Hotel Industry Experts Share ROI Increasing Secrets

There’s a new series of one day events, and they’re changing how hoteliers get information regarding their home markets. They’re called Hotel ROI, and we attended this intimate up and close event in Los Angeles where we got lots of exciting information and relevant in-market insight.

But while lots of secrets were exposed for the greater Los Angeles area, there was also plenty of goodies relevant to all hoteliers around the country. Here’s what we learned:

Grab Those Guests
Having a branded hotel still pays. Sure, there’s a move toward an increasing desire to operate independent hotels – especially with the rise of soft brands — but mainstream brands such as Red Roof Inns are delivering as much as 66% of customers every single night, on average, according to Matt Hostetler, an SVP with Red Roof. Other major factors that get guests to make a reservation are: Quality, rate, brand familiarity and rewards program, said industry experts.

Increase Your Hotel’s Income
Let your employees help you make more money. No, we don’t mean carry guests to the room, we mean leveraging their great ideas. Create a culture of success by incentivizing staff to provide great ideas that make money. Train staff to convert OTA guests to return guests, and upsell those folks newly renovated rooms. Also, most industry experts at Hotel ROI believe there’s not a lot of room to keep pushing rate higher. That means it’s becoming a game of increasing on property revenue outside room rate. One area that returns great profits is selling alcohol.

Massive Room Count Flooding Mid-Market
“Upper Midscale inventory will exceed 1 million rooms, no other scale has this,” says Bruce Ford, SVP of Lodging Econometrics, which tracks the new hotel construction pipeline. Other relevant data points; In Q117, there were 513 projects announced totaling 57,1278 rooms. Plus, 212 hotels with 24,122 rooms opened in the U.S. during the first quarter, with the majority of hotels located in suburban locations. Almost half have between 100-200 rooms. For the remainder of the year, LE forecasts another 868 hotels to open, representing a 22% increase over the total number of openings compared to 2016.

Lower Your Hotel’s Operational Costs
This is an industry where people look to each other for success, so share best practices with fellow hotel owners, or simply seek their advice. That network is filled with experienced and smart professionals that will provide smart ideas, such as ways to lower costs through installing energy efficient products, and available environmental tax incentives.

Here’s another idea: In Los Angeles, and around the country, many hoteliers are focused on renovations. Did you know older furniture can be reinvented and repurposed at the fraction of the cost of buying new, saving as much as 80%. The Refinishing Touch specializes in reimagining furniture in ways that reinvent pieces to make them more functional, durable and unique. Styles change, technology presses forward, and sometimes the need for a specific piece of furniture becomes outmoded. So, refinish or repurpose, don’t replace. The Refinishing Touch creates factory fresh looking pieces by changing color, adding stone, laminate or glass elements, and changing the hardware. Plus, it’ll help protect you against any loss in pricing power for your hotel.