Knowing which side you land on is a crucial aspect of revenue management. It is the deciding factor in your pricing strategy. This choice will vary depending on the segment it’s aimed at, the room you’re trying to flog, the time of year and a multitude of other factors. That or you make a choice about what kind of hotel you are and stick with it for the most part – especially if you want to market to family holidays or packages.
Don’t get me wrong – the great majority of hotels will occasionally dip their toes in the other pool. That in mind, those same hotels will mostly stick with one type of self-promotion and it will nine times out of ten lean on price or value.
You can be a quick, economic solution to a fly-by’s need of a bed for the night or you can be the delightful surprise in the evening of someone who just needed somewhere to lay their head. If you’d rather be the latter – and you should – then you need to lean into it with how you talk about and promote yourself.
You should want to be a value-pusher for no other reason than your own self-esteem but there are business reasons too. The types of customers who seek value are less resistant when it comes to paying above the norm. As a matter of fact, many look for hotels priced above the norm on the assumption that the hotel will itself be better – one of my favourite subtleties of hotel revenue management as it happens.
It’s also a relatively safe assumption that a guest who follows price alone has no potential to be a loyal customer, and loyal customers are the ones you want if you seek to increase your direct bookings.
