We all know sports are a great hotel business driver. Be it the local teams, or planned tournaments, they’re both important and predictable opportunities from which to fill rooms. (see our recent piece on that here). But, all bets are off when it comes to nail biting season enders. Many times, it’s not known until the last moment who is going to be in the playoffs and subsequent league finals.
That uncertainty can potentially mislead owners to misinterpret true market demand for a specific period. Most sports fans that are passionate about their contending team won’t book a stay in the opposing team’s city until it’s clear their team is in the running for the championship during post season play. That means many potential guests sitting on the sidelines, waiting until their favorite teams advance to the next round. Then, they’re ready to book a trip to your city, which could happen very quickly.
Here are some tips to maximizing the opportunity in this business segment of sports fanatics.
Be Aware: Keep up with the win – loss records of your local teams. If it looks as if a locally based sports team is in the hunt for playoff contention, that could mean opposing teams visiting your town for an on the field showdown. Be sure to look beyond the major pro sports — sports such as soccer, minor league baseball, college teams, and others, are gaining more loyal fans every day who will travel to support their respective home teams.
Know Those Dates: Keep track of which days would be scheduled for a playoff or championship rounds in your community for any given sport. This reveals a sense of potential demand should a local team clinch that coveted playoff berth. When using a cloud-based Property Management System (PMS) such as the SkyTouch Hotel OS®, for example, you can adequately prepare by blocking off rooms via shared selling limits among designated wholesale rate plans. This immediately ensures you aren’t selling lower priced business than the market commands.
Set alerts: With the SkyTouch Hotel OS®, for example, users can set thresholds for a sudden demand increase. This relieves the hotel operator from constantly keeping up with every sports team in the running for a championship. The system alerts you when demand quickly shifts. Then you are empowered to make more informed rate decisions, quickly and remotely, from any place with an internet connection.
Create Stay Rules: Say, you expect those out of town fans to book rooms once their team wins. The SkyTouch Hotel OS® property management system, for example, empowers you to create a stay restriction such as a two-night stay. This allows you to capture more sold room nights, quicker. Also, consider adjusting BAR rate for nights prior to, and after, the game. Rooms will be in higher demand, and fervent fans are more likely to pay a premium for a room to see the event in person.
As demand surges, the cloud-based SkyTouch Hotel OS has the capability to automatically raise rates. And every time a new rate threshold is reached, the price of a hotel room is increased by a preprogrammed amount. Those rates are then distributed throughout all the hotel’s distribution channels, such as OTAs.
With these tips, you could be in the running for post season profits.
