually sell. However, many hotel sales teams are bogged down with administrative tasks and other duties that leave them with less time to sell.
One day a few months back, the main phone line rang at our headquarters office. Can you imagine the surprise when our receptionist heard a man’s voice saying this: 'Hello, this is Doug Kennedy calling for Doug Kennedy.' At first, she thought it to be a prank, but thankfully she did not hang up on him, because it was in fact Doug Kennedy, President & CEO of Peapack-Gladstone Bank. As it turns out, Doug Kennedy had been personally spearheading an internal initiative to take his relatively small but mighty bank to even higher levels of service.
The skills required to succeed in hotel group, event, and BT sales are going to be hugely different here in 2023, but the disruptions that have caused these changes began much earlier. Traditionally, succeeding in hotel sales was more about personality than process. Target rates were locked-in well ahead of time and fees were few, so negotiations were much simpler. A focus on filling the house made it easy to get concessions approved, but since most planners and BT buyers were novices, they weren’t asking for that much anyway.
With costs rising and flow more difficult to achieve, sales teams must exceed revenue expectations for hotels and/or ownership to achieve acceptable profit levels. The HSMAI Sales Advisory Board got together to discuss how to meet those revenue expectations.
Based on the conversations I’m having with KTN sales training clients, it seems that demand for groups and events is coming back quicker than expected, so sales revenue targets for 2023 have been raised accordingly. With all the continued uncertainty in the economy and with Covid 19 still refusing to go away, it’s going to take more than a reactive sales culture to achieve those goals. Therefore, this is a wonderful time to establish new sales habits.