It’s been a cruel, cruel summer. It’s been too hot, business was a bit down at most of our hotels, I sold my house and moved, and I didn’t get a beach vacation. The last one listed is indeed the most cruel – LOL.
Even though I am a beach girl at heart, Fall is my favorite season. I like the warm Indian Summer days and the cool, sleep-with-the-windows-open nights. As we approach the season AFTER Labor Day and BEFORE Winter, we need to remind ourselves of all the great opportunities we will have over the last 4 months of 2016. As I noted in a previous Labor Day post, we need to treat Labor Day as a pseudo-New Year’s Day opportunity. From this point forward, we need to forget about Summer and focus on the holidays, back-to-school, businesses, and getting out of the Summer mindset.
What are your hotel plans?
Do you have promotions that you want to try? Do you have customer events you want to host? Are there packages that you want to develop and sell? What about the holidays? Have you thought about your meeting room and bookings for holiday parties and what you will offer? We need to pack away our Summer wardrobes, get out our Fall business attire and look and what we are going to do for the balance of 2016.
One of our hotels had a great idea for a promotion… for both during the Summer and beyond. It’s called “Explore More Than The Shore.” The title is catchy and it draws attention to destinations that don’t have beaches but do have activities suitable for vacations. Does your destination qualify? What’s fun in your area? Pick a few destinations, activities, or attractions and build a promotion or package. Everything is game.
While we haven’t yet done our 2017 Sales & Marketing Plans, it should be our goal over the next few weeks to start aligning our sales and marketing strategies. Get a head start and start brainstorming with your teams on what we should be selling and to whom we should be targeting.
Happy cooling off!
Linda