Gregg Blanchard
May 15, 2023
Staffing shortages – whether on the front line or in your marketing team – are a huge challenge in the resort industry right now.
Call centers are tough to staff, skilled marketers are tougher to keep, revenue managers are asked to do more and more, front desks have more balls in the air, and the result can be a negative impact on your guest’s experience.
This challenge can feel like one for your HR team, but it’s important in moments like these to think more strategically.
Marketing
A friend of mine, Joe Myers, used to say that “everyone is in marketing.” Yes, only a few people have the word “marketing” in their title, but everyone at a resort creates the guest’s experience and perception of the brand.
The opposite, however, is also true. A marketing CRM like Inntopia Marketing Cloud has guest data from all of those touch points and more. And our marketing automation have advanced to where literally any data point can be used to trigger an automated message to a guest. And the contents of those messages can be customized based on guest data using dynamic content.
In other words, with some creative thinking, marketing is perfectly poised to stand in for your overworked team and help alleviate their burden. Here are a few examples.
1) Contactless Pickup
Contactless pickup is something that many resorts still haven’t adopted. It’s not something you have to go all-in on, just giving guests the option can mean fewer staff required to sell tickets at windows. Revelstoke is one of many resorts who have seen the benefit of this first hand.
2) Proactively Prevent Issues
Another great example is simply talking to your front desk or call center about the reasons guests call in and brainstorming whether any of these can be addressed with a well-timed email. For example, if construction on a nearby interstate is getting soon-to-be-arriving guests lost, send them an arrival day email with one-click directions to a better route in Google Maps.
3) Custom Abandoned Cart
No call center is perfectly utilized, but how do you fill those slower times that still need that extra agent on the phones? Instead of asking agents to call abandoned itineraries, an automated abandoned cart email can be customized with the details of the agent a guest spoke with and get guests to call back in. Time this during slower parts of the day and you can do more revenue with a smaller call center.
4) One-Click Confirmation Resend
Some teams still manually resend booking confirmations to guests. For some resorts, this tied up as much as one full-time staff member to manager. We built a tool that let’s an agent look up a confirmation email and trigger the system to automatically resend that message.
5) More (Automated) Revenue
The last thing to remember is that every dollar of revenue automated campaigns generate takes away one dollar of pressure the marketing feels to generate that through more manual campaigns. Abandoned cart, cross sell, extend your stay, upsell, and booking anniversary emails are all perfect examples of this that are powerful when applied to lodging, but seeing impressive results when built for other products as well.
Marketing (Automation) Can Help
Inntopia Marketing Cloud has the most advanced automation capability in hospitality. Any kind of message can be triggered by any kind of data point.
If you’re losing the battle to labor costs or shortages, grab a copy of our free marketing automation guide, do a huddle with your team around how automated emails can take a burden off your marketing, reservations, call center, front desk, or other teams and you’ll be amazed by the possibilities? Want a hand brainstorming? Reach out, we’d love to jam on ideas with you.
