Hotel marketers are used to working on tight budgets and deadlines.
NB: This is an article from Travelboom
However, unless you have been in the business for 10 years or more, you very likely have not had to adjust to a significant recession. The good news is that marketing in a recession is a lot like marketing in good times. You focus on your measurable performance, minimize your ineffective marketing, and stay nimble to take advantage of fleeting opportunities.
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In this article, we are going to review what you can do at your hotel, resort, or vacation rental company to make the most of your potential guests’ limited discretionary spending and your tighter marketing budgets. To start with, unlike what the title suggests, you really can’t “recession-proof” your marketing, but you can set yourself up for success by being smarter than the competition. These six strategies will help any hotel reduce costs, preserve its budget, and maximize RevPAR.
#1 Actually Look at Your Invoices and Tech Stack
Just like your oft-forgotten subscription to your 10th streaming service, there can be a lot of waste in your hotel’s marketing budget. For a property to truly get to a position where it can be recession-proof they need to ensure there’s practically zero waste in the current budget.
The first step in this process is reviewing every invoice that is coming through your department and seeing what is unnecessary. This is not just your monthly invoices, but the annual ones as well. Are there items that are not needed or are there a less expensive solution that would suffice? One thing we learned from the cost-cutting during COVID is there is far more fat in most budgets than we think and we can be just as effective while getting lean.
The second step after cleaning up budget waste is to review your current tech stack and see if there are alternatives to your current services. Oftentimes you can find significant savings by simply shopping and sharing your concerns with your current partners.
#2 Ensure Your Analytics Systems Are Optimized
You can only make smart decisions if you are getting the right data. You can only survive a recession if your data can accurately show where to focus and what areas of your marketing need improvement.
Starting now, begin a thorough analytics audit of all your systems and ensure you’re getting all the data and insights you need to make decisions. Without the data, you won’t make smart decisions. Without smart decisions, you’ll be burning money, and that’s suicide in market downturns and recessions.
Read rest of the article at Travelboom
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