How to Increase Hotel Sales
“Heads in beds” is a mantra for many hotel sales teams.
Your sales team is always looking for new business and looking at innovative ways to push that ADR.
But with finding new business and keeping up to date with current guests, things can get a little ”busy” or “messy” when trying to keep everything straight.
Let’s face it, those of us good in sales aren’t always the best at paperwork.
This was 100% me when I was working at a hotel in sales years ago! It was a challenge keeping all of the dates, groups, and contracts straight while working on growing the hotel.
Your Simple Hotel Sales Tip
But everything became simple, easy, and clear when I started the 3 calendar system.
This 3 calendar system gave me immediate clarity over these 3 main sales points:
Current groups, guests, events, and agreements
Past groups, events, and guests
Future groups, guests, events and agreements
What I had were 3 giant (almost wall sized calendars!!!) for the past year, the current year, and next year broken up by those points above.
Other hotels use a calendar system as well for their sales team, but they have it on their computers.
Having a full year of tangible calendars laid out side by side allowed me to pinpoint immediate slow points at the hotel and those areas where I needed to just hold off and let the hotel maximize the best available rate.
Now I want to walk you through the system for these calendars:
Calendar #1: Current Year's Hotel Business:
Now, the first calendar was the current year, it was what I was currently working on in the books and what groups and organizations I had spoken with. And I had it color-coded! This color coding for groups and events was gold! I used a green marker for new business. Meaning I could go ahead and contact them to get their business. Green meant go! Go Get that business!
Next, I used a red marker for business I had contacted but ran into an issue. I ran into some sort of a hiccup that I needed to go back and address in order to submit the business.
Finally, I would make a label of the group name and put it over the dates when I had sealed the deal. Labels were for those groups, events, etc. that had their contract in the folder. I had the group made, the reservation links hooked up, and guests were making reservations. We were all set to go!
Calendar #2: Last Year:
Last year's calendar had all the same coding as the current year and I would use it as a baseline for contacting hotel stays for that year. This way I had an idea of which groups were available when and if I cemented their business. I also kept those groups red so I could hit them up again in the current year and work on taking that business from someone else in my STR report.
Calendar #3: Future Year:
The final calendar was for next year. This had all events, groups, and activities in the community coming up the following year. By being able to see what was coming up a year in advance I would provide myself more time to find groups and business to fit into areas that may have holes.
Tip of the week:
Today’s simple tip is to have your hotel sales team watch this video on the 3 calendar system so that they have a clear, simple, proven process to keep hotel sales up while removing the stress and overwhelm of keeping all activities straight.
When you implement this 3 calendar system at your hotel, you will find that your sales team is more confident because they know where they need to be focusing their sales time which will lead to more bookings and ultimately heads in beds!
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