The hospitality industry is well-known for being home to some of the biggest hotels in the world. Massive chains like Hilton and Marriott have been in operation for ages, and they make a lot of money all the time. Starting a business in this area is a smart idea, but it’s not for everyone. Instead, I find it interesting to look at the owners of these massive hotels and see what we can learn from them to apply to business in general.
Here’s what I found out:
Customers Always Come First
A hotel lives or dies depending on how well they treat their customers. We’ve all been to a hotel that’s got poor customer service, and we’ve all never returned. Normally, bad customer satisfaction leads to negative reviews, and reviews mean a lot to hotels. As a consequence, hotel owners have learned that the customer is at the forefront of everything they do. Forget about everything else and ensure the customers are left happy and satisfied.
This is something we lose sight of in business all too often. Regardless of what field your business is in, you always need to put your customers first. Your thoughts should be on how you can make your business better for customers, rather than how you can make more money. The money will come if your customers are satisfied.
Pay Attention To Percentages
Hotel owners spend a lot of their time looking at percentages. Mainly, they concern themselves with the percentage of occupied rooms at any given time. They use software for this, and you can check out Mingus Software for more information on the stats they look at. By concerning themselves with percentages, they can set goals that they wish to achieve. These are realistic goals like, say, 60% occupation rate minimum for a week. It gives them things to aim for, which they can then base their marketing around, etc.
Business owners of all sorts can learn from this and start paying attention to percentages. Naturally, you might be looking at different things. The main one that comes to mind is your conversion rate; what percentage of leads become customers? Likewise, what’s your customer retention percentage? Use percentages to set goals and targets for your company, which gives you things to aim for and maintain. It’s also a great way of measuring your success from week to week or month to month.
Grow Your Business With A Chain
Hotels are great examples of businesses that grow from small dreams into big corporations. Most hotels will grow by opening a chain of hotels under the same name. There are Hilton hotels all over the world, and the same goes for some small hotels too. With a chain, you open your business to multiple markets and can get more customers.
You can do this with any business too, when success comes, think about expanding globally by opening a new chain. You tap into new markets, and your business becomes an international success.
Hotel owners can teach us a lot about business, so it’s well worth applying these things to your company today.