One should work elaborately and in a committed way to be successful in an industry like accommodation, where competition is fierce. In this respect, it is vital to plan your steps in the industry for the future your property. Therefore, creating a business plan is the first thing you should do among the strategies to have a permanent position in the accommodation industry. What is a business plan?
You can regard a business plan as the road map for your property. What one would generally like to see in a map includes your location, where your destination is and how you can reach there. You can expand this approach to your business plan as well. Your business plan includes items such as your property’s current situation, which guest category it addresses and which strategies to follow to reach it.
As HotelRunner, we have examined the steps for a business plan that will bring success to your property.
Step 1: Your property
You need to identify your property’s structure in the first step of your business plan. In this step you can identify which services you have and what makes you different than other properties within your area. For instance, if you are a city hotel preferred by the middle-aged working class for business travels, you had better make it clear. This way, you can see where to get started.
Step 2: Your mission and goal description
Companies’ missions generally consist of one sentence, and describe your main goal for instance: “To be a property offering the highest service standards in the region.” This sentence can be a mission. Your goal description can be a sentence showing how you will progress. As for this, we can give this example: “To achieve the 80 percent occupancy rate each year.”
Step 3: Your target audience
After determining your mission and goal description, you can now classify the guests arriving in your property. It is important to report details like the general age range of your existing and potential guests, why they stay in your hotel and their income level. The more detailed you create your target audience profile, the more clearer your style of approach will become.
Step 4: Action plan
Following the step 3, you can determine the strategies necessary to be developed rather than descriptions. The first stage of this is action plan. In this plan, you can specify which kind of services you offer for your target audiences and what improvements you aim at. By talking about past experiences, you can determine new strategies that will strengthen your relation with your potential guests.
Step 5: Marketing strategy
Creating a marketing strategy is among the most important steps to be take as you build your business plan. According to your goals, it is critical to create a promotional plan that can draw your potential customers’ attention and fit well into your budget. You can get started by first determining the methods to reach your target audience. For instance, social media marketing can be useful if you address young people. Or you can have the opportunity to reach many users directly through e-mail marketing.
Step 6: Financial plan
You have created your operational plans with the 5 steps above. Now you need to calculate the budget you can allocate to achieve your goals. We can argue that you will not have any problem about the financial part if your road map is drawn up based on realistic goals. It is critical that your financial sources and goals are consistent with each other.
Having a business plan helps you see your future in the business world better. You can apply highly effective strategies and strengthen your position in the industry by creating a business plan. Using tools that can be accessed by Internet users easily when planning will increase your efficiency. To achieve this, you first need to have a website for your property. You can start accepting online bookings by building a website infrastructure and having a virtual POS. Moreover, you will not need any technical knowledge to have a website anymore. Thanks to the HotelRunner platform, you can easily create a website for your property. With its robust infrastructure, sleek and simple themes and virtual POS feature, HotelRunner will have enough time for you to focus on your business plan. Create your free-of-charge account now and benefit from HotelRunner’s offers.
