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ToggleThere is no shortage on the never-ending articles about Millennials, from their work patterns, to their attitudes, to a recent focus on their travel habits. In an article by Forbes entitled Why Millennials Are The Most Important Consumer Generation For The Travel Industry, it’s clear this is an important market for hoteliers to now tap into. While most travel demographics indicate people are cutting back and spending less on travel, Millennials are spending more, in fact last year an 8% increase from 2016. Millennials took an average of 3.5 vacations during the past year, and 35% of Millennials intend to take more vacations.
Step 1: Understand What They Want
There are a few key trends that Millennials are following when they travel, as a hotelier it only makes sense to create incentives and packages that tie into to these trends, and bundle them up into direct booking offers only available from your hotel. We know these trends include Millennial travelers wanting an experience, and they like adventure. In addition, they want trips of interest. According to Adventure Travel News, the Millennials want experience-rich choices and local, keeping traveler costs low while delivering meaningful travel experiences. Take this knowledge of what they want, and find out what Millennials are doing in your area. Are there outdoor adventures close by? What is the hottest dining experience in your city for this age group? You need to do your research and understand exactly what your geographic region has to offer. Now that you’ve done this, it’s time to create a package that will be hard to resist.
Step 2: Build It and They Will Come, & Book Direct
You’ve done your research and now you understand what’s hot, what’s trending and what your local area can offer Millennial travelers. It’s time to bundle it all together. Create your package as a starting point; this might include two nights at your hotel, a day of river rafting, a dinner at the hottest new restaurant where you have negotiated a 25% off coupon, followed the next day by a guided bike tour of the old historical district. As part of your service, you take care of booking all transportation as well as tickets for the events. Congratulations, you’ve just created a great package that will appeal to Millennials. Now, it’s time to set up the offer on your own online booking engine. With great tools like WebBook by roomMaster you get to take back ownership of your guests and save on high OTA commissions using this leading customizable direct booking technology. With a modern and intuitive design, WebBook was developed with you and your guests experience in mind to deliver direct booking back to your hotel.
Step 3: Marketing
With your exciting new travel package created and set up on your direct booking engine, keep in mind that Millennials are tuned into technology, and they will be attached to their smartphones and tablets. In some cases, they might actually be surgically attached to their hands they are so addicted! Joking aside, these Millennials really do live on their devices and a big part of that experience is on social media. It might be helpful to get some support setting up & refining your hotel social media accounts, and we recommend posting on social media daily to start and build your following in the Millennial market. It will be important to also follow this demographic, “like” their posts, comment and show interest. The usual or typical channels they are using are Facebook, and Twitter. However, Millennials are also using many other social media channels as well. It’s impossible to be tuned-in to each one, however the big channels right now are Snapchat and Instagram which also offer video capabilities……and video is hot with this age group.
The bottom line when it comes to Millennials, understand them, engage with them and cater to them. This has become a blossoming target market and it is both the current and future client base you need to be engaged with.
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InnQuest Software is a leading technology provider for the hospitality industry. For over 25 years, innQuest has combined hotelier experience with innovative technology to deliver an all-in-one solution that empowers hotels to attract guests, drive customer loyalty, and increase profits. Our flagship property management software, roomMaster, helps manage over 5,500 properties across 100 countries. InnQuest develops scalable solutions ranging from a Hotel PMS, Cloud PMS, Channel Manager, Hotel CRM and helps properties enable guests to Book Direct. We believe that everyone deserves a great guest experience, whether they’re staying at a small B&B, a thousand-room resort, or anywhere in between.
Call us today at 1.813.288.4900, or email us at sales@innquest.com. We will be happy to walk you through innQuest’s solutions.