Generate More Revenue in Your Hotel With These Key Strategies
The hospitality industry produces a massive amount of revenue; Statista projects that the global hotels market will reach $426.50 billion (USD) in revenue by the end of 2024 worldwide. Obviously, there’s a lot of earnings to go around. How, then, do some hotels struggle to increase their revenue? And how can these hotels improve?
Expanding revenue generation in hotels requires fine-tuned strategies and forward-thinking technology. Leveraging responsive wireless connectivity with carefully constructed approaches can lead to considerable raises in revenue — read on to discover a few pertinent strategies to implement within your property.
- How Do Hotels Generate Revenue?
- 7 Ideas to Generate More Revenue in Your Hotel Using Internet Connectivity
- Empower Increased Revenue Generation With Hotel WiFi From Hospitality Network
How Do Hotels Generate Revenue?
As with any business, there is no one way hotels generate revenue; hotel revenue generation comes from diverse drivers, including:
- Room Reservations
- Special Events
- Meeting & Conference Bookings
- Parking Amenities
- Spa Services
- On-Site Food & Beverage
Rooms are, of course, the most consistent form of revenue for hotels. At any given time, the vast majority of people within a hotel are staying there; in turn, most other forms of revenue stem directly from customers already contributing revenue from rooms. Hotels can encourage guests to drive revenue to other amenities using specific strategies — several of which we’ll highlight in the next section.
Ways to Generate More Hotel Revenue with Internet Connectivity
Here are just a few of the most relevant ways hotels generate additional revenue — each of which requires internet connectivity to achieve maximum efficiency. Any one of these solutions can pay substantial dividends for your property’s bottom line; combined, they provide a truly powerful means to increase revenue.
1. Personalized Guest Messaging
Within hospitality marketing, personalization should be considered essential. According to Marq’s 2021 Content Effectiveness Report, 87% of marketing industry professionals said that customers expected at least some personalized content. To generate more revenue, hospitality professionals may need to tap into this personalization — often achievable through the use of existing guest information and means of communication.
Hotel guest messaging encompasses all communication between hotels and guests across all digital touchpoints, including:
- Hotel Website
- Booking Apps
- In-Room Entertainment
- Email & SMS
- Digital Kiosks
By referencing guest information collected from their previous stays — such as birthdays, reasons for travel, and prior amenities use — with each providing unique opportunities to reach guests with personalized offers, deals and information. Hotels typically schedule these messages in advance using internet-connected software.
2. Hotel Upselling
Upselling is an effective way to increase revenue across many industries; according to Forbes, the probability of upselling to an existing customer is 60 to 70%, while selling to new prospects is just 5 to 20%.
Hotels are in a unique position to even further amplify the impact of upselling; existing customers often take prolonged stays within properties, leading to multiple opportunities for additional marketing.
Via upselling, hotels can offer diverse amenities, including early or late check-out, room upgrades, and wellness packages. Plus, using personalized guest messaging, hoteliers can market specific upsells to targeted groups, increasing the chance of converting on a sale and generating additional revenue.
3. Monetized Tiered WiFi Plans
Whether or not hotel WiFi should be free is debated by many across the hospitality industry. While implementing a fee for WiFi use can support revenue and justify higher-end networks, mandatory additional charges may upset guests who only need WiFi to send a quick email. Free WiFi, meanwhile, runs the risk of easier access from bad actors and network freeloaders. The solution? Offer both.
Offering monetized WiFi tiers allows hotel guests to only pay for the WiFi access they need while generating hassle-free revenue for hoteliers. By implementing a log-in portal, guests must still verify themselves before accessing your free network; once logged in, hotels can offer select tiers, only charging users looking for a premium experience. Working with an experienced team of WiFi experts, hotels can custom-build these tiers with their specific clientele in mind.
4. In-Room Entertainment Platforms
Next-generation in-room entertainment platforms offer extensive ways to generate revenue — both by selling services via the platform itself and promoting other amenities within your hotels.
Today’s hotel guests often appreciate a diverse array of accessible content via their hotel television. While traditional video-on-demand must now compete with streaming services and content casting for guest attention, premium VOD of hit Hollywood releases will always have a place within in-room entertainment infrastructure. By keeping entertainment options updated and relevant, hotels can sell blockbusters to guests as a key source of revenue generation.
Modern hoteliers also recognize the importance of branding within in-room entertainment systems. IRE systems can serve as a customizable marketing hub for all hotel amenities — informing guests of restaurants, spas, resort entertainment options, and far more. In turn, in-room entertainment platforms become viable channels to educate, interact with, and delight guests.
5. Encourage Group Experiences
Rooms are the most consistent form of hotel revenue, directly leading to other revenue streams across a property. In turn, promoting ways to sell more rooms can be key in increasing hotel revenue. What better way to increase hotel revenue, then, than booking blocks of multiple rooms to large groups at one time?
Catering to larger group-based events and outings can potentially increase a hotel’s revenue generation, particularly for gatherings like:
- Business Meetings
- Weddings & Celebrations
- Conferences
- Trade Shows
To attract these types of events, hotels can offer targeted deals to groups with large bookings — especially valuable during slower periods of the year or times of the week. Accordingly, large groups can help populate other amenities within your hotel — including spas and restaurants — to further increase revenue.
Focusing on specific demographics for group travel can lead to even greater increases in revenue. Take, for example, business travelers. From bleisure travelers to conference attendees, business travelers often travel to hotels en masse. Offering the right deals to the right business groups — several of which, such as IRE packages and discounts on deluxe WiFi tiers, leverage wireless connectivity — can lead to distinct, highly lucrative revenue generation.
6. Dynamic Room Pricing
Not every booking is equal in value, even for the same room; the demand for a stay on your property can widely fluctuate between seasons, holidays, and time of the week. Selling the same room for the same price throughout the year is essentially burning a vital revenue stream. By changing the price of your room depending on the demand — a strategy known as dynamic room pricing — hotels can ensure they maximize the revenue on each room.
Hotels can implement dynamic pricing on rooms in different ways — two of the most popular being charging the fees upfront or charging after a guest already clicks on a room to book it. Generally, charging upfront is the preferable option; NerdWallet found that 64% of Americans prefer to see one total combined price that includes all charges rolled into one, instead of an upfront room rate later inundated with separate fees. To determine the right price, hotels often use dynamic pricing software equipped with complex algorithms — supported by powerful WiFi networks that can handle high-level computing.
7. Versatile Loyalty Programs
Loyalty programs can contribute to almost every form of revenue generation we’ve already mentioned — sending personalized discounts on premium upsells, IRE exclusives, and premier tiered WiFi options that both make guests feel valued and contribute to additional revenue generation. Implementation of loyalty programs also encourages guests to keep using your hotel as opposed to competitors; the greater value a guest gets from returning, the higher chance they will.
Empower Increased Revenue Generation With Hotel WiFi From Hospitality Network
From carefully honed upselling to dynamic room pricing, there are diverse ways to increase revenue generation within a hotel. One thing all of these strategies have in common, however, is that each is empowered and maximized by wireless technology. Consistent, responsive internet access is integral to supporting hotel revenue generation; without it, means to increase revenue may instead result in lost money.
Hospitality Network provides fast, scalable, and reliable hotel WiFi services, building networks from the ground up to support your property’s unique needs. Our networks enable high-speed internet access (HSIA) from guest rooms to poolside, with custom splash pages and malleable monetization options designed to cater to your hotel’s particular clientele. Request a consultation today and explore potential revenue generation strategies to blow away your guests and raise your bottom line.
