Exclusive Feature: Most often hotels have a pre-set combination of target groups and successfully market to them and when working on hotel's marketing plan, it is usually believed that selected groups of target population have their perceptional, preferences towards certain facilities of the hotel. But the situation is great and amazingly stable in normal economic conditions.
However, in many countries of the world the situation may be rapidly changing forcing the external markets like tourist arrivals to react in specific ways.
Let us think about the consequences of these measures and how to turn effective target market shift into your marketing dollars.
First, it is all about target markets. In order to be successful during the shift period, the hotel needs to calculate target market groups in terms of their demand and yield.
Each tourist, let's say, of a resort hotel in Maldives, consumes 68 dollars of hotel expenses per day and activates over 16 various types of leisure facilities while giving over 170 dollar revenue.
At the same time, 16 types of leisure facilities cost the hotel more than 500 dollars of monthly operation budget for maintenance and labor costs (if calculated per person, taken the overall maintenance and labor costs and dividing them by average number of guests).
In this case, generating 100 dollars per day ‘profit' lets the hotel ‘breakeven' in just four days. Effective target market? Good positioning? Taking out occupancy rates, revenuewise this model is effective.
However, what if tomorrow the climate changes? Maldives would not be a great vacation spot anymore. In this case, the hotel management will need to apply the strategy of target market shift to effectively transform their former financial productivity taken into account factors, which may vary the results.
In order to do this, the following steps are recommended:
First of all, examine all changes effectively and thoroughly enough. Sometimes people underestimate new opportunities as in most cases people oppose changes. What if the climate change brought not only business segment, but also scientists? Adventure seekers? Extreme sports enthusiasts? All these segments need to be considered.
Secondly, study the segments deep enough to know what they need before they need it. All the above listed 16 leisure facilities were effective due to the fact that tourists really liked them and used them. This is the marked result of what needs to be done in the second step. Without knowing what the market may need, the revenue will be lost and expenses made in vain.
Thirdly, apply changes where the channels are present. Show your hotel to the new segment more than to the former segment. Be present in all places where your potential new markets can be found. And be creative in this case. Extreme sports enthusiasts may enjoy your logo on their new snowboard. Why not make a limited edition for them?
Calculate the results. Now that you've conducted target market shift and you have totally new people coming, prior to playing ‘cute lovely managers', first play ‘strict accountants' game. Calculate their yield and see what is working. Because if it is not working, it is a waste of time to collect your guests feedback.
Finally, collect feedback and see what needs to be improved. Sometimes we may not see everything. Guests will help you to engage more in the needs of your new ‘changed' guests. Listen to them, and finally you will have more fans than you ever imagined.
Mila Petruk, CEO & Founder at Milina Outsourcing
Mila Petruk is a hospitality consultant and a founder of Milina Outsourcing which provides project-based consulting and outsourcing services including mystery guest audit, temporary staffing and training support. Being a hospitality industry enthusiast, Mila has a global insight into the developing trends of hotel and restaurant business all over the world. Having graduated from University Centre Cesar Ritz (Switzerland) in 2007 with MBA in Hotel and Tourism Management, Mila has obtained a rich international hotel work experience in Europe and Asia. Contact Mila at mp@moconsulting.com.ua or www.moconsulting.com.uaMila writes a regular exclusive column for 4Hoteliers.com.
