Staying competitive towards big chain hotels might sounds like a rocket science for smaller hotels. The rise of alternative accommodations, more competitor, and bigger chain hotel in the area, are the most likely reasons why you lose many of your guests. Hotel competition these days require more than just smart marketing. You are correct when you’re saying that the hospitality industry competition is growing, more and more competitive. As an individual hotel, you will face a bigger challenge than those who backed with bigger resources (chain hotel). Here are Caption top-tips to stay in competition by utilizing technology:
Open Up Channels
How does your hotel get its guests? By phone? Or via travel agent maybe? In 1990’s this is the most likely situation you’ll get booking. Fast forward to 2016, you would get none from those channels. You need to offer more ways to connect with your potential guests. Connectivity is the key to reach more guests in modern days. You need to provide more options for them to be connected to you.
Enlisted in OTA?
Everybody do that now. Almost every hotels are now connected to OTA. If you have done this step and still getting few guests, try to be more creative. Hotel competition these days means more than just connecting online. How about offering to book your rooms via Facebook or even WhatsApp? Never crossed your mind before, right?
Build A Character
Being a small hotel among the big chain hotels doesn’t mean that you can’t win the hotel competition. Remember that you are an individual hotel, no one restricts you with their awful branding work. Unlike big chain hotels that restricted with certain rules in management and even interior design, you have every rights to be creative. You are free to manage your own social media or online persona. Caption top-tips, pick the key traits and start highlighting them on social media one at a time.
Invite Reviews
The good experience in your hotel often just end in memories. You can change this by inviting them to make a quick review for you. One of the important tricks in winning modern hotel competition is to win the internet validation battle. Good review on TripAdvisor may sounds like a small thing, but this is a weapon for small hotels like you. Potential guests will always try to look for internet validation before they decide to book a hotel and here’s you can see how important it is to win this game. This small extra step will definitely become a great asset, maybe even affecting the incoming guest.
Manage The Negativity
Managing reviews on the internet means you have to be ready with bad reviews as well. While some guest have good memories, we cannot forget about them who didn’t. These guys usually will be vocal about their bad experience. As important as achieving good reviews on the internet, managing bad review is also the key in winning the hotel competition these days. Make sure that you take care of these people that give you bad review. It is your job to make sure that everything sorted out (of course) and showing that you are really care with your guest, even after they leave. Hopefully, it can be turned into a good impression.
Tech Up
One of the biggest insights that a hotel can utilize is their data. Being in the battle of modern hotel competition doesn’t mean that you have to put millions in technology. However, technology is a good investment you can consider to take. If you are a small hotel, then you better start to invest in technology, for a better access to your data and customer insights. On other parts, technology can also be used to build up your hotel image. Imagine, you are the first hotel with option of key-less entry and mobile check-ins. More customer market to be accessed right?
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