Group bookings can represent a significant revenue opportunity for hotels. Hotels aren’t taking advantage of this opportunity as well as they could be. The reason is that the processes typically employed for managing group reservations make it challenging for an attendee to book an extended stay.
The rise of bleisure
Attendees want to participate in the phenomenon of bleisure, the growing practice of combining business and leisure travel when they’re coming to your hotel for a meeting or event.
Prior to the pandemic, bleisure had been on the rise year over year. According to Skift.com, 43% of all business trips were extended to bleisure trips, many of which lasted four or more days.
Booking these additional shoulder nights can be cumbersome for the traveler. The vast majority of event attendees simply choose to visit their favorite online travel agency (OTA) and book additional nights in a transient fashion. When this happens — what’s called a book-around — numerous issues result.
Issues with book arounds include:
- The hotel has to pay a commission on that transient booking to the OTA.
- Hotel staff must endure time-consuming manual processes to connect the two separate bookings.
- The event planner may not be recognized for the booking, which could impact their numbers.
- The transient booking can negatively impact group forecasting.
- The guest is inconvenienced right from the get-go and may even book at a different hotel altogether.
Increase revenue by capitalizing on bleisure travelers
Groups360 has found that, given the opportunity, 28% of attendees will book shoulder nights, adding an additional day or two to their trip. If a typical hotel has 240 rooms and they’re doing 20% group business from meetings and events, these bleisure bookings could add an additional 1,400 room nights per annum.
GroupSync Housing is a room block management solution that makes it easy for attendees to book shoulder nights during the online booking process.
This seamless approach means that hotels can easily add 6% to 25% to their bottom line without any additional effort on their part.
What’s more, hotels are also able to offer room-type upsells and additional services around the event. There aren’t many opportunities where hotels are able to boost revenues without any incremental effort.
Want to find out how to implement this platform for your hotel? Take a tour of GroupSync today.
