Best Practices Request: How do you prep for a great booking season?
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With summer coming to an end, we’re getting ready for the next season and are curious about various best practices. Our question to our customers is;
What’s one thing do you do in your off-season to prep for a successful booking season?
This post is part of a series aimed to collect “Tips and Tricks” from our customers, and for our customers, to share within our community, blog and/or newsletter. Replies in this thread may be used elsewhere! We’ll reach out to confirm your details if that’s the case.
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Lots of things, but one biggy is to stay in touch with your guests. Don’t just call them next year to book (which you should do BTW) but also stay in touch with things happening in your business or area - a newsletter or blog post. If they don’t subscribe, you might send them a personal email or text at some point and ask them if they would be “interested in reading this latest info”? Perhaps a blog post about OTAs and how to save money? Perhaps about renovations you’ve done to your area or special events in the plans for next year? The key is to stay in touch and not just once a year.
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From an internal perspective, I analyze my booking data too so that I know how to monitor my pricing for next year, and look to see where I need to improve. Some prices may need to go up or down. Even with dynamic pricing, you need to look at this to know where you want minimums to be or even your base pricing.
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And I also go over all of my properties and look at the photos and websites to see what needs to be updated. If you can get fresh content for people to see before your prime booking period begins, that helps.
