Hotel Marketing Plan

Marketing Plan in a hotel industry is an important book that Sales & Marketing team develop on yearly basis.  Or for a new opening hotel, this book will be part of the pre-opening set up which can identify the short term and long-term strategies.

I can say that Marketing Plan is a guidance book for the Sales & Marketing team to kick off the start month or year, to monitor the progress, to review and check what to implement and what to change as well as to track the achievement.

But sometimes what happen is, the Marketing Plan has been properly created with effort and lots of thinking, then the book just sits in one of the shelves, rarely been opened and simply being forgotten.

The understanding to use the Marketing Plan as a working document is very important because it will support the Sales & Marketing tasks in terms of strategies to implement be it new, existing strategies or some adjustment strategies to make.

In this writing, I will elaborate several points to support the development of good Marketing Plan.

1. Clear understanding on the targeted figures

This will refer to the yearly targeted hotel revenue.  As for Sales and Marketing team, the focus will be to chase business to achieve the targeted room revenue and catering revenue.  Or in some cases, Sales and Marketing team will also assist to generate revenue for other department, such as, Food and Beverage, membership, etc. It is important to understand the monthly revenue target to be able to support what the right action to implement.

Of course, the detail figures of room revenue must be broken down into occupancy, average rate and revenue per available room or known as RevPar.  While for catering revenue, the details will consist of number of covers, type of meeting or event and price.

2. Well knowledgeable on the hotel product

How to promote and sell the hotel product if we are not yet familiar with the facilities and services.  Focus not only on how to sell but also how to maximize the selling.  This will also includes getting to know the surroundings, such as, your hotel competitors, is there any new hotel development, under renovation or closed for operation, the accessibility, historical data, etc.

Develop Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunity, Threat analysis or also known as SWOT to summarize and review the fact findings.  Creating Supply and Demand analysis will also help to picturize how to position the hotel.

3. Identify the market situation

Do some research on the market situation.

This will include the economic and political situation, infrastructure development, tourism growth and potential, ongoing and upcoming business project, type of market to grow and capture as well as consumer behavior, any new regulations particularly those that will affect into the market.

It is always good to get the information in details so as to help identifying the right target and strategies.

4. Specify the budgeted capital to spend

Have a good understanding on the expenses budget to spend will be ideal in order to be able to support the strategies and action. The numbers will usually be calculated with the historical activities as references and what current and new things to add.

Although, the numbers might change and are being reviewed once it comes into the actual year due to the dynamic of market situation, but at least, we will have the approximate figures to start the activities.

5. Determine the strategies and action

Define your strategies and action with measurable target to achieve on each strategy.  I always mention to create SMART strategies and action which means Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time bound.

Do not forget to ensure that each planned action will be well executed.  There is no point creating good strategies and action but only to be nicely written and not being well accomplished.  Be sure to review the details on monthly basis and make any necessary adjustment to adapt with the situation at that particular periods.

To develop a thorough Marketing Plan, it is good to have adequate analysis, in-depth discussion and details required information as well as sufficient time, in another word, do not rush.  Hope each point I have mentioned earlier will be useful for Sales and Marketing practitioners mainly in the hotel industry.

All the best.