Everybody loves a long weekend. Finishing work on a Thursday afternoon, knowing that several days of relaxation and enjoyment lie ahead. It’s tough to beat.
For the hotel industry, long weekends don’t represent rest and relaxation, but they are an excellent opportunity to drive more revenue and get more bookings. However, you have to do it right.
In this article, we’ll take a look at how hoteliers can tap into the right technology to make the most of long weekends and some of the specific tools to help here.
Why technology is so important for hotels
Hotels today have access to some incredibly useful tools, which are improving all the time. These solutions can help you attract more guests across various channels, deliver better customer experiences, and manage your operations more efficiently.
Let’s take a look at some of the most useful tools here and how they can help you make the most of long weekends and holidays.
Channel Manager
A channel manager allows you to build a presence across multiple marketing channels, allowing you to connect with more guests than ever before. This way, you can tap into the increased opportunities during long weekends and holiday periods, ensuring you make contact with as many potential guests as possible.
Booking Engine
When booking a stay for a long weekend, customers are bombarded with options. If your booking process isn’t as smooth and enjoyable as possible, your potential guests will click away and look elsewhere.
A booking engine gives you all the tools to create the most rewarding, friction-free, and easy booking experience for your customers. It also allows you to showcase your rooms and services more clearly and offer promotions and deals.
Central Reservation System
While long weekends represent plenty of business opportunities for hotels, they also come with challenges. Receiving more guests than usual can put a strain on your staff and processes, and run the risk of overbooking, mixups, and other issues that can disappoint guests.
A Central Reservation System helps mitigate many of these risks. It allows you to manage the operations of your hotel much more easily and efficiently, helping you deliver a better experience to your guests while also relieving stress from your hardworking staff.
Metasearch Connectivity
Connecting your hotel to common Metasearch platforms like TripAdvisor and Kayak makes it easier than ever for guests to find your hotel. During busy times like long weekends, this is yet another technique that allows you to stand out from the competition and connect with guests at exactly the right moment.
Common pitfalls for hotels without robust technology
As hotel tech becomes more and more advanced, hotels that fail to keep up here run the risk of falling behind and missing out on the many advantages on offer.
Let’s look at some of the common issues hotels face when they don’t stay ahead of the technology curve:
- Overreliance on slow, clunky manual processes that take far too long and come with an increased risk of error
- Problems with bookings and reservation management, like double booking, overbooking, and failing to deliver guests what they asked for
- Poor analytics and data management, so you fail to access highly useful insights into your guests and industry that could be used to drive future improvements
- Poor communication and engagement with guests. Hotels that rely on outdated communication methods and don’t interact with guests across multiple digital channels often deliver a worse experience overall.
The Hotel-Spider solution
Our tools like booking engine, channel manager, and central reservation system combine to give hotels everything they need to take advantage of busy periods like long weekends, connect with more guests than before, drive more direct bookings, and deliver exceptional customer service even when occupancy rates are high.
The future of the hotel industry will be shaped by tech. Contact us to learn more about how you
can harness the right tools to stay on the cutting edge.
