10 Ways To Improve Your Hotel Business In These Challenging Times

If we’ve learned anything from the past few years, it is that change is the only constant. From the crippling pandemic to inflations and labor shortages, the hospitality industry has definitely taken the brunt.

Furthermore, stiff competition and the opening of new hotels have provided additional impediments.

Wondering how to deal with all the above challenges and boost your hotel’s revenue?

Read on to find out more about how to improve hotel business and turn pain into gain.

Let’s dive in!

How to Improve Hotel Business in 10 Strategic Ways?

With the right approach and strategies, you can tackle the biggest challenges and turn them into competitive advantage.

Not only can they help you improve your business and revenue, but also help you create the ultimate guest experience and build a loyal customer base.

1. Automate Hotel Operations

Automating hotel operations implies using technology to streamline and optimize various aspects of running a hotel, such as:

• Reservations, 
• Check-ins and-outs, 
• Housekeeping, 
• Guest services, 
• Inventory management, 
• Accounting, etc.

Implementing the property management system (PMS) reduces manual tasks, leading to faster service delivery and better resource use.

Moreover, if you use the PMS, you can reduce human errors and improve accuracy in tasks revolving around inventory management, billing, and guest bookings.

? ProTip:

OTA SYNC, an online PMS, provides features that address the full hotel management and centralize hotel operations, allowing your staff to efficiently:

? Handle bookings, 

? Monitor room occupancy and 

? Manage guest services.

On top of that, the PMS integrates with point-of-sale systems, ERP solutions, and reporting tools to provide a comprehensive overview of your hotel’s performance.

2. Enhance Online Reach Via Channel Manager

It is super important to promote your hotel online and improve its visibility to increase bookings.

One of the most effective ways is to list your hotel on one of the popular OTA channels, such as Booking.com, Airbnb, Expedia, etc.

These platforms have a large user base and can help you widen your reach. 

A good way to distribute your hotel across multiple channels and platforms is to opt for a Channel Manager.

Besides multiple-channel distribution, it also syncs all the booking info in real time and minimizes double bookings.

? ProTip:

OTA SYNC’s Channel Manager has a 2-way connection that lets you seamlessly sync across all channels simultaneously to prevent overbooking, all from a single dashboard.

It has native integration with our PMS, meaning you can see the occupancy and room status in real time, as well as any changes or updates.

3. Increase Direct Bookings

Listing your hotel on OTAs is a great way to boost its online presence, but they charge a commission fee.

Thus, being active on more than one can quickly become quite hefty. 

An effective counterbalance is to use the Booking Engine to combine indirect channels, such as OTAs, with direct channels like your website.

This way, you can maximize your overall reach and enhance commission-free direct bookings.

The Booking Engine gives your guests more power since they can make bookings directly and choose desired add-ons, such as breakfast, parking spots, etc.

? ProTip:

If you opt for OTA SYNC’s Booking Engine, you get a mobile-friendly solution that provides your guests with live availability and rates, upsell and cross-sell possibilities, etc.

This way, you can maximize your website’s potential while decreasing dependence on OTAs.

4. Adapt to Market Conditions

Nothing ever stands still in the hospitality industry, and one of the biggest mistakes you can make is not adapting.

Keep your eyes open to changing trends, conditions and demands so that you can act promptly.

Dynamic pricing can be a great assistant regarding adjusting room rates in real time based on various factors such as:

✨ Demand, 

✨ Seasonality, 

✨ Market trends, 

✨ Competitor pricing and 

✨ Booking patterns.

Depending on the above factors and your hotel’s historical data, you can predict when demand will be high or low and set the optimal price.

The principle behind it is quite straightforward: 

You increase prices during periods of high demand, such as weekends, holidays, and peak seasons, and decrease them during low-demand periods to attract more bookings.

? ProTip:

With OTA SYNC, you can apply special rules for certain periods and seasons and dynamically adjust room rates to reflect changing demand levels.

5. Diversify Revenue Streams

Your revenue doesn’t have to come only from bookings but also from various upselling options, promotions, special offers, and discounts.

These little treats won’t burn your budget, but they will help attract more guests and keep the previous ones returning.

For example, you can offer upgraded room options, premium services, or add-ons, spa services, dining packages, or special amenities.

Besides generating more revenue, personalized promotions and discounts can build strong customer relationships and loyalty.

? ProTip:

Did you know that with OTA SYNC, you can use promotional and discount codes to say “thank you” or attract new guests with promotional offers?

These codes are fully customizable, thus, you can set different parameters, such as early booking or last-minute deals, etc.

Moreover, you can choose which room type and pricing plan the promotion will apply to, its duration, and so on.

