How to Capitalize on Unused Inventory
Hi. Welcome to Resort Marketing Vids. I’m Michael Grimm, here for the Resort Developers Association.
If you have cabins, a motel, hotel, or other rental units associated with your resort, either available to the public or not, you have experienced lackluster occupancy rates.
A simple way to boost these occupancy rates and capitalize on all that unsold, unused inventory, is a “Last Minute Deals” program.
All the major travel sites have last minute deals whether for hotels, cruises, condos or flights. All you have to do as a user is sign up with your email address and you’ll be notified of special last minute deals within your interest range.
This is an easy program your resort can replicate. You only need to do two things. Set up a notification platform and build a list.
I use Instant Customer for my platform because I can send out text message blasts to peoples cell phones and email addresses at the same time. It has a user friendly tracking system, dashboard, and even simple code that you copy and paste into your website to generate leads. It allows people to sign up to receive your last minute deals via their cell phone or their email address.
But you can use whatever platform you want. The point is to set up some platform that allows you to capture peoples information and easily communicate to them when you have a deal.
Once you have your platform you have to start building your list. This is as easy as putting a “Last Minute Deals” page on your website, with a prominent banner or sticker somewhere drawing attention to it.
Then on that page, have your lead capture form that ties into your notification platform like Instant Customer.
Other ways to build your list are to have posters or flyers printed up and posted around the resort. You can have business card sized reminder cards printed up that prompt people to sign up for last minute deals. Then hand those out to all your members that come through the front gate or the front desk.
You can also send out an email blast to all your members alerting of the new program. You can put it in your newsletter, and even add a notification to any physical mailing pieces you send out to your members like dues notices or bills, or whatnot.
Once you’ve gotten one to three hundred people on your list you can start sending out notifications on slow weekends or undersold holidays offering them some special last minute deal if they act now.
Be sure when you’re doing this that you’re getting people’s explicit consent to contact them regarding this last minute deal program. Just because you may already have a list of cell phone numbers doesn’t mean you can add them to your system and start blasting them, that’s called SPAM and it’s illegal. The same goes for email addresses. This is a separate program and people need to opt- in to it as such.
That doesn’t mean that you can’t contact everyone whose information you have and offer the new program to them. As long as you don’t spam people you should be fine.
So, to recap, set up a communications platform to send notifications, build up your list using the various techniques discussed, then alert your list of “special deals” when your occupancy is looking sluggish.
This is the best way we’ve found so far to capitalize on unused inventory and it works like a charm.
It works for more than just rental units too by the way. If you have a golf course, for example, and someone cancels their tee time, you can send out a last minute deal notification on green fees. There are more possibilities than just filling cabins.
I’m Michael Grimm for the Resort Developers Association, I’ll see you later.