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Valentine’s Day is likely the first big event on your hotel calendar for 2023 — so let’s get the year started with a bang!
Reports show that year after year, Americans are spending more on Valentine’s Day gifts and celebrations. So why not take advantage of that?
Now’s the time to come up with some creative ideas around Valentine’s Day for your hotel!
Without further ado, let’s start exploring the best ways to get your hotel ready for Valentine’s Day!
If your hotel offers gift vouchers, now is the time to be promoting the heck out of them! They make a great Valentine’s gift—the flexibility allows couples to have a romantic getaway even if they can’t do it on the 14th.
When promoting vouchers for a room or hotel guest services, be sure to highlight what they can be used for: specific rates, food and drink credit, spa treatments, etc.
Give guests a special reason to choose your hotel guest services over somewhere else. A Valentine’s dinner package always goes down a treat. Otherwise you could offer special in-room services like decorations, champagne on ice, or flower arrangements.
Start advertising these packages well in advance to pique interest and capture the attention of early planners.
In early January, send out a newsletter or SMS message to guests who have previously stayed at your hotel. Highlight the special promotions you’ll be offering for Valentine’s Day—you could even offer an extra discount for returning customers. They’ve stayed with you before, so they’re more likely to trust your hotel guest services with their important Valentine’s plans.
It started as a joke on the TV show Parks and Recreation, but more and more people are celebrating Galentine’s Day on February 13th. It’s a day to acknowledge and commemorate female friendships, and enterprising businesses have jumped on board with themed brunches or drink specials.
It’s a fun way to get customers in the door even if they’re not celebrating Valentine’s Day itself.
Travel isn’t quite as easy as it was pre-2020, so many couples are choosing to lean into staycations this Valentine’s Day. By bundling offers and branding them as Staycation Packages, you’re making things simple for guests and increasing your revenue.
Package things like spa treatments, bottles of wine, breakfast in bed, and in-room cocktails, with one or two nights’ accommodation—the perfect romantic staycation!
Flowers, wine, and three-course dinners are pretty traditional ways to celebrate Valentine’s Day. But increasingly, couples are looking for fun and novel ways to mark February 14th as special. Maybe you could offer your guests add-on experiences such as:
In line with the staycation vibe for Valentine’s Day 2023, why not encourage your guests to spend Valentine’s night in their room with generous discounts on all in-room dining and drinks.
That way you’re guaranteed that they’ll be spending even more with you, and it gives you more of a chance to wow them with your customer service. Make things super easy for them—instead of phones, many hotels are now opting for app messaging platforms for guest communication.
If you haven’t got your own internal app, HelloShift’s guest messaging platform is seamless and simple to use. Every guest with a smartphone can instantly reach a member of staff to order drinks, food, or make another request.
The easier it is to keep ordering drinks and food to their room, the more likely a guest is to keep doing it!
If a guest has booked a Valentine’s package, it’s ok to decorate their room with flowers and hearts. But there’s no need to deck out your entire romantic hotel with Cupid imagery. Some people don’t celebrate, some people are single, and many of your guests may just be staying there for business or a regular getaway. Don’t turn guests away by overdoing it on the lovey-dovey stuff.
When a potential guest searches for accommodation in the week around February 14th, it’s a good idea to target them with messaging about your Valentine’s offers. There’s a good chance they’re booking for Valentine’s Day—if they’re not, they can easily ignore it.
In the leadup to Valentine’s Day, you should definitely be promoting your packages and offers on social media. Yes, display advertising and email campaigns have their place, but nothing can beat the effectiveness of a good social post.
Nearly half of millennials admit that hotel and travel images on social media influence their booking. Meanwhile, over 60% would consider a last-minute impulse trip based on a hotel’s deal.
Meet your audience where they are. Design social media posts and advertisements based on your target demographic. Have a look at what kind of content they’re sharing and engaging with—and let that inform your strategy.
Don’t let Valentine’s Day slip by. Sure, it may not be a ‘big’ travel holiday like Thanksgiving or the 4th of July, but there’s still a massive market for hotel rooms and romantic packages.
Now’s the best time to be reaching new guests and encouraging existing customers to come back. Use these tips to have a killer Valentine’s week, and set yourself up for a successful 2023.
Of course, one of the most important ways to run a successful hotel is to make sure all of your hotel guest services are running smoothly, on both sides of the curtain. And how can you ensure that? By digitizing your hotel.
Hotel guests receive automated, routine messages, consult hotel digital guidebook, and pre-checkin via their mobile device. Hotel teams use HelloShift to work together across buildings, floors, shifts, and departments with up-to-date visibility into room status via the Housekeeping app.
Go digital with Guest Messaging, Contactless Checkin, Website Chat, Staff Collaboration, Housekeeping Management and more.
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