Group bookings are an essential strategy for hotels to boost occupancy and revenue. The types of groups staying at your hotel will look very different depending on your location and amenities. Maybe you’re looking to increase corporate travel for nearby conferences, vacationers traveling together, or wedding blocks.
No matter which groups your hotel brings in (and it’s probably a combination!), there may be room for improvement. In this article we’ll discuss some strategies to increase the number of group bookings coming into your hotel. And once those groups are interested in your property, we’ll also cover how you can maximize revenue from those groups.
How to bring in more group travel
If your hotel is looking to increase group reservations there are two key areas to investigate. First, your connections with other brick-and-mortar local businesses. And second, the technology you use to manage hotel operations.
Community – Network with local organizations
Local organizations are a major driver for group businesses at any hotel. Even if you don’t have your own event space or a dedicated Sales team at your hotel, think outside the box to generate some new leads, such as:
- Wedding and private event venues
- Near-by hotels you can leverage for overflow
- Convention and visitor bureaus (CVBs)
- Smaller arenas for school tournaments
Technology – Better distribution tools
The global distribution system (GDS) still handles a huge percentage of group travel. That includes corporate travel from large Fortune 500 companies, as well as managed trips by travel agents on behalf of smaller non-corporate groups.
Increase corporate travel with hotel CRS software that sends availability and rates in real-time to the GDS. Your reservation software is essential to improving group bookings. Once you have your room types and rate codes set up, follow GDS best practices to increase your visibility.
In addition to third-party distribution, technology can make booking easy either for guests or for a business on behalf of guests—and increase the likelihood that local business will work with you again!
Hotel operations for group reservations
It’s all well and good to bring in more group business, but are you set up to maximize revenue and efficiently manage group reservations?
Most property management systems have basic group functionality. The basic functionality you need to manage groups is the ability to:
- Create a group rate in your PMS that is publishable to your booking engine,
- Assign charges accurately at check out
- Send invoices where they need to go
- Manage group inventory
But there’s more to it than that. Let’s discuss some of the key PMS features you need to optimize revenue from your group bookings.
Group guest management
To optimize revenue for groups, you’ll need to be able to work with multiple group types and booking styles. As discussed above, one option is to create a dedicated rate code for your IBE or CRS. This allows members of a specific group block to book on their own.
However, in many scenarios, organizers want to book on behalf of a group. With Chorum PMS, you can use a Rooming List to easily assign and manage rooms for a group. Upload a list from a .csv file into Chorum PMS to bulk manage rooms, occupancy, and share splits within the group. You can search within, modify, and update the rooming list as needed.
Being able to import a rooming list is an essential feature if you get a lot of group business at your hotel. It saves your staff valuable time and resources managing groups. Once uploaded, it should be easy to update the list as well as to send it to relevant users and to use it to search past and future reservations.
If groups create tedious manual work for your staff, they will make unnecessary labor costs that impact your bottom line.
Checking in your group reservations
Another way to optimize overall group revenue by providing a seamless check-in and arrival experience. First, consider the entire guest journey: are you sending impactful hotel welcome emails? Are you providing multiple check-in options, such as via web-based portal or your own app? Your technology should be enriching this essential stage of the guest experience. And when the day comes, your staff needs to be able to see at a glance what groups are arriving each day so you can be prepared. Once those guests arrive, make it easy to promote up-sells that can be easily routed to either the group or individual folio, depending on group needs. An individual getting a group rate can still benefit from an upgraded room!
Managing block availability
Another key functionality for group management is the ability to optimize the stay dates themselves. There are many different types of group rates and you need to be prepared for them all in order to maximize revenue. Your PMS should make it easy to set a group rate with:
- A fixed date and then release rooms without additional manual work
- No set dates at all
- Flexible shoulder days
If it’s an event with specific stay dates, such as a corporate event or a family reunion, your PMS should auto-release blocks on a certain day leading up to the event back to the general public rather than requiring you to manually release those rooms. On the flip side of the coin, for ongoing clients, your PMS needs to allow you to set a group rate with no dates at all.
In addition to dateless group rates and auto-releasing options, you also want flexible shoulder dates. This gives guests the option to book outside the event window at a specified rate – rather than receiving the discounted group rate for their additional days. Giving a discount off public dates also encourages guests to stay a little longer at your hotel!
Learn more about Chorum PMS’ Groups functionality
Improve your hotel’s ability to manage groups and increase revenue from each group with a better PMS. Jonas Chorum helps better manage groups with a whole suite of features. To see more, watch a video overview here:
Chorum PMS helps hotels flexibly manage groups. To learn more, get in touch with our team for an overview of our system.
