The hotel industry isn’t just about leisure business. Corporate and group bookings form an important segment of your revenue, especially if your hotel is equipped with meeting space.
These direct hotel bookings generate revenue, streamline operations and give you a steady occupancy rate.
Corporate Hotel Booking and Group Hotel Booking: What’s the Difference?
Corporate and group hotel bookings are similar — but not the same. All corporate bookings are a type of group booking, but not all group bookings are corporate bookings. Let’s look at this in more detail:
Corporate Hotel Bookings
Businesses and companies use corporate hotel bookings when multiple individuals are traveling in a group for various work purposes. They could be attending a conference, sealing a significant deal or conducting an important client meeting. These group reservations are typically arranged by organizations for their employees, clients or associates.
Group Hotel Bookings
Group hotel bookings, on the other hand, involve making hotel reservations for several individuals traveling together for a common purpose. While these could be corporate bookings, they could also come from the SMERF market (no, not the blue cartoon characters). SMERF stands for Social, Military, Educational, Religious, and Fraternal groups. Your guests might book these group hotel reservations for family reunions, school sports team gatherings, and even wedding parties. Booking by group size ensures that everyone can stay together and enjoy the convenience of spacious accommodations, whether it's large rooms or a specific number of rooms to accommodate the entire group comfortably.
The top channels for corporate and large-group hotel bookings vary greatly depending on the specific needs of the guests. Some of the most popular ones are:
- Hotel websites and direct bookings
- Corporate travel agencies
- Group booking platforms
- Online travel agencies
- Travel management companies
- Meeting and event planners
- Mobile apps
Your Audience for Corporate and Group Hotel Bookings
Your best audience for corporate and group bookings is event planners of all types. Corporate event planners book meetings and events for businesses and corporations. Wedding planners — you guessed it — organize weddings. Social event planners organize celebrations like birthdays or engagements.
Nonprofit event planners organize fundraisers, galas, charity auctions, and awareness campaigns. And third-party planners organize a wide range of meetings and events for a whole host of clients.
Each type of planner will have different challenges and needs. So it’s important to adapt your strategy accordingly.
Importance of Corporate and Group Bookings for Hotels
Corporate and group bookings are an important business segment for your hotel and bring in a lot of revenue. Here are a few benefits these bookings can have on your business:
- Revenue generation: Corporate and group bookings are often business trips and tend to involve a larger number of rooms and longer stays, translating to higher revenue. Ensure your hotel offers pre-negotiated agreements with extended stays that benefit both parties.
- Consistent occupancy: Corporate and group travelers often stay for longer durations compared to individual leisure travelers. This longer length of stay helps you maintain higher occupancy rates, even during off-peak seasons. Offering attractive guest room rates encourages their extended stay.
- Filling room blocks: You might have a certain number of rooms that need to be filled to maintain profitability. Corporate and group bookings help fill these room blocks, reducing the risk of revenue loss due to empty rooms.
- Negotiated contracts: Corporations and groups often negotiate rates based on the volume of business they bring to your hotel — this is not a bad thing. In exchange for a reduced price per room, your hotel earns consistent business flow. Effective pre-negotiation ensures mutually beneficial terms for all parties involved.
- Diversification of client base: Relying solely on individual travelers can make a hotel vulnerable to fluctuations in leisure travel demand. Corporate and group bookings diversify the customer base, reducing the impact of market fluctuations.
Upsells and Add-ons to Offer at Booking
Corporate and group bookings for hotels are naturally larger than your average bookings, presenting a sizable opportunity for your hotel to drive upsell and add-on revenue. Some of the most popular upsell examples include:
- Room upgrade packages
- Early check-in
- Late checkout
- Parking (if on-site parking is available)
- Discount vouchers for local businesses
- Technology and equipment packages for your event space
- Daily housekeeping services
- Food & beverage services (even without a restaurant)
- Reduced pet fees
- Premium Wi-Fi
- Luggage storage
- Transportation to venues (convention centers, training facilities, etc.)
Train your staff using hotel upselling scripts, but understand that upselling can feel unnatural and awkward. If your team prefers a more digital-first approach, consider leveraging an user-friendly software platform like Canary.
With Canary Upsells, hoteliers can intelligently offer upsells to guests throughout their journey. Upsells can be purchased from the time of booking through checkout, resulting in thousands of dollars in new revenue per week.
"It’s basically free money. Last month, we had £10,000 in upsell requests.” - Andrei Ticau Rooms Division Manager, The Copthorne Tara Hotel London
9 Steps to Increasing Your Hotel and Group Bookings
Understand Your Target Market
The first step to increasing your hotel and group bookings is to understand your target market (or markets). But what does this mean?
