4 Ways To Improve Your Hotel Business With Competitive Benchmarking

The most important thing to grow in an industry is to learn from your competition. And believe us there is no industry/business near to hotel business in terms of the cut-throat competitive environment. You might already know how difficult it is to go a notch above your competition if you are into the hotel business. If your business is stuck at the same place where it used to be even after changing the ways of your business and investing plenty then my friend competitive bench marking is the solution for you.

Competitive bench marking is a simple evaluation of your business against your competitors. This way you get to know the current position of your business and the improvements that can be made to catch up with the best in the practice. For instance the reservation system, this is like the frontline for every hotel. Your customers make a reservation via the reservation system. Let’s say you are still using the old and traditional methods for reservations where your clients have to call your reservation staff to get themselves a room booked. However, at the same time, your competition is making use of the latest technology that is they are providing online reservation via the website and customized application built on the back of robust Hotel Reservation Script. Then it’s obvious that the competitor would get more clients, as he is offering ease of booking to the users.

This is what competitive bench marking is, comparing yourself to the best in the industry. All you have to do is evaluate every element of your business with your competitors. This is one effective technique that is really going to help you improve your hotel business.

If you are new to this, no need to worry as we will provide you with 4 Ways To Improve Your Hotel Business With Competitive Bench marking. So, just hang on and carry on reading.

Analyze Your Competition

The very first and the most important step to competitive bench marking is to know who is your competition. This way you can list the options your clients have. Although it’s important to know where your clients can go, you must really focus on the question that “why would they go to your competitors?”. Now, this is where you really start your analysis of your competitors. Yes at times you might think that this is just futile, but believe us this is the way to the top.

After you have decided your competitors, you need to answer that question, what is it that your clients leave you. How is your competitor better than you? What are they offering that you are not? These questions are going to be answered once you compare each and every service and business elements. For instance, you can analyze your business based on:

● Management
● Facilities
● Prices
● Location of business
● Client approach, etc.

Once you start summarizing the reports you definitely notice the slight differences in hotel service and the one sitting at the top. Now the last and the final step is improvising. When you know the reason why your sales going down and why you are losing customers. Then why not make some changes and make your clients stay. We know making changes to the ways you do your business can be a little chaotic and frightening to some of the hotel owners, however its worth doing it.

Gathering Information

We have discussed the ways to beat your competition. And like we said before in this battle the one with the information wins. So you cant go out take a look at random stuff in your competitor’s hotel and make list to do the same. What you need is a proper strategy to gather the right information. So here are few standards to be used to gather data.
Information about the types of room, facilities and the most important the prices.

The two most important thing a clients sees before he/she makes a reservation is the tyes of room and facility. And the other one is the price at what they are offering. Once you get to know about these you clearly see the reason why you are behind your competition. Remember the aim is to compare every element of the business from the perspective of a customer.

● Whom Are They Targeting: It is important to know that every person has a different taste for different things. So if you think that every person you encounter is going to like your hotel then its a blunder. You cannot convince everyone to like to and nor it is a good idea to do so. For most business are target-oriented. Same goes for your competitors and when you look at their rooms and facilities you will have a clear idea about their targeted customer group.

● Make Use Of E-mail Newsletter: E-mail is considered as one of the best ways to execute the marketing strategy. That is why hotel and restaurants use it to undergo marketing campaigns. This where they connect to their clients about different offers and discounts etc. Well, this might be a great deal bringer or your competitor’s client, as for you its good source of information.

● Social media: It’s a modern world and every business today has an online presence either through the website or social media. You can gather a lot of information about the development your competitors make from their social media handle.

Use The Latest Technology

Successfully running and operating a hotel is no easy task. And if you are not making use of technology then it just gets harder. Similar to the hotel reservation script you can make use of other technology to get things done a lot easier and faster than you could ever imagine. Create a website, have a presence over social media, etc.

Provide What You Show

One of the major problems that arise in going online for hotels is the quality services. Most of the hotel show extremely luxurious photos of their hotel and provide nothing. Believe us this is not something you would want to do to your customers. This not only reduces your client base but diminish your brand name in the market. So make sure to provide what you promise to your customers.