While nothing dictates when a couple can and can’t tie the knot, most brides tend to prefer walking down the aisle sometime toward the end of spring and the beginning of fall. And of course, the love birds will almost always want to spend their honeymoon in a special way, meaning anywhere else but their matrimonial home!
If you’re in the hotel and hospitality industry, this makes the wedding season a reason to celebrate – because business is booming! More bookings for accommodation and event venues often mean more profit, but only if you can maximize your guest list.
Here are a few ways through which hotels can increase bookings during the wedding season.
1. Make Your Space Wedding-Ready
If you’ll be targeting the wedding industry for customers in your hotel, one of the best ways to attract clients is to make your space wedding-ready. This means designing the space into something a couple or wedding planner would easily be attracted to.
Of course, different clients will have different preferences on how they want the seating arrangements and decorations to be done, as well as where the dance floor, restrooms, and other amenities should be.
This is why it makes sense to have a flexible design for the event space. Thankfully, event floor plan software is available to make the seemingly daunting task easier. A good event layout tool can help you create various scalable floor plans and room setups that your guests will likely love.
2. Offer Special Perks For Wedding Parties
Another great way to make your wedding space more attractive to couples is to offer some type of personal service when they book party space or accommodation in your hotel. While these might include spa treatments, food, transportation, photography, travel, etc. as an added touch to make them feel more comfortable during their visit, a good old-fashioned phone call or a personalized invitation can go a long way.
You can even go one step further and offer this service free of charge to the wedding couple and have a custom-built wedding gift for the bride. But if you want to make the experience even more pleasant for them, consider offering a dedicated meeting room in addition to your regular event venue space.
3. Get Listed On Wedding Lead Sites
While much has been said about social media as a marketing tool for the hotel industry, there’s one platform that provides more exposure for your property than any other – wedding lead sites.
These sites are designed to help wedding planners, venue owners, florists, cake decorators, photographers, and other wedding professionals get the word out about their businesses.
But since you’re offering event venue space, accommodation, and perhaps catering, they can be a great place to get the word out there about your hotel and attract more wedding bookings.
4. Promote Wedding Venue Space Using Professional Photos
Weddings are all about beauty, love, and to some extent, perfectionism. It’s a special day for the bride and the groom as well as their guests, so they’ll want to rent an event space that will make the event memorable and as beautiful as it can get.
Some professionally-taken photos can go a long way in enticing prospective clients to your hotel, whether you post them on social media, your hotel website, or other online platforms.
5. Give Discounts and Incentives to Guests Who Book a Block of Rooms
Of course, you can offer an incentive to guests who book a block of rooms to make their stay more affordable for them. Better yet, you can also allow or ask guests who book rooms to take photos for you and post them on social media, your hotel website, or other online platforms.
This way, they can help spread the word about your hotel as well as help you get featured on wedding lead sites.
These are just a tiny fraction of the many ways you can make your hotel more appealing to the about-to-be couples, wedding planners, and even guests at weddings. Working with wedding vendors like florists, caterers, event planners, and transportation services can also be a great way to get referrals and accelerate hotel bookings during the wedding season.
