Are you keeping up with the competition?
To maximise your hotel’s success, you need to know who and what you’re up against.
The hospitality industry is fast-paced so your hotel revenue management strategy must be informed, dynamic and responsive and keeping tabs on your competitors is an essential element of this. Through careful analysis and monitoring, you can identify ways to stay ahead of the competition, maximise your revenue streams and stay profitable. Building a comprehensive competitive set to understand your competitors better and maximise your property’s performance is a good place to start.
Known as a ‘comp set’, this comprises a group of hotels that you see as direct competitors to your own property. The idea is to identify and compare your performance against the comp set, so you can find ways to improve your own performance. By using this information and taking a proactive approach to looking and listening for key insights into your competition you’ll be channelling your strategy in the right direction.
Here are six practical ways to keep an eye on your competition.
Order STR reports. Measure your performance against a defined comp set and the wider market. The benchmarking data, analytics and marketplace insights provided by STR will help you to understand market trends and allow you to make informed decisions around your pricing strategy.
Network. Attending meetings, networking events, and conferences is a great way to get the scoop on what’s challenging your competition and what’s working for them; you’ll also identify new opportunities and build relationships on the way. We run IN4Hospitality, a networking group to provide supportive and exclusive business networking opportunities for hospitality professionals. Learn more about this here.
Subscribe to your competition’s newsletters. An easy way to receive updates and news direct from your competitors. You’ll discover how they’re using email marketing to stay in touch with their guests, how they’re driving direct bookings, running promotions and using calls to action. Just bear in mind that it’s likely they’ll monitor your newsletter too.
Scour their website and blogs. Likewise, checking your competitors’ websites and blogs will help you keep abreast with their offers so you can compare it to your own hotel. Don’t copy them, just use this information to help you identify ways which will make you stand out and inspire your hotel’s marketing efforts.
Set up Google Alerts. This is a great way to keep tabs on the competition. Simply pop in your keywords and Google will send you alerts whenever your competitors get media coverage or post new content.
Follow them. Watching your competitors’ social media channels is a super way to keep track of their activities and how they respond to customer queries, complaints and reviews.
These are just a few ways to help you build a picture on your competitors so you can gather the right intelligence to inform your marketing and revenue management strategies.
If you need help with competitor analysis, get in touch.
