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How the customer base is segmented depends on the customer base you are looking for for the lodging facility. Is it your goal to encourage businesses to hold conferences at your facility, or to encourage customers to stay at your hotel, or Targeting is where you make the decision on what segment you want to pursue. Which segment do you think is best suited for your particular lodging facility? If you were a smaller facility, perhaps targeting individual customers would be the best course of action.
If you are a larger lodging facility that offers all the amenities, including meeting rooms, focusing on the businesses in the area may be the best target for you to start with. Lastly comes the positioning part of the lodging facility. Positioning helps you decide which method is best for your lodging facility. The four As can also be extremely beneficial in the positioning part, these being product, price, promotion and place. When positioning your lodging facility, you must ensure that your facility offers something your competitors do not.
Make the prices of your rooms cheaper than your competition, if this is not a possibility, then ensure your customers are eating something more from you than they are getting from your competitors to justify the price difference. Secondly, how you promote your facility is a crucial part of your success, again this is where the marketing department comes into the scenario. The marketing department is ultimately responsible for the success of your lodging facility promotion. And finally, as clich?? as it may sound, it is all about location, location, location.
If there is a lodging facility in the same area that offers the same amenities as your lodging facility, it is best to find a better location. A location where the competition is not right on your doorstep, or a location where the volume of customers is so high, that having a similar facility right next door will not impact your bottom line so much that you essentially loose everything and have to close your doors. Prospecting Another form of retaining customers for your lodging facility is something known as prospecting. Basically the Job of prospecting is to find customers that are interested in your facility.
There are three levels of prospected customers: level one, now as a “cold” customer, these are customers that are not interested in your facility at all, or are not motivated to take any necessary steps to visit your lodging facility. These are generally the customers you will not want to contact again. Level two customers are known as “warm”, these are the customers that showed interest in your facility but have obstacles holding them back, such as a financial situation, these are the customers that you want to contact once in a while and offer them rooms at a special rate.
Lastly is level three, the “hot” customers. These customers are a sales apartments dream, these are the customers that make arrangements with you immediately to stay at your facility, although this level will have the lowest numbers of leads, they are definitely the customers you want to get into your lodging facility as soon as possible. These customers can include businesses or customers that can give you the best marketing of all, word of mouth.