GeneralOnline & Digital Marketing

10 steps to creating an effective business plan for hotels

Well, you decided to start your own hotel by developing an outstanding concept which offers unprecedented guest services. Now it’s time to create an effective business plan for your hotel. Creating such a plan will enable you to follow an invaluable guideline as a roadmap until you manage to open it.

At this point, creating a decent hotel business plan requires being aware of your plan’s steps, content and what to avoid when building it. Also, an effective hotel plan should not overwhelm the investors with huge loads of information, it must rather excite them.

What are the steps to creating an effective business plan for hotels?

1. Executive summary

Here are the things you may include in your plan’s summary section regarding the hotel management.

Mission

The introduction should reflect your hotel’s spirit with a single line of description instead of a long paragraph or lines of sentences. Also, you should highlight your motive behind your attempt to get into this or the big expectation your hotel meets.

Goals

What do you aim to achieve? (For instance: achieving an annual 85% occupancy rate.)

2. Company Analysis

You can briefly refer to the details of your hotel concept as well as what distinguishes you from your competitors.

3. Sector Analysis

This section contains information about the current market situation, customer trends in the industry and how all these will affect your hotel. The sector analysis is critically important in terms of ensuring clear understanding of the accommodation industry vis-à-vis investors.

4. Guest analysis

Which guests do you intend to accommodate in your property the most? This section includes the details about guests such as demographic, psychographic, behavioral, socioeconomic and geographic categorizations (segmentation), i.e. it contains thorough information regarding your target market. Here you should explain your hotel’s position across the target market in terms of your activities and services, how it will cover the needs of your targeted guests and why the guests will prefer your hotel.

5. Competition analysis

You must compile information about your local or global competitors as well as strengths, weaknesses, occupancy rates and market shares thereof. The most essential aspect of competition analysis is probably the features helping you make a distinction among your peers.

6. Strategic Planning

Marketing

-What kind of guests does your hotel attract?

-How would you position your hotel?

-What message does your hotel communicate to different guest segments?

-How will your direct marketing activities function?

-What are your hotel’s plans regarding your website, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), SEM (Search Engine Marketing) and SMM (Social Media Marketing)?

-Do you plan to launch offline promotion campaigns for your hotel?

Distribution

-Which third party channels will you use and how will you manage their availability?

-Which technologies will you need?

Revenue Management

-Which pricing and productivity techniques will you utilize?

-What kind of a payment and cancelation policies will you implement?

7. Operation Plan

-How will you celebrate your hotel’s opening?

-How many employees and chefs will you hire; what are their respective job descriptions and which responsibilities will you assign them?

-What kind of a background will your employees have? What kind of experiences should they have and what is their start date of employment?

-What are your service standards? Will you develop guidelines?

-Which supplier will you work with? How will you manage your inventory?

8. Executive team

It includes your team’s biographies. (When building your team, you should focus on unique qualifications that will take your hotel to an outstanding success.)

9. Financial plan

It contains hotel, capital, investment and establishment expenses that will incur to your hotel in the upcoming five years as well as the expenditure covering your revenue projections, recruitment costs and operational costs. You should also include in this list the estimated occupancy rate, daily ratio average and income per available room.

10. Fundamental milestones

You might need to reflect more on the following topics to bring even more success for your hotel.

-Selection of your location

-Permissions and Licenses

-Establishment/ Hotel Construction

-Employees and Training

-Opening

Tapping into our tips, you can also build an effective business plan for your hotel and enjoy an invaluable roadmap on your journey of business. HotelRunner is always there for you to claim your position across the digital realm. Create your free HotelRunner account now and start benefiting from its advantages.

 

Rıza Kaynak

Director of Demand

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