Are you responsible, in one form or another, for driving sales for a small hotel or hotel chain? If so, these past few months have probably been a little tough for your business. Business travelers aren’t traveling as much. Many folks are leveraging online tools like Google Docs and Skype to get business done while in different geographic locations. Summer is usually a big travel season here in the U.S., and I’m thinking even that’s going to be down this year, as more and more families are staying local during their family vacation. So, with this being the situation, it’s up to us to get creative and find new ways to generate revenue for hotels.
Every time I travel, and stay in a hotel, one of the most underused areas of the hotels that I stay in are the conference rooms. Most hotels have at least one to two conference rooms, and most of the time, they are not being used. So, if I’m working at a hotel, especially if I’m a decision-maker, I’m trying to find creative ways to use the conference rooms. One use of the conference rooms is to rent them out to local entrepreneurs and small business owners. There are quite a few small businesses, as well as startups, who need workspace. Workspace with internet and cable connections. Workspace that’s affordable, comfortable, and can accommodate at least 5 – 7 people. Hotel conference rooms can fill this need in the marketplace. It just takes some planning, a little creativity, and the use of the right online tools to market the new service.
When it comes to renting out your hotel conference rooms, you want to make sure you do not upset any hotel guests that need to use the space. Figure out a way to ensure that you do not schedule the conference room at times when hotel guests need to use it. One way to do this is to ask each guest when the book their room (which is usually at some point prior to their stay) if they plan to use the conference room. If they do, find out the date/time that they’ll need it and add that to a calendar that keeps track of the conference room schedule. Once you have a plan in place for scheduling the conference rooms, you can come up with your fee schedule. This could be hourly, it could be by the day or half day, it’s really about what you think the market will pay. Perhaps you can do a little research to see what other “similar” spaces charge. Find a price, start marketing it, and the market will tell you if it’s too high, too low, or just right.
Once you have your plan in place, now you can start marketing your new service both through materials inside the hotel, and through your online social tools, like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Yelp, YouTube, your Blog, and foursquare. Your target should be entrepreneurs, startups, and small businesses without a physical location. Create content about the need for physical workspace that’s affordable for entrepreneurs. Get testimonials from past customers. Shoot a video showing the space and explaining what’s offered (ie. high speed internet, cable, phone, etc). Create a foursquare special geared towards saving money on a conference room rental. There are countless creative ways that you can promote your message to your target audience through online tools.
Give your plan some time to get up and running. Check-in on a quarterly basis to see how you’re tracking against your performance measures. If you aren’t seeing many rentals, then tweak some things. If people are starting to rent the conference rooms, find out how they found out about your service, ask them what they thought about the service after they use it, etc. Constantly learn about what’s working and what’s not. Don’t be afraid to try new things. With ideas like this, there are hardly any real costs needed to try to rent out your hotel conference rooms. What’s there to lose? If it doesn’t work, then come up with a new creative way to leverage the conference rooms, or other underused areas of your hotel. In times like these, the businesses who get creative, and leverage the proper tools, will be the ones who thrive.
Tags: creative marketing, Hotel Marketing, Small Business Marketing