6. Boost Your Hotel Brand

OTAs and your hotel’s website are great sources to make your hotel brand more visible, but they shouldn’t be the only ones.

It would be a pity not to leverage the power of social media and influencer marketing. You don’t have to be active on all social media platforms, but rather focus on those where your target audience ‘lives.’

Try to be authentic and produce high-quality content such as blog posts, videos, virtual tours, and guest testimonials.

Your main goal should be to showcase your hotel’s unique features, amenities, and offerings.

In addition, you can use social media to introduce special time-limited offers and promotions.

? ProTip:

Want to benefit from influencer marketing? 

OTA SYNC enables you to easily share your booking engine link with any influencer and let them earn a preselected commission each time a guest makes a reservation through them.

7. Go Mobile

Considering that almost 50% of guests book accommodation over their mobile phones, having a mobile-friendly website is paramount.

In addition, potential and future guests expect the mobile version to have the same functionalities and be as appealing as the website.

Making your website mobile-friendly will add to a seamless booking experience. 

? ProTip:

OTA SYNC has a free supreme mobile app for Android and iOS. 

This app matches all the functionalities of the web PMS version to manage all the operations on the go.

8. Boost Guest Experience

Most of the steps we’ve covered so far have a common denominator – improving guest experience. 

Catering to your guests and providing them with the ultimate guest experience can vary from upselling options over room amenities to welcome cocktails and fruit baskets.

However, creating a positive guest experience isn’t only about promotions and gifts. 

It is, first and foremost, about providing a personalized and customized booking experience.

Besides a well-trained and helpful staff, technology can greatly improve guest satisfaction from pre- to post-stay.

Think about contactless services, digital messaging, self-service apps, etc., as a great means to enhance the overall guest experience.

? ProTip:

We’ve created a Guest App that adapts to your guests’ needs and gives them the freedom to design their own stay through add-ons and extras.

Furthermore, the automated messaging feature enables you to send a range of personalized messages at different stages of the guest journey. 

From a practical point of view, this means you don’t have to manually send emails to each guest—the system will automatically send them at the desired time.

9. Secure Guests’ Data

Ironically, technological advances have increased data security methods, but at the same time, they’ve provided a fertile ground for identity theft, tampering with sensitive information, and fraud.

Thus, choosing a reliable and secure system is a must when processing online booking payments and storing guests’ info.

There are 3 key parameters a trustworthy system should have:

• PCI DSS compliance.
• End-to-end encryption.
• 3D secure authentication.

This way, you will maintain guest trust, comply with regulations, and safeguard sensitive information.

? ProTip:

OTA Payments meets the industry’s highest security standards and offers multiple layers of security, so you can rest assured that we process and store your guest data safely.  

The 256-bit SSL encryption transmits all data safely while automated processes reduce the risk of fraud, theft, or manual errors.

10. Make Informed Decisions

Whatever decision you want to make regarding your hotel operations and future actions, always, and we really mean always, back up that decision with valid data.

One of the worst things you can do is make business decisions based on your gut feeling or, even worse, stay inflexible and ignore changes.

Again, thanks to technology, you can gain insights into every little detail of your hotel performance, revenue, occupancy rate, and all other relevant metrics.

It is only with these analytics that you should plan your next move.

? ProTip:

Once you sign up for OTA SYNC, you’ll benefit from robust analytics and advanced revenue, finance, and in-hotel operations reporting.

Therefore, you can get detailed analytics on:

• Occupancy rate
• Length of stay
• Number of reservations
• Arrivals by channels and countries, 
• Pace reports, etc.

Furthermore, you can receive any specific report via email at a desired frequency without manually adjusting parameters.

How To Improve  Hotel Business With OTA SYNC?

Choosing the right PMS can streamline and facilitate hotel operations in ways you probably can’t imagine.

Besides providing robust hotel managing solutions, the PMS helps you build better rapport with your guests.

With OTA SYNC, you’ll get an all-encompassing PMS solution focusing on hotel management and guest experience.

What makes our solution so special?

✨ Do onboarding in a day without needing external assistance, making it a great solution for newbies.

✨ Create unlimited invoices where our tool pulls all info automatically, so you should just choose the status and insert additional services.

✨ Manage hotel chains from a centralized hub and have a clear overview of the occupancy, payments, etc., in our drag-and-drop color-coded calendar.

✨ Explore premium features such as the SPA & Wellness management solution to automate appointment scheduling, client management, and resource allocation.

✨ Connect to all major payment gateways to accept guests’ online payments in multiple currencies and through various online, in-store, or mobile channels.

And the list goes on.

Ready to take our tool for a spin?

Start your 14-day Free Trial and improve how you run your hotel with minimal effort.

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