Recovery Strategy: Preparing Your Hotel For Life After COVID-19

Whether you are the manager of an independent hotel, the director of sales and marketing of a luxury resort or the owner of a smaller boutique property, there are several extremely effective ways to prepare for business recovery coming out of the Corona virus crisis.

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Hotels can take various steps while we are still in the critical phase to help themselves survive and prepare for future success. For instance:

Cost control
Adopting new technology and innovation
Focusing on staff training
Updating digital channels

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If you are thinking of cutting down your hotel marketing budget during lockdown, a short pause on, for example, Brand PPC advertising is understandable.

However history shows that companies which actively market during recessions or difficult trading conditions experience higher sales and net income than others.

Now is the best time to take appropriate measures which will be beneficial to win business for you after COVID-19.

1. Record videos for social media

Videos have a key role for the marketing and there is a time-window now to prepare them. Record videos and take photos of your hotel. They are terrific tools for SEO and can form other types of your content as well. How can you use them?

Place the video or pictures in a blog post
Use them in your social channels
Take quotes from the video and use them as caption of your images on Instagram in the coming months
Reuse the quotes in other media channels and upcoming blog posts

2. Interview your staff or guests

Your staff may have a little extra time in their working day. It’s a great idea to interview some of them or even your loyal guests about their experiences and knowledge of your services and culture. You can record Zoom calls and use them as a rich source of information for your blog posts, social content and more.

3. Make an FAQ video about your hotel

Planning a webinar or a frequently asked questions video would be an effective way to answer questions about your hotel, amenities, new products, or services. Then distribute it through different channels like YouTube, Instagram, Facebook or add them to your blog.

4. Streamline your online reviews strategy

This is a good time for your hotel to have a plan for a thoughtful responding to online reviews. Create a review policy and you can train an employee to manage them. You need some template responses policy and position your brand with them.

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5. Update your hotel's Google My Business

If you have information on changed opening hours, takeaway options for your restaurant or new precautions for avoiding the spread of Covid-19, update the information through "Google My Business". You can also add news of events or special offers with links to your website in this channel.

6. Update your website

It's a perfect time to update your website!

Digital marketing is faster and more effective in comparison with traditional marketing. An email or social media campaign will connect your marketing message to target guests for a fraction of the cost of an outbound marketing campaign.

It drives traffic directly to your site which should be optimised to engage your visitors with great content and user experience, and then channel them to a conversion by making a direct booking. Of particular importance is your mobile site as over 60% of hotel bookings are made on a mobile device.

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Conclusion

If there is one thing which is clear, it’s that we don’t know when this situation will be over. However, experience from previous crises clearly shows that measures taken during the tough times help business recover more quickly and perform better once the crisis has passed.

Times will change and guests will soon be at your doorstep again. Take the time now to nurture your business and prepare it to drive your hotel revenue post COVID-19.