5 ways to increase your hotel’s revenue
Like any business, hotels should constantly be looking for ways to evolve.
The industry recovered well from the pandemic.
As occupancy rates have returned to pre-lockdown levels, owners should be thinking of ways to expand.
Staying afloat is no longer the goal.
Savvy businesses can thrive and grow in 2025 and beyond.
This article will offer some creative suggestions for ways to increase your hotel revenue and open new opportunities.
Learn more about your guests
The booking and check-in processes are great chances to capture both information on who’s staying with you. The more data you can reasonably collect, the better informed you’ll be. From demographic data to diet and typical spend, there are plenty of ways to categorise your guests.
That data can be used to tailor their experiences during their stay and identify broader trends among your customers, helping you plan for the future as well. Compare the data you receive to your typical customer profiles to ensure you are targeting the right people with your marketing.
If you typically receive bookings through online travel agencies or comparison sites, it isn’t always easy to capture this sort of customer data. If that’s the case, consider a check-in process that collects more details for the purposes of enhancing the customer experience.
Get creative with your upselling
Once you know about your customers, you’ll be in a much better position to offer them added value extras that might appeal to them.
There are plenty of options here, from the standard offerings of breakfast, airport transport, and parking to more out-there ideas like tours, spa days, sports packages, or themed rooms.
If you have clearly defined customer profiles, catering to these can allow you to upsell a whole stay, turning a simple room booking into a romantic getaway for couples, a classy and relaxing hen do, or a weekend retreat full of activities.
Reimagine your spaces
You can take the theme of themes even further by giving new purpose to your rooms and other spaces. Co-working spaces or quiet, well-connected areas are often in demand and could bring in additional income when occupancy rates are lower. Business professionals on work trips, local university students, or even after-school study clubs may all be interested.
You could also look to bring in additional users of meeting rooms with conference facilities, or even tap into the surge of interest in e-sports by creating an online gaming space. Any additional facilities you offer that might attract events or interest groups could be potential goldmines for your hotel.
Why not reach out to local groups and see if there’s interest in hosting quiz nights, board game conventions, corporate away days, or any other number of events at your venue?
Bring tipping into the cashless age
Cash was already on the decline before the COVID-19 pandemic, and that trend has continued since. That has meant that tipping has become a lot trickier, especially in the hotel industry, where tips can form a significant part of many employees’ wages. This is especially true in countries like the US, which is now experiencing something of a tip crisis.
As such, digital tipping solutions are becoming more popular and can offer easy ways for guests to show their appreciation without needing notes or coins on them.
While tips won’t go directly into your bottom line, satisfied employees are likely to work harder to delight customers, leading to positive chains of effect increasing interest, word of mouth marketing, and eventually bookings and revenue.
Get smart about scheduling
With occupancy fluctuating regularly, do you need the same members of staff in for the same times each day? Unlikely. Consider changing up shifts to streamline costs and make your operations more efficient.
Of course, this isn’t easy to manage with a old-fashioned paper rota or a jumbled Excel spreadsheet, so online employee scheduling solutions like Findmyshift are the answer. Tailored to hotels and hospitality venues, Findmyshift makes it easy to create, assign, and advertise shifts. With messaging capabilities, reminders, an in-built time clock, and more, Findmyshift could help you bring smart work schedules to your hotel.