Wedding Season Strategies: How Hotels Can Boost Bookings and Revenue

Guests demand personalization in wedding decor, packages, and unique venues, which suddenly increases the demand for hotel rooms. This pushes hoteliers to increase their room prices, and as a result, they can expect a significant increase in hotel revenue. 

A recent study states that during this occasion, hotel rooms are booked for around 5,000 crores a year.

But how do you plan to sell more rooms and increase your revenue this wedding season? Let's learn about six key strategies that can help you make the most of your hospitality business.

1. Entice Your Guests by Creating a Wedding-Friendly Atmosphere

A perfect wedding atmosphere isn't about creating a fancy setup; rather, it's about enhancing your guest's experience from the moment they enter your hotel.

These can be in the form of offering customized menus for guests, creating an ambience ranging from planning unforgettable dinners to using floral arrangements that they love to cherish.

Another way is to design your hotel surroundings with proper lighting, lush greenery, and rooftop terraces that romanticize wedding settings.

Ensure that the color palette you choose aligns with the wedding theme. While classic themes are on the rise, using softer color shades such as sage green and blush can perfectly blend with bridesmaid dresses and add a sparkle to their decor.

Some hotels have huge outdoor spaces that can be transformed into a wedding venue. While others provide an enhanced environment for guests by having decor filled with lush green surroundings.

Some might even use a different pattern such as hosting a wedding reception by the beach or near the pool. It also depends on the size and type of hotel.

Westin Sohna Resort and Spa pampers its guests by providing a special venue surrounded by a lush green garden. Each of their outdoor halls is customized for each wedding according to guest preferences.

They offer guests an e-menu facility allowing them to choose from a mix of food and beverage options. All this enhances the guest experience.

No matter the guests' diverse backgrounds, their chefs offer dishes in every flavor, ranging from traditional Indian taste to international cuisine.

Additionally, the hotel staff should be well-trained to treat their guests with a personalized approach, decide the entire wedding theme, greet them properly, and determine different ways to entertain their guests during this special event.

2. Creating Irresistible Wedding Packages

A wedding is considered a nightmare for guests, as it comes with huge expenses. To appeal to budget-conscious guests or people who are on a tight budget, hotel owners have decided to create customized wedding packages.

As every guest differs from one another, hoteliers develop such packages depending on guest needs and their budget. There are different types of packages you can offer to your guests, such as wedding day packages, ceremony-only packages, or reception-only packages.

For Instance,

You could create a special package for the wedding couple, including a spa treatment before the wedding day, organizing a special event, providing goodies such as gifts, offering discounted rooms, and romantic dinners, along with the support of a certified wedding planner.

Not only does it add value to your guests, but it also encourages repeat bookings for your accommodation.

3. Network with Local Wedding Planners

By partnering with local wedding planners, you tap into their networks. They may have good contacts and rapport within the industry with local vendors. Such a partnership brings a steady flow of bookings and increases your hotel revenue.

Although it sounds like a big investment in hiring a wedding planner, it's a cost-effective option in the long run.

Local wedding planners know the ins and outs of the wedding industry, the current trends emerging, and how you can personalize the entire wedding experience for your guests.

Over the years, these planners have built good relationships with guests, so they can recommend reserving a spot at your accommodation. Alternatively, they can suggest you customize your offerings according to guest preferences.

For instance, if one wedding planner endorses your wedding venue and brings 10 guests for you, and you've had a healthy relationship with that person, and you agreed to offer a special discount for their wedding celebration.

Each booking costs around $500. The total revenue you earn from those bookings amounts to around $5,000.That’s how it works.

4. Promote Your Hotel through Social Media and Online Advertising

Once you've collaborated with wedding planners, the next step is to promote your hotel through social media marketing. A fancy hotel wedding setup isn't going to help you unless you adopt the right marketing strategies to grow your business by leaps and bounds.

It all starts with building your online presence, such as investing in an SEO-friendly website that looks visually appealing.

The best part is that you can entice visitors by showcasing luxury amenities, adding high-quality wedding photos, and highlighting the outdoor spaces where such celebrations happen.

Furthermore, you can add social proof to your website by displaying testimonials and reviews. Create high-quality content on your website so that it ranks high on search engines and drives more traffic to your site.

On average, guests spend nearly $6,500-$10,000 on a wedding venue. You too can make the most money by marketing your hotel venue on different channels. You need to do your homework and see what type of venue guests expect.

The right customers won't come to you if you don't market your offerings on channels where your audience hangs out. These can be social media, in-person events, collaborations, or running social media ads.

Platforms such as Pinterest can help you reach your targeted audience (couples) by promoting your venue and featuring wedding couples or using imagery.

Additionally, consider using paid advertising platforms such as running targeted Facebook ads. You can engage with your audience by customizing ads based on guest location, age, gender, etc.

Make sure to experiment with your ads such as images of the wedding venue, testing different headlines or ad copy, focusing on selling benefits, not just features, etc.

In a nutshell, when marketing your hotel, precision is everything. 

Run hyper-targeted digital ads or retarget those who browse wedding guests and showcase Instagram-worthy visuals to highlight past ceremonies. Moreover, you can attract modern guests by creating user-generated content and doing influencer collaborations.

5. Creating Detailed Guest Profiles for Wedding Guests

By creating detailed guest profiles, hotel owners can segment their guests, know their preferences, and understand every minute detail they fill in during the booking process.

Based on the previous booking history of guests, if you find that one type of couple showed interest in outdoor settings or special events, then you can curate custom packages around those things.

You can offer special discounts for guests who make a direct reservation through your site, such as free nights for room stays or complimentary room upgrades.

You can collect data from couples by sending post-stay surveys. Later, you can improvise your services based on their feedback.

6. Using Technology to Streamline Hotel Operations

Technology plays a game-changing role in streamlining your hotel operations.

For instance, implementing e-front desk software can help you streamline your check-in/check-out process. Thus, it reduces waiting time for your wedding guests and reduces the burden on your hotel staff.

Additionally, they can use data analytics to provide insights into booking patterns, allowing hoteliers to identify the peak season period so you can optimize their pricing strategies accordingly.

To set the best price for your hotel rooms, consider hiring revenue management experts who will conduct a detailed analysis of your property, track metrics, and suggest actionable strategies you should adopt now to increase your RevPAR.

To enhance hotel operations, many resorts are leveraging AI-powered platforms such as chatbots to answer guest inquiries and personalize their communication.

One such software is Freddie, an AI-powered bot that engages with guests and provides them with personalized support. Its 24/7 support availability improves your hotel productivity by answering repetitive questions.

More importantly, it’s a multilingual bot that communicates with guests in their native language. So, no more hustle in hiring multilingual hotel staff anymore.

Wrapping Up

Just like marriage starts a new chapter in everyone's life, for hoteliers, it provides a good source of revenue. That's possible if they can sell maximum rooms and operate at almost full occupancy during this period.

Thus, by reading the above blog, you know what strategies (collaborating with local wedding planners, marketing your hotel, creating customized packages) to adopt to maximize bookings, increase revenue, and leave a lasting impression on your guests.