While it is widely accepted that hotels will need to make changes to regain guest trust, such as implementing new cleanliness standards, leveraging marketing strategies, and adding contactless solutions, the fact of the matter is that all of these enhancements will be costly. With a recent study suggesting that new cleaning protocols alone could cost $130,000 per year for a 250-room hotel running at 60% occupancy, it is essential for properties to save money where they can. Rather than passing the costs on to the guests, which would likely have serious ramifications of its own, there are other avenues hotels can utilize to offset the costs of these necessary changes. With that being said, let’s take a look at some of the ways hotels can increase their revenue and offset these additional costs.
Upsell & Upgrade Opportunities
With the likelihood of reduced occupancy rates, at least for the foreseeable future, the need to maximize the value of each guest increases greatly. Having said that, the ability to offer guests the ability to purchase special requests, room upgrades, and add-on services becomes even more important. A property management software that can allow front desk staff to easily perform these capabilities can make a big difference and really help drive revenue. For example, with the upgrade capabilities within Chorum PMS, the system automatically offers additional upgrades, requests, and services as part of the quick check-in process, making it simple for front desk staff to enhance the guest’s stay, while providing hotels with added revenue. In addition, with the ability to leverage the mobile and contactless capabilities within Chorum PMS, guests can purchase additional add-ons and services right from the comfort of their room on their mobile device, helping to promote social distancing at the same time. With reduced occupancy rates, the ability to seamlessly increase supplementary revenue will really go a long way to boosting the overall profitability of a hotel.
Minimizing Housekeeping Services
By reducing the amount of times housekeeping staff enter and clean rooms for stayover guests, hotels can significantly reduce their overall cleaning costs. According to the study done by Optii, by decreasing cleaning services to every fourth night, properties can reduce their spend by 75% or roughly $111,000 per year. To help manage this, investing in a property management system with mobile housekeeping functionalities such as Chorum PMS can help manage this process. With fully-integrated features such as room assignments, checklists, and the ability to mark rooms as unavailable for a specific period of time after a guest has checked out, hoteliers can seamlessly and efficiently manage new cleanliness protocols. By lessening room cleaning, there will be significant savings in terms of water usage and supplies, while reducing the risk for housekeeping staff as well.
Reducing In-Room Items
With a greater emphasis on cleanliness from the guest standpoint, many hotels are opting to limit the number of ancillary items in the room such as coffee machines, hair dryers, irons, and even toiletries in some cases. While some guests may request for these items, there is a good chance most guests could get by without them. This ideally will result in lower costs for a hotelier, as there will be no need to either maintain or purchase new equipment and toiletries will be re-stocked less frequently as well. In addition, by limiting toiletries, hotels can reduce their environmental impact which can have a positive impact on the environmental conscious guest. Alternatively, hotels could donate their extra toiletries as a goodwill gesture, which would also greatly benefit and improve a hotel’s brand reputation.
Interested in learning more about how Jonas Chorum can help your property maximize revenue? Request a demo today and view a live demo of our leading cloud-based property management software – Chorum PMS.
