HOTEL DOSM CHECKLIST:HOW MANY ARE YOU MISSING?

2016 is your year. You can count on it.

Travel spending is up. Gas and airfares are low. And, technology is constantly making it easier for guests to book rooms and for hotels to reach out to guests. Don’t let the good news go to waste. You should leverage and maximize every advantage you have to score robust profits in 2016. Getting and staying ahead of the game requires dedicating time to specific activities EVERYDAY.

That’s right, everyday. We know you’re busy. We know your to-do is miles long. That’s why we put together our annual Tambourine DOSM Checklist for 2016 to make it easy to reap the biggest profits, little by little, day by day.

DSM CHECKLIST FOR 2016!

Catch Up On the MetricsMost Important To Your Owner

Don’t wait until your year slows down to catch up on your vital numbers, or else you’ll be scrambling frantically to catch up. Everyday, check up on your metrics such as RevPar Index vs your compset, MCPB (marketing cost per booking), Website conversion rate, and DRdaR (direct revenue ratio).These key performance indicators are what will matter to your owner and asset managers when it comes to reviewing how your efforts are contributing to your hotel’s revenue.

Read More: 6 Sales and Marketing Metrics Every Hotel Owner Cares About

Tap into your guests desire for authentic experiences

Today’s travelers are obsessed with ‘traveling like a local’. No longer are they interested in big-ticket “touristy” attractions. Now, they’re looking at farmers markets, distilleries and craft breweries, hidden local spots, mom-and-pop shops, hole-in-the-wall restaurants and art walks.Stay on top of it all by reading your local weekly newspapers, such as Seattle’s Stranger, and your city’s main magazine, like San Diego Magazine. Or, check if your city has localized content on Thrillist.com or Eater.com. These media have their pulse on the newest and coolest things for locals to see, do, and try. Which means your guests will want to follow suit. So, look for partnerships, possible packages, etc. Read More: Want More Hotel Revenue? Start Selling Your Destination

Check in On YourTop 20 Sales Opportunities

Sit down with your sales people and look over their top group meeting opportunities. Review the planner’s pain points, their hot buttons, the other properties competing for business. Determine what the sales person can do that day to tip the scales in your property’s favor.

Scrutinize Your Product

With all the marketing programs and strategies you have in place, in the end it’s a standout guest experience that will draw guests again and again. So, in addition to reading your hotel’s online reviews, leave your office at least once a day to walk your property.Experience and scrutinize each touchpoint. Be ruthless and ask ‘what’s missing’ from your guest experience? Does your restaurant have a lackluster menu? Is the spa starting to look shabby? Are staff uniforms looking out-dated?

Study Your Comp Set

With all the monitoring tools at your hotel’s disposal, there’s no reason not to know what your comp set is up to. There’s STR reports, Google alerts, social media mentions and good ol’ hotel reader boards.Sign up for a hotel intelligence service to streamline your daily monitoring. These services will produce reports that show your competition’s most active groups, annual repeat business and which companies are booking their meetings at other hotels.

Engage Guest Reviews

The reviews that previous guests leave behind are the direct link to your future success, so they should NEVER be ignored. Just because someone else at your property is delegated with the task of reading and responding to reviews doesn’t mean that you can’t also look over and act on them.

Engage Guest Reviews

After all, many meeting attendees will leave reviews as a guest. And, if they took the time to review your property on TripAdvisor, they are likely to have shared their feedback with the planner as well. So, make the time to listen to their thoughts. It takes little effort, just 5-10 minutes a day to see what reviews have been left recently. Notice the topics that keep being brought up, then outline ways you can attend to them.

Analyze Your Team’s Performance Against Target

and GoalsSuccessful DOSMs know where they are in relation to their sales goals, on any given day. By tracking your daily progress towards your target numbers, you’ll know whether you’re behind or ahead.How close is each member of your team to their projected room nights? Are there a lot more sales calls and follow-ups to make? When working to increase meetings and events at your property, you can’t get lax on this. It’s paramount to monitor your team’s progress on a daily basis.

Talk to Your Guests!They Know Best!

Don’t stay cooped up in your office trying to determine what guests and planners want and need from your hotel. Take 30 minutes to converse with guests staying at your property and the meeting delegates lingering around your conference space. Ask them about their stay and what you can do better.

Talk to Your Guests!They Know Best!

Converse with your social media community as well. Sign up for Linkedin groups for meeting and event professionals and play an active role in answering questions and offering suggestions. All of this intelligence can be used to lock in future group business and to improve your hotel experience.

Keep An Eye on IndustryNews and Trends

From Skift, to Hospitality Net to Hotel News Now to (shameless plug, Tambourine’s own #1 ranked hotel marketing blog… there’s plenty of industry publications and resources to stay on top of the latest news and tools impacting how you market your hotel.Dedicate a half hour each day to browse these hospitality sites, file away any articles you want to refer to in the future, or pass them along to the appropriate staff at your property.

Meet With Your Revenue Managers

You should pow wow with your revenue management team every day, NOT once per week. In fact, keep them as a standing daily appointment in your calendar.Just like your sales opportunities, you need to stay on top of your upcoming low periods, property’s pace reports, and strategies on how to maximize revenue from your ancillary products. READ: How to build a more cohesive hotel marketing team

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