Marketing Tips for Mid-Week and Business Travel Bookings
You’ve already heard how to set up the inn to be Business-Traveler friendly…you bought desks with good lighting, put in a power strip next to the desk for all the plug-ins business travelers have, your wireless access is working fine, and you are prepared to get up earlier to serve breakfast to those corporate early birds.
So why aren’t they showing up? You must go get them!
If you are not located in a marketing region that has a source of those business travelers (industrial park nearby, some corporate headquarters around the corner, a college in town, or on a major interstate), don’t waste your money or effort. According to the “PAII Study of B & B Marketing Practices” (2006), 48% of inns do not target corporate travelers for this reason. It is difficult to book enough corporate retreats and sales meetings to make the investment worthwhile. Instead, think about marketing to group interests such as quilters, local clubs, history buffs, bird watchers, or family vacationers.
If you are fortunate enough to be located in an area with corporate visitors, usually an urban market, a combination of passive and proactive measures are needed. The passive ones are easy:
- Update your website with a Corporate Page with the amenities sought by the traveler, corporate and government per diem pricing, and a call-to-action link to your reservation-making engine.
- Network at and sponsor the local Chamber of Commerce mixers at your inn.
- Make a list of the businesses in your area, call their travel departments, and discover how their visitors book their rooms when they are scheduled to come to town. Do they use the travel department or make their own travel plans?
- Make sure your internet directory listings note that you are business-friendly.
Be proactive…call and ask for a quick visit to the decision-makers at each company:
- Ask for your website link on the corporate travel department’s site
- Take a basket of muffins, your signature granola, or cookies for the office break room
- Take a handful of brochures and one-sheets with the “Top 10 Reasons Why Your Business Traveler Will LOVE Our Inn”
- Strike up a personal relationship with the boss’s secretary (she makes the reservations) and the folks in the travel department. Get to know them by name.
- Call your contacts and follow-up frequently (once a month?) with specials for their business travelers
- Copy your contacts with your inn’s newsletter
- Treat any corporate bookings like royalty…word of mouth is a great referral tool.
- Women travelers like the security of an inn…let your contacts know what you do to make them feel safe.
- Visit the relocation office at the company.
- Invite the contacts to the inn for a tour and lunch…continue to build the relationship
- Deliver on personal attention when they stay with you. They are loyal repeat guests. They LOVE being called by name (don’t we all?!) and remember their menu preferences.
Business guests are low maintenance, usually travel alone, return frequently, out early and gone all day…how great is that! They will become the bread and butter of your mid-week business.
Please send me YOUR ideas on how you proactively seek the corporate traveler. I will list your thoughts in an upcoming edition of Inn-Sights.