The hotel industry talks about “big data” and all of its impact on revenue management, guest satisfaction, product development, etc.  The piece I find interesting is how it can be useful for hotel sales teams at a very granular level, in their day-to-day sales efforts.

Our hotel partners both at the brand/corporate level, as well as individual properties are sitting on mounds of data and information, but have a hard time with a concrete plan to use it to increase revenue.

Here are some best practices for sales teams using existing data within just two of the most common data collection tools that every property should have:

Property Management System For In-House Guest Data:

Pull current and past guest information, and track it to their company/organization.  This is a great way to prove usage from target accounts when creating business cases to gain entry into the account.

Create an incentive program for the front desk to accurately capture this information from in-house guests, and reciprocate with an incentive to the traveler for sharing this key information.  You want to know company or organization name, email address, referral to company decision-maker for hotels, why the traveler chose your hotel, how they booked their reservation.

Drill down length of stay & stay pattern information by market segment and/or account to gain insight into the most valuable business.  This sheds light on like business that can be a target for new business.

Sales & Catering Software (Customer Relationship Management Software):

Use Data To Create Targeted Prospecting Efforts: 

Lost business and past business by specific date periods for prospecting and re qualifying.

Drill down lost business reasons to determine prospects to revisit & reintroduce.

Drill down by industry, geography, and market segmentation to understand biggest wins & determine like-business to target for new opportunities.

Drill down by need periods and timing of past business to focus efforts on business that has booked in the past on specific need dates.

Look at companies that have booked catering only meetings to target for rooms business.  Catering information can be incredibly valuable for business travel sales managers and group sales managers for future needs that have guestrooms.  Likewise, catering sales should partner with group sales and transient sales to target future catering needs.

Use Data To Create Lead Nurturing Expectations:

Drill down sales activities to determine the sales cycle from the time a new opportunity is uncovered to contract signature.

Drill down lead type vs. sales cycle within that lead type.

Create visibility into lost opportunities due to leads falling off the lead ladder.  Example: activity stopped after a few attempts of follow-up, and we are unsure what happened with the lead.

These few areas can assist with setting a clear and realistic process for sales teams to follow.  For example, one of our hotel partners has set up a 7 step process for lead follow-up based on this data.

Garbage in = garbage out, so the key is ensuring the information going into the Property Management System and the Sales & Catering Software is accurate and complete.

Then, at the bare minimum, these two systems should be deployed by sales teams to enhance revenue generation efforts, through the above simple tactics.

We work with hotel partners every day to build effective revenue generation campaigns from data they already have in their back pocket!  Let me know how we can help your hotel with our bandwidth and quick-start programs to uncover opportunities.