Position your hotel to gain market share with these 5 tips

The Indian economy is going to spend about half of what it normally did last year.

This month Indian government passed a 20 lakh crore stimulus, not much was announced for the hotel and restaurant industry.

We can continue to debate if the stimulus was right and whether it was distributed properly or if Airlines, tourism and hotels that are hard hit should have received additional support.

What is done is done, and everyday we get a little bit more clarity and we can start making more decision on what the new normal or abnormal will look like.

Recent estimate suggest that 40 to 50% of restaurants will go out of business, most of the tourism industry will get into trouble, and hotels and restaurants may close.

But while we are at all this, what we can control is to make investments to prepare our hotel for the opening and for surviving.

To position your hotel to effectively to regain share once the economy open up and survive, you will have to focus on these 5 points.

Connect with your customers:

Your customers are your life blood and will provide you the required income to survive. But what to do when they are not travelling or dont want to come to your city.

• Connect to them over a call or email.
• Talk about how they are doing.
• Find out what is happening in their industry.
• What was the impact of the stimulus for them.
• Has something changed in their industry that will have a positive impact on your hotel.

Train your team well:

If not before, now is the time to revisit on staff training. With rapidly changing process and protocols, you will have to make sure your team is upto date with latest hygiene and safety trends.

When your teams come back from lockdown, the guest expectation would have changed, your sop would have changed and it is your duty to make sure that the existing people are trained well.

Find Funds for future:

Money is the life blood of business and you need to secure it now. Talk to your bank managers and secure the credit or advances today. Going forward as you begin coming out of lockdown, you will have to operate the hotel, pay salaries and bills. All this with reduced revenue. If you have not done it yet, now is the time to connect with the banks and financial institutions

Focus on what you can do:

While you cannot do many thing, you can surely do many things to keep the property in shape. Wanted to drain the pool to fix the chipped tiles or grouting, wanted to change that plumbing shaft or epabx exchange that kept failing.

Now is the time.

You may feel that you do not have the funds to pay for all that, however you may find the time is good to do all this work. You may find that the vendors will also give you a better deal since you will be one of the very few spending money on work

Since there are no guests in the hotel, any noisy work can be done with ease.

Manage your stress and health:

Finally take care of yourself. It is undoubtedly a very stressful time to be in. However remember not to let the stress get to you.

Practice or do anything that relaxes you, pick up a hobby, learn a new subject or instrument. The point is stress can take a toll on mental health and you need to be fit to survive.