Remember, your audience is event planners, but who you specifically target will depend on your hotel and the event in question.
For example, an airport hotel might naturally market corporate bookings due to ease of travel, while an elegant or funky boutique hotel might focus on higher-end events, weddings or birthday parties.
Once you know your audiences, analyze their preferences, challenges and needs to determine your marketing strategy.
Most event planners are busy. They need you to take as much off their plate as possible. A great way to do this is to invest in technology that will make their lives easier, such as event diagramming, room blocking and guest messaging that allows you to attend to guest requests easily (something the planner will be happy to pass along to the business as a perk of staying at your place).
Next, identify potential booking seasons and patterns to determine the busiest months for your customer segment. In general, spring and fall are the busiest for corporate and group bookings because the weather is more pleasant than in winter months and less busy than in peak summer seasons. (Note: This would not be the case for hotels with season-specific amenities near the beach or a ski mountain.)
Build a Competitive Offer
Building a competitive offer gives you a good chance of winning corporate and group reservations. This means tailoring room packages and rates to suit event planners and their attendees. There are a few ways you could do this:
- Customizable options: Allow clients to customize aspects such as meeting room setups, catering options, audiovisual equipment and additional services to match their specific needs.
- Add-ons and upgrades: Offer additional services or upgrades that clients can choose to enhance their experience. This could include spa treatments, team-building activities, private dinners, airport transfers or city tours.
- Competitive rates: Research competitor pricing strategies and set your corporate rates and group rates accordingly. Consider partnering with credit card companies to offer exclusive discounts or rewards for bookings made with specific credit cards.
- Incorporate useful tech: Include technology event planners might appreciate in your packages like room diagramming or messaging technology.
Develop Strategic Partnerships
Partnering with local businesses unlocks mutually beneficial cross-promotional opportunities that will support the community, increase revenue and enhance the guest experience.
Convention and Visitors Bureaus (CVBs)
Convention and visitor bureaus (CVBs) are an important resource for small and major hotel chains looking to increase their group hotel reservations.
CVBs are dedicated to tourism, conventions and other beneficial activities within their local area, and therefore, typically have access to your ideal group prospects.
Foster a good relationship with your local CVB, so you stay top of mind when they receive a group inquiry.
Printing Services
Partnering with local printing services not only benefits you but also your event planner clients. Negotiating terms that work for you and the printing service enables you to print updated menus, brochures or stationary.
But more importantly, it allows you to better serve event planners using your space. It’s highly likely your event planner clients will need some last-minute printing done. Using your relationship with local vendors, you can have their materials delivered on-site and alleviate some stress—which they’ll be thankful for and remember.
Local Produce Suppliers
Incorporating sustainable, locally-sourced produce into hotel dining offerings isn't just about food — it's about creating a well-rounded guest experience that celebrates the destination, supports local businesses, and aligns with sustainable practices.
Enhance Your Digital Presence
You likely utilize online travel agencies (OTAs) for your leisure bookings, but how do you tell the world about your group and corporate bookings? Here are a few ways to advertise online:
- Optimize your hotel website for corporate and group bookings with a section dedicated to this offering. Include descriptions of your meeting spaces as well as floor plans and virtual tours to help you bring in better-qualified leads and filter out the duds.
- Leverage social media and OTAs dedicated to group bookings.
- Prioritize video content. Post TikToks and YouTube videos dedicated to your meeting spaces, including informational content, designed to help event planners visualize your offerings.
Build a Strong Sales Team
The strength of your sales team will determine the health of your group and corporate business. Hire the right people and you could find yourself with a thriving group segment.
Start with experienced sales professionals who you know can sell. They’ll need to understand your business and what you offer inside and out. It’s all about mastering a mix of technique and charisma.
Developing comprehensive training and onboarding is also vital. This will help you establish clear targets and ensure your representatives perform at their best.
Provide Exceptional Customer Service
Customer service is the lifeblood of hospitality, whether you’re marketing to leisure, group or corporate travel segments. Here’s how you can deliver exceptional levels of customer service to your event planners:
- Offer personalized experiences to corporate and group clients: Personalized guest experiences are a great way to make your clients feel valued. Try to personalize every experience through things such as customized room diagramming.
- Anticipate and exceed guest expectations: Understanding your audience and your clients will help you anticipate their needs and exceed expectations.
- Provide prompt and efficient communication channels: Inspired customer service is professional and responsive. Messaging technology can help open an avenue for easy, direct communication between you and your client.
Canary Messaging saves time through automated, broadcast and direct messages. Schedule a demo today!
