Discounts

[JBloggs]

The good news is that I gave less in discounts this year than ever before, the book online and military and a few business guests (like the ATF training here w/ a gvmt rate) etc.
I am in the midst of a big clean and sort and going over these type things as I go and am able to think out there vs always in a hurry with guests in and out and coming in soon.
So for me, here, the specials did not bring them in, the packages did not bring them in, just general marketing did it this year. Gotta roll with the punches, stay ahead of the curve and see what is around the corner!
I am trying to glean out the excess and focus on what brings the most value.

 

[Flower]

We have found our SEO work
Greatly improved our Go ogl e organic searches , which brought more people to our web site.
A couple of our local directories listing did well also.
Though people looked at our pkg. it was not a seller. They more interested in rooms and breakfast.

 

[Madeleine]

Packages here were a big deal this year. I found that getting them listed in the right places (state tourism website, newspaper article) was what made them attractive to guests.
We've really cut back on discounting. I would rather give the guest a locally-produced 'gift' than give them money off their stay.
As an example, we gave $40 in AAA discounts this year compared with $170 the year before. We had a total of 37 packages or add ons purchased this year. Compared with 39 the previous year. (Hmmm, thought we did way more this year! Good thing we keep track.)

 

[Breakfast Diva]

After having a dip downward in 2010, I did a few discounts at the beginning of 2011. These discounts were not posted, I would shave off a little of the room rate or lift my 2 night weekend minimum when taking a phone reservation in the winter. Those small discounts stopped after a couple months.
When we realized business was down towards the end of 2011, we decided to do a new refresh of our website, changed reservation system to ResKey and to take the leap to upgrade our kitchen just enough to be able to get a full service restaurant license so we could offer an en suite dinner package (pre ordered).
It's really difficult to take the leap of faith and spend money to make money, but it turned out that it was the perfect way to go for us. We just finished our best year ever. The $ investment in the kitchen paid for itself quickly, as did our new re-freshed website.
Our packages were popular this year. The only one that was down was our picnic basket. People used to order the picnic basket and use it for dinner, but now they can order dinner instead.
At this point, we'll just continue on the track we're on for next year and hope all is well!

 

[Arks]

After having a dip downward in 2010, I did a few discounts at the beginning of 2011. These discounts were not posted, I would shave off a little of the room rate or lift my 2 night weekend minimum when taking a phone reservation in the winter. Those small discounts stopped after a couple months.
When we realized business was down towards the end of 2011, we decided to do a new refresh of our website, changed reservation system to ResKey and to take the leap to upgrade our kitchen just enough to be able to get a full service restaurant license so we could offer an en suite dinner package (pre ordered).
It's really difficult to take the leap of faith and spend money to make money, but it turned out that it was the perfect way to go for us. We just finished our best year ever. The $ investment in the kitchen paid for itself quickly, as did our new re-freshed website.
Our packages were popular this year. The only one that was down was our picnic basket. People used to order the picnic basket and use it for dinner, but now they can order dinner instead.
At this point, we'll just continue on the track we're on for next year and hope all is well!.

Breakfast Diva wrote:
We just finished our best year ever. The $ investment in the kitchen paid for itself quickly, as did our new re-freshed website.
Excellent! Glad to hear some good news! I feel like the economy is slowly turning the corner and headed back up.