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Useful Insights to Improve Your Hotel's Profitability in 2023 According to Leading Industry Experts
Improve Your Hotels Profitability
Looking for ideas to increase profitability at your hotel this year then invest in your future? Faced with massive headwinds like staffing shortages, lower business travel demand, and rising costs, hoteliers are searching for clever ways to increase top line revenue or decrease costs to meet their profitability goals. In fact, in a recent survey conducted by leading revenue management software company Duetto, reports, 60.8% of hotelier respondents said that business travel would be the industry’s top challenge in 2023. With fewer of those high-rated, mid-week reservations on the books, how can you hit or beat budget? In this article, we’ll share six tips from industry experts that will help you take advantage of trends and technology to boost profitability.
Invest In Technology
In recent study by a leading revenue management company, 60% of survey respondents said their technology spend will increase in the next three years, which means your hotel needs to continue its technology investment to stay competitive and commercial. It might seem counterintuitive to spend money on technology in order to become more profitable however invest in your future and you will reap the rewards it brings,
For example, according to Laura Calin, Global Vice President, Hospitality Strategy & Solutions Management at Oracle Hospitality, “reports, more than half of consumers (54%), said they are willing to pay more to choose their view; 38% to choose their room; and 32% to choose their room floor; etc. Consumers want what they want, and it’s up to hotels to provide options for guests to customize their stay, and to present those offers throughout the guest journey, from booking to check-in (digital or in-person) to on-site.” A hotel can only realize the revenue uplift from these potential upgrades and ancillary fees if it has the tech infrastructure to administer and support it.
What steps will your hotel take to become more profitable in 2023? With technology at the centre of your strategy, you can achieve higher profitability, decreased costs, and even better guest review scores this year.
Develop A Direct Online Guest Booking Website.
Have you ever considered the benefits of operating your own booking channel, the cost savings it generates and the immediate increase on the bottom line? Why not be bold and give it a try!
For example Wix offer owners the opportunity to add a direct booking engine and channel manager to their websites that diversify audiences reach and increases chances of new untapped market bookings, you can also add your property to as many listing sites (OTA's) as you want. The channel manager allows connectivity access to over 400 booking channels worldwide and provides booking managers the ability to automatically update rates, availability and bookings across many booking channels simultaneously (such as Airbnb, HomeAway or Booking.com), all from a single platform.
Initially it's important that you take your time and monitor the booking results then gradually adjust the balance between listing sites (OTA's) and your direct booking system!
The OTA giants are not going away any time soon, fair to say that they must be acknowledged for the services they provide the holiday booker and should not be ignored but worked with in co-operation.
Online booking software like Wix hotels integrates OTA's within the channel management systems, therefore complimenting both methods of guest booking. Hoteliers also have an army of weapons that OTA's can't access: the possibility to offer gifts or discounts on services for a particular stay (airport transfer, meals, spa, late-check out, etc.) or offers on local attractions are endless… These small gestures towards satisfying customers combined with a more digitized interactive website and its design are non-negligible arguments to improve direct guest booking and profitability.
Get Control Of Your SEO
Search engine optimization is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines. SEO targets unpaid traffic rather than direct traffic or paid traffic.
With the release of Googles "core web vitals" many believe this is a real game changer and is the predominant factor that will impact SEO from now on.
In today’s world, company's turn to search engines like Google to find the answers to pretty much all of our questions. So it’s no wonder that business and website owners everywhere do what they can to make their information findable on Google. Which is exactly what SEO is—the practice of optimizing your content to appear higher within search results.
Forget trying to rank for high ticket search queries like ‘Paris Vacation Rentals’. The OTAs will win every time. Instead, focus on less common ‘long-tail’ keyword phrases with greater intent and focus like ‘pet-friendly hotel Montmartre. Whilst the search volume is far less, the chances of higher search engine ranking and booking conversion are greater.”
Specifically, think about details like your site’s URL, keyword search phases, optimise page load speed times, compress images, reduce paragraphs, write meaningful title tags and meta descriptions, (they send out strong signals to search engines), implement alt text, create internal & external links and make sure your site is mobile friendly.
Implement a search on your primary competitors, check their ranking and search phases then check your rankings and see how you compare to what you consider a success.
Take note: SEO success is not guaranteed it takes time and patience, so be sure to hang in there until you achieve your goal.
Move To Cloud-Based Systems.
Legacy software is installed on your computer’s hard drive and can only be accessed from that computer. Cloud-based software, on the other hand, lives online, or “in the cloud,” which means you can log in from any device, anywhere, to use it. Legacy software was the only option for hoteliers for decades, and only in the past few years did cloud-based apps become popular. Cloud-based software offers a slew of benefits besides convenience; one key benefit is that software updates happen automatically so you can always use the most up-to-date version.
On a legacy system, you’d have to download (and perhaps even purchase) a new version and install it manually. Another benefit to cloud-based software is that it’s often cheaper or more flexibly priced than legacy software. You often don’t need to commit to years-long contracts or purchase a certain number of licenses. Switching to cloud-based systems can be a great way to decrease your technology costs and increase efficiency.
Some website builder programmes like Wix.com already include cloud based systems for their clients so if you're planning a change in your website design programme take a look at the comprehensive Wix software and service levels they provide.
Leverage Automation.
One of the top challenges facing hoteliers in 2023 is the industry-wide staff shortage. When your hotel must deliver the same high standard of guest service with fewer employees, you need to find ways to free up time that employees would normally spend on repetitive back-office work. Invest in your future with automation is the perfect solution for this challenge, since software on the market today can handle tasks like guest communication, billing and invoicing, and even pricing. As Mark Braune, Group Director Revenue & Distribution at Ruby Hotels, says: “Automation is one of the major topics for Ruby Hotels and we are always looking to improve our automated processes with a special focus on this in 2023.”
In addition, Bob Engeringh, Commercial Director at citizenM, is prioritizing automation: “Especially now that it is harder than ever for the industry to attract people to work, the focus will be more on automation.” If you’ve been thinking about implementing that chatbot or AI-powered pricing tool or Ascend by Wix, 2023 can be the year you unlock the power of automation so your staff can focus their attention on higher-impact tasks.
In conclusion
With all the challenges hoteliers are experiencing in this financial crisis at the moment, that translates to yet another challenging business year through out 2023 it is even more essential hoteliers focus on improving the functions of the business like embracing automation, online guest booking etc; that will help towards a viable and secure future.
Hoteliers must accept the fact that old practices need to be dropped because the hotel business climate is steadily changing for ever due to the pandemic and the introduction of new advanced automation software that carry out menial repetitive tasks.
It is already clear that guests booking behaviour, guest preferences, searching for the best room rates and direct booking means hoteliers must respond and begin the process of commitment to redefining the way they run their businesses.
The Advanced software programmes that assist in the above tasks will provide positive results are mostly stand alone systems although they are not that expensive to purchase they are app addons and ay not be compatible with your existing software, so check before you purchase.
Alternatively Wix.com website builder software includes all the applications you'll need to get your website up to speed by implementing the above future investments to increase profitability.
It's worth investigating the difference in cost with buying individual apps V apps already built in to a software programme like Wix.com.
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Acknowledgements in preparing this report:
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