What to do after your hotel refurbishment

Q: I have recently spent a fortune upgrading my hotel, but it hasn't had quite the impact on occupancy I was expecting. How do I get the word out? A: Upgrading your hotel can help you achieve one of two things; it either maintains and increases your standards enabling you to better service existing clients, or it extends your facilities providing you with the opportunity to target new customers. Either way, the developments won’t get noticed on their own, unless you already have a booking in place or a regular, loyal customer anyway. No matter how expensive the refurbishment, you will need to plan in ways to promote it, to ensure it gets the exposure it deserves and that you need. Promotional opportunities will depend a little on your location and services, as you’ll need to tackle the regional wedding market differently to the national traveller for example; however the following provide you with some ideas which can form the basis of your activity, and it is worth you having a think of similar ones specific to your local area. Invite local businesses / individuals for the cost of a little hospitality, it’s worth hosting an event for local businesses or individuals within the newly refurbished venue, particularly if you can contrive a way to show off the ‘best bits’. Start with a directory of local businesses, and then having planned an event, get in touch with them via phone and email, extending an invite. If necessary, host a few different events for a few different audiences. Approach local groups to use the hotel, initially as a free venue if you can. Anything from local business networking groups who want bacon butties for a morning meeting, through to the local branch of a club, they’ll all attend official events, and may well be encouraged to return again in the future. This will depend on your local area, but I have seen this work well with classic car motoring or biking groups, cycling and hiking groups and many others, who need a place to gather and enjoy themselves. Work with tourist information centres / destination management partnerships; people often assume that the rise of the internet has killed off local support, but TICs and DMOs are still in demand, particularly from foreign travellers. Whilst this won’t be a mainstay for the business, it will provide a nice ‘top-up’ to your other bookings and extending your hospitality to them will help ensure you’re top of their recommendations list. Host dedicated showcase events - if you have the ability to offer weddings, then organise a wedding fayre that shows off your venue, at the same time building relationships with potential referrers / partners. Other examples include spa taster treatments or gym open days to make the most of your facilities. Run social media competitions – assuming you run social media accounts, use them; shout about the refurbishment, run a competition / prize draw to win a stay and focus on garnering attention. Be careful not to run awry of the rulings on competitions, but this can be a great awareness driver. If you don’t have them yet, launch them, start making connections with local businesses and participate in dedicated discussion hours on the different platforms as a way to build followers and engagements. Use introductory offers whilst you don’t want to devalue your offering by consistently lowering the price thereby implying it is too high in the first place, a celebratory ‘added value’ package such as three nights for the price of two can do wonders for generating initial bookings. Mine your existing database this is a refurbishment we are talking about, so you must have a database of existing clients. Use it! Send out an email or a new brochure, showcasing the new venue and encouraging people to return. They’ve been before, hopefully they enjoyed and most of all, they’ll probably be curious to see what you have done. Marketing doesn’t have to be expensive, but it should be measurable and it should be consistent. Make sure your CRM or database record system is as on the button as your new refurb so that you can record new customers and their source and can target them with future marketing, as well as measuring how successful each campaign has been. By Angie Petkovic. This article first appeared in the April 2015 issue of Hotel Owner