Thriving in 2024: How Small Hotels Can Stay Competitive in a Changing Market
August 24, 2024
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In today’s time, it is difficult for small hotels to manage sales, guest experience and operation costs at the same time. Travel and hospitality have been taken over by the new generation and there is little traditional hotelers can do to stop it. Times have changed and now people want to choose between the best hotel at their fingertips and that too at the best price. Every hotel that adapts to this new change in the market is doing great while those who do not want to use these mediums suffer. In 2024 it is important to understand that providing accommodation is not the only important thing about a hotel. What matters now is what kind of experience can you provide so that someone might think of visiting your place. A few years ago a hotel may provide the worst possible service yet still get tons of bookings because there was no option for other people to know what they were going into. Now anyone who books a place first checks the kind of reviews a place has and if there is a serious remark about the property the person might even change their decision.
All this is frightening for traditional hoteliers as they are not used to these things. Dont worry! we all are in this together and we shall make use of these new tools for our benefit without even spending a penny. Here are some important strategies small hotels can use to boost their sales and guest experience.
5 Must Follow Tips for Small Hotels to Stay Competitive in the market
1: Efficient Use Of Technology
A lot of the platforms and tools that you see over the web are free to use but may have some hidden fees upon usage. Platforms such as Airbnb, Booking and Expedia won’t charge you money to list your hotel or property online instead they will charge you commission on every booking you get from their platform. Understand the commission and payout structure first before getting your listing on any of these platforms. There are many ways to maximize your revenue using these online platforms but you would need some tools to do it efficiently.
The most difficult situation for a hotel that uses these famous online platforms is getting a double booking because of an inventory issue or a human error. In this case, these platforms will most likely recover the cancellation and relocation charges from you since this mistake happened from your side. A mistake like this is most likely to happen when you manage different platforms and update your inventories manually. It is best for small hotels to spend some money and use a channel manager from where they can link all these platforms and update the inventories from a single place. A channel manager will also give you more flexibility by providing you with different options such as dynamic pricing, min/max guest, extra person charges and other useful services. There are many channel manager services available in the market such as Ezee and Siteminder. Do some research before choosing a channel manager as some of them are good for small hotels or individual properties while others are preferred for a group of hotels or multiple properties.
Use different integrations which are available with each platform and for your own bookings. Check with your channel manager support team which integrations they support and what would be the cost to use them. Make sure all your guests are well informed about their stay in advance avoiding any last-minute confusion. Use an automated system that sends email reminders depending upon the day of check-in, you can automate such pre-stay emails to make your hotel look more professional. If you have a small hotel with minimum bookings then you can do this manually too at the start and then move onto a service when you get more bookings.
Connect with the guests on the most easily accessible medium for important or urgent messages. A person will respond to a WhatsApp message quicker than the time he would take to reply to an email.
Implement a simple CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system that allows hotels to track guest preferences, such as room type, special requests, and past stays. You can use this data to provide a more personalized experience to your guests.
2: Exceptional Guest Service
What value does your hotel provide? What makes your hotel so special among other hotels in your market? Why should I stay at your hotel and not the other cheaper alternative? You need to answer these questions with your hotel or property picture as that is the first impression of your hotel in front of a guest. In 2024 travelers want hotels that provide more than just a place to sleep—they want an experience.
A few things you can do to improve this is by focusing on a niche audience depending upon the location of your hotel. Train your team to always be polite and help the guests in anything that they ask for. Make sure your property stays clean and there are no hygiene-related issues in your property. All these small changes will go a long way in helping you get great guest reviews.
Additionally, a small hotel can collaborate with local businesses and services which can boost your bookings and at the same time add more value to it. For example, you can partner with a strawberry farm providing tours of the farm every day in between a particular time, the farm owner can sell their items making it a profitable collaboration for both parties.
3: Leverage Social Media
It only takes one video to significantly boost your bookings. In 2024 travel influencing is no longer about passion but more like a business. Social media influencers know how profitable their content could be for a hotel and so the modern influencers charge a fortune to post about your property. We would not advise you to pay any influencer as a small hotel. Start with creating content on your own and post it over different platforms. See what your competitors are doing and how is their social reach. Try to copy the style and content of your competitors and see if there is any improvement. Be consistent and do not stop posting if you do not see any audience even after months of posting. You never know which video gets viral so just keep going.
If you want quicker results from social media then ready yourself to pay money on ads to get more views and clicks on your sponsored posts. At the start do not keep a huge budget for ads, it is important to first understand how ads work on these platforms before you exhaust all the money in one go. Please keep in mind never press the ‘Boost’ button that appears under your post on any of the platforms. Learn about the ad platforms and how to use them from a reliable YouTube channel or any other trusted source.
4: Save The Earth
Save the environment and the environment will save you. We have seen that in recent times hotels that are more eco-friendly and use environmentally friendly utilities are ranked higher than other hotels. It may initially cost you a little more but in the longer run you can benefit greatly from this and be a hero who saved the earth.
5: Build Guest Relation
Due to the nature of today’s hospitality market, the retaining guest percent is abysmal for most of the hotels. Property managers are unable to retain their guests and that is something that has significantly changed recently. Having a good guest relation is the key to guest loyalty and repeat visits.
Collect and utilize guest data so that you can go the extra mile and win the retention game. For instance, you can provide something for special occasions, previous requests made and even their personal preference with the room or property. It can only happen when you start collecting data from all the sources and have it readily available when a guest comes back.
Staying competitive as a small hotel can be challenging but with the right strategies and calculated operations, one can get good results, much better than the competitors. Understand and use the points mentioned to your benefit. Do not spend a lot of money at the start, experiment with little and see what works for your hotel. With these strategies, your hotel can not only survive but thrive in the competitive landscape.
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