How can hotels get rid of the off-season?

The following information is reproduced for reference

How hotels deal with off-season

No matter what industry you are in, there will always be off-peak and peak seasons. The catering industry is no exception. How to deal with the hotel's off-season is a question worthy of consideration by all entrepreneurs. So how should the hotel deal with the off-season? What are the solutions? Let's take a look:

1. Increase revenue and reduce expenditure for marketing

The person in charge of a restaurant believes that during the off-season of these few months, the sales of river and seafood are not very good, and as the weather gets hotter, the chance of seafood spoilage and death will greatly increase. Therefore, during the off-season, many restaurants have downplayed the seafood aspect, instead focusing on home-cooked dishes, and strive to innovate the taste of home-cooked dishes.

The marketing work of a restaurant is a continuous business operation that runs through the entire enterprise, and will never be a breakpoint. Whether you admit it or not, accept it or not, marketing will always accompany your enterprise. It only exists in terms of operation, but there is a difference between active marketing and passive marketing in terms of situation, and there is