If you have meeting rooms to hire, then it makes sense to make sure you make as much revenue from these rooms as you can while offering the best possible experience to your clients. Here are eight tips for increasing the revenue of your rooms:
1. Make sure your employees are happy
It’s important that your employees have a friendly and outgoing manner with your customers. If you make your employees happy by paying them fairly and recognising their achievements, they will want to be good ambassadors for your business. When your employees go above and beyond what’s on their job description, it leads to happier customers, repeat visits and for your customers to tell others about your venue.
2. Don’t be tempted to drop your rates to increase bookings
If you’ve ever seen Alex Politzi’s ‘Hotel Inspector’ on TV, you’ll have seen how small hotels often drop their prices in an attempt to pull in more customers. Unfortunately this leads to a ‘race to the bottom’ scenario because independently run hotels can’t compete with the budget chains. In fact there’s almost always someone who can offer rooms cheaper than you, so dropping your rate is rarely the best strategy.
3. Differentiate your venue from your competitors
Instead of competing on price, find a way to make your venue stand out from all the others in your area. Give your guests a reason to choose your venue over the one a mile down the road from you. You can differentiate your venue from your competitors based on service or branding, for example. While a basic, functional room with tea and coffee may be fine for some meetings, a client may want a more secluded or inspiring setting for her personal development workshops. If you can offer this kind of setting then you may well be able to charge extra.
4. Get room scheduling software
Why not provide your prospective clients all the information they need by using room booking software? It saves labour costs and time, both when the client makes the initial booking and if they decide to update their booking later on.
Clients also have a better experience because they can check availability and book at any time, 24 hours a day, without needing to wait for someone to answer the phone.
5. Add additional sources of revenue
Don’t be too pushy but do try to gently persuade your clients to spend a little more. You might ask if the client would like a great deal on rooms for those delegates who are staying the night before the meeting or perhaps another night after the event so they can spend some leisure time in your area. Or you could offer an upgrade on their refreshments package.
6. Host both business and private functions
Could you expand on the ways you’re currently using your meeting rooms? If you’re offering them to business, you could offer private events such as weddings or reunions, too.
7. Look at what’s going on in your local area
Keeping on top of what’s happening in your local area means that you are able to offer customers exactly what they want, when they need it.
8. Network with other nearby businesses
Networking with other area businesses that tend to attract business travellers could help you spread the word about your meeting rooms or even create opportunities to work together with those businesses. For example, clients can be encouraged to your venue if you offer a special rate for anyone who books a room and shows a ticket or receipt from your networking partner.
Image by Ed Yourdon, used under Creative Comms license