Let's take a look at this scenario: You own a hotel with beautiful scenery and outstanding facilities. Your main aim at your hotel is to get guests to book rooms, and you are doing quite well in that aspect. Is that the only way to make money at your hotel? Okay, maybe you have a restaurant that guests dine at. You are still not doing enough.
With the current state of Ghana's economy, we must look at various ways to generate revenue. The number 1 strategy that has been adopted in many top hotels is to organize events at the hotel.
Now that you have this in mind, you need to consider these strategies to help you boost events at your hotel:
1. Promote Your Space
Your hotel may have the best scenery and facilities but how will people know if you do not promote it?
Promoting your space at your hotel to the right audience will get you cashing out in no time!
What do we mean by the right audience?
If you have a state-of-the-art conference room, you should be looking at getting organizations to host business events at your hotel.
Got a large and aesthetically pleasing lawn? Your target audience should be guests looking for wedding venues. The same goes for a roof-top view or a pool.
See? You just need to know the key facilities you have and find your target audience.
2. Connect With Travel Agents
Travel Agents are very vital in the hospitality industry in that they are one of the sources that connect hotels and guests.
When organizing tours, many event planners collaborate with travel agents for the best possible experience - and most of them look for accommodation facilities in large groups.
You do not want to be left out of potential deals.
What you need to do first is to approach travel agents with your hotel’s portfolio. Ensure that you highlight all the facilities available for hosting an event.
Be it capacity, seating arrangement, technology, amenities, or more.
Have a tie-up with travel agents on a profit-sharing or commission basis.
This would initially boost your room sales and eventually increase events at your hotel.
3. Partner with Event Planners
Event planners work directly with your target audience which means you have to connect with them in order to gain access.
They do not always manage high-end events. Some of the parties they organize are functions with a small headcount. Small events end quickly so, you can host two events in a single day.
In order to increase events at hotels, it’s necessary to partner with both small and big event planners.
Partner with event planners from a different niche. Don’t miss any of them. This is one of the most effective ways to increase events at hotels.
If you offer the best rates and highlight your facilities, they will be able to recommend your venue to their clients. This will definitely boost events at your hotel.
4. Target Corporations!
Having corporate tie-ups is very beneficial to your hotel.
Working with corporations means you will be getting repeat guests, constant cash flow, and referrals.
Corporations host quite a number of business conferences. You could have a corporation booking the venue for a business seminar or training each month, for 5-6 days.
The frequency at which they hosted business conferences was unbelievable. Every month they had a seminar or a product training session which lasted for 5-6 days.
Once you work with corporations, you should start raking in the cash.
5. Host Your own Events
If you don't have any events planned for a while, you can always host your own event!
You need to seize every opportunity to be in the limelight.
All you need to do is, organize and promote an event at the hotel.
Some examples of events could be the hotel’s opening anniversary, summer pool party, Christmas Party, new year bash, or any other workshops.
You can market it across various channels and to your loyal guests.
Promoting a self-hosted event garners the attention of event planners and guests. Eventually, leading to an increase in events at your hotel.
6. Promote Events through Social Media
In order to make use of social media, you need to first ensure that you have an online presence across most or all of the various existing social media platforms.
Social media is a perfect tool to promote events in your hotel.
The best part is about is that when millennials and GenZ visit a property, they geotag the location of any event they visit. Which gives the properties a free promotion on the internet. So why don't you jump on it!
You can have signage at the entrance of your venue showing hashtags they can use when they take pictures or videos. Onc again, free advertising.
Using relevant hashtags ensures that these posts reach a wider audience.
One more thing to note: whenever you host an event, don’t forget to post about it on social media platforms. This will keep your guests updated about events and functions happening at your property.
Finally, do not forget to promote events on Facebook, because many guests attending any event look for it on Facebook.
7. Focus on delivering the experience
According to an article published by Harvard Business Review,
“Guests having the best experience in the past, tend to spend 140% more than the guests who had a poor experience.”
Events involve providing a great experience to two different sets of guests:
The organizer, or the event planner
Event attendees
In any case, you have to ensure a flawless operation and management of the event.
What should hotels take note of?
It’s simple, double-check all the arrangements before the event starts.
Focus on these five aspects – Ambience, food, hygiene, service, and technology.
This is the key to hosting a successful event.
Pro-tip:
Due to the pandemic, guests avoid attending any events.
You can highlight safety measures deployed at your hotel. Also, you can use pictures to showcase the safety precautions you took to host a successful event.
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