Leverage Reviews and Testimonials
Don’t underestimate the power of positive reviews and testimonials. For many, reviews are an important indicator of quality in hotels and can influence a guest to book with you over a competitor. The same can be said for your event planners.
Encouraging satisfied corporate and group clients to leave positive online Google reviews during checkout is a good first step, but why not go further?
Collect video or written testimonials during your events, or better yet, capture the essence of your clients’ events by editing footage together. When event planners see happy attendees in a warm, inviting event space, they’ll be more likely to book with you.
Then, utilize these videos on your hotel website and social media platforms.
Participate in Industry Trade Shows and Events
Industry trade shows and events allow you to network with decision-makers and discover the latest trends in hospitality. They also allow you to showcase your property and event space to as many people as possible — this means more bookings.
Think about what you want prospects to know and see. Is it the versatility of your ballroom? Or the technology you use to help make event planners’ lives easier? Make sure you and your sales teams get these unique selling points across.
Here are some industry events to consider:
- IMEX America
- IBTM World
- HITEC
- The Business Travel Show
- Cvent CONNECT
- PCMA Convening Leaders
Track and Analyze Data
Finally, tracking and analyzing data is an essential ongoing task if you want to maximize your corporate and group bookings. Choose technology that integrates with your wider tech stack. The data you collect and share among teams helps you understand what’s going well and what could be better.
Use analytics tools and reports to monitor booking patterns and trends internally and externally. Companies like STR give you access to market data, while your sales activity, pace and win/loss reports paint a picture of your business-specific trends.
Once you have your data, it’ll be a lot easier to make data-driven adjustments and improvements.
Best Practices for Managing Group Reservations
It’s important to build a process for managing group reservations before advertising the offering, so your team can accommodate these guests properly. Here are a few ways to address the operational requirements:
- Create a hotel block contract: Customize your group booking contract to include the cancellation policies, number of rooms, room rates and any added services requested. Consider adding the information for a single point of contact the business can contact with questions and revisions, such as last-minute add-ons or date changes.
- Hire a dedicated group coordinator: If your budget allows, employ someone whose focus is on providing an exceptional experience for groups from start to finish. Let these staff members spend time building relationships with businesses and planners and communicate with them as a concierge.
- Require advanced group reservations: Require that large groups book as far in advance as possible to ensure you don’t block a significant portion of your venue only to deal with no-shows. You can also offer a discounted rate to those who book three months in advance to encourage reservations.
- Streamline payment processes: When handling large group bookings, it’s important to have a way to process payments and credit card information securely using compliant booking software that protects sensitive information.
Leveraging Technology to Boost Group Hotel Bookings
Old school spreadsheets, pens and paper won’t cut it when dealing with large groups. You need streamlined software and tools that will help you keep track of guest’s needs from booking to check-in to checkout.
At the top of your list should be a robust hotel guest experience platform, which will help boost staff efficiency and maximize guest satisfaction. Find a system that streamlines the booking process, offers curated on-site experiences via upsells and allows you to communicate with guests in record time.
It’s easy for the front-desk staff to get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of check-in requests that come with large group hotel reservations. A digital check-in solution allows visitors to check in using their phones or lobby tablets, reducing your staff’s workload.
What’s more, when you use a smart guest experience platform like Canary, you can gather accurate contract information upon arrival you can use to re-engage guests later. If a group booking comes from an OTA, you can encourage a direct booking next time by offering a special rate if they book using your website.
Marketing Tips for Corporate and Group Bookings
When marketing your hotel to group bookers, lean heavily on the business-related amenities you offer, including business centers, conference rooms, free Wi-Fi, catering services, group transportation and proximity to airport transfers.
Here are a few ways to get the word out:
- Invest in email marketing: If your hotel already hosts business travelers, you can engage them via email and promote your group reservations. In your emails, consider adding incentives, such as group discounts or complimentary amenities, such as free Wi-Fi or breakfast.
- Build relationships with event planners: As mentioned, strong relationships with event planners will help boost group bookings because they’ll be more likely to consider your hotel for their wedding events, corporate trainings and more.
- Invite corporate accounts to join your loyalty program: Turn existing group booking customers into loyal regulars by inviting them to join your loyalty program. Give members access to specific perks, such as priority bookings or access to your group concierge team member and their community contacts.
Conclusion
Increasing your hotel’s corporate and group bookings can have a big impact on your overall revenue. But knowing how to strengthen this side of your business is key.
From understanding your target market to tracking and analyzing your data, there are several ways you can attract more corporate and group business.
Next up, discover how yield management could work for your hotel.
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