Local guests on hotel radar
While everyone is waiting for the lockdown to be lifted and things to get back to normal, hotels are prepping to bring back business while making sure that they meet all safety and hygiene norms that the government may put in place soon. Hotel brands talk
Our marketing plan will be to approach Odisha-based corporate, banks, the IT sector, Pharma companies, etc., for holding their conferences and meetings within the state.
We will also approach all those guests who have cancelled their bookings due to COVID-19. We have already approached our government for declaring directives that all meetings of the government and private sector be conducted within the state.
We will promote staycations for local travellers. We will also upsell SPA, local art & culture, dinning, and organise local field trips and day-long picnics during this period. On the hotels front,
we will enhance our cleaning protocols to include additional sanitation and cleaning routines. Sanitiser bottles will be kept at public areas. Seating capacity of restaurants and bars will be reduced. The lowest hanging fruit that we see within the domestic segment is that of self-drive holidays. We have, in the last 10 days, created brand new products focused entirely on this segment
and we are confident that with the right digital marketing approach, we will see good traction and conversions for these products. At this point in time, potential guests are not going to look at brand, price or product.
Once the lockdown is over, domestic corporate business will be the first one to hit the road. Industries like Pharma, agriculture, banks, public sector, FMCG and infrastructure, etc., should immediately start their operations and create some demand. This will also depend on the financial health of the respective sector and companies, as well as the grant or support being extended by the government to revive the economy.
The fundamental tectonic shift that will emerge for hotels out of the COVID-19 crisis will be around three pillars— efficiency, automation and technology. The most important approach, once the lockdown is over, is to attract customers to our destinations. We should be making new strategies and evaluating them on a monthly basis.
We should relook into our pricing to make it more pocket-friendly for leisure market.
In the immediate aftermath, driving holidays will be preferred. We are going to re-engineer our SOPs pertaining to hygiene and sanitisation.
The frequency of sanitisation will increase and we will ensure enough sanitisers are placed from staff entrance to guest areas.
We will use and encourage our guests to upload their IDs online by selfcheck-in process. Guest pick up vehicles will be sanitised.