With Coronavirus still impacting the travel industry globally, it is vital that you keep an eye on key industry forecasts, trends and government regulations that will eventually shape your recovery strategy.
In their two part research titled, Impact of COVID 19 and the hospitality industry worldwide, RateGain, a hotel and travel software company showcased how after the outbreak of this virus, hoteliers realised a significant drop in room reservations irrespective of their property’s size resulting in meagre occupancy rates and rising cancellations across regions. However, this is the time we look introspect and learn from this pandemic to come out of it even stronger.
As time progresses, the only viable step for recovery is to come up with strategies by using effective hospitality solutions that can help us get through this pandemic.
Some of them are-
Come up with a marketing and revenue management strategy aligned with the current times:
When you are creating your own recovery plan, it is crucial to align with revenue management on rate strategy and parity across all the channels including direct booking, it is important to know if there are any offers and packages out there, and what kind of flexible cancellation policy that you can offer your guests.
Keep your website up-to-date:
Make it a point to keep your website up-to-date, and it should serve as a source of reliable information for all the potential customers to access and allow them to quickly find the information they require in order to make a booking.
Come up with a flexible cancellation policy:
If you come up with a flexible cancellation and implement it, it will further lead to hotels reassuring guests and providing them with an incentive to book. If on your website you will have a cancellation policy it will turn out to be very crucial in ensuring direct bookings.
Keep a healthy combination of direct bookings and distribution mix:
When travel demand will start to pick up, and hotels that were shut down will slowly and steadily reopen, focus on shifting the distribution to the direct channel as it can turn out to be one of the most effective ways that will positively impact your bottom line.
When talking about direct bookings, most of the distribution channel management software come with a built-in booking engine or the option of getting connected to your booking engine which allows consumers to make direct bookings. This thereon will create an excellent value for revenue purposes.
Coming up with a Marketing Plan that Ramps up with Travel Demand:
Try to come up with a month-to-month marketing plan which will progressively rise according to the travel demand over time and will allow you to fuel the booking funnel and maximise revenue. In case your hotel has been shut down, you should initiate your plan a month prior to hotel reopening and continue to shift from upper-funnel to lower-funnel targeting month to month.
As demand progresses, it will become imperative to use a software that can help you manage your hotel distribution system. RateGain’s smart distribution platform allows hoteliers to easily discover and receive recommendations on any new demand opportunities, they also help hoteliers to auto contract with new channels, construct new content and then automatically map products on various new channels which will be key to sustaining your marketing efforts and recover strongly.
Conclusion
Above mentioned were some of the effective hospitality solutions for the hotel and travel industry, in order to survive this pandemic. If you want to know more about the hospitality industry around the world, then you must follow RateGain’s better tomorrow initiative and the frequent webinars that they are hosting for the entire industry to bounce back and come out of this pandemic stronger than ever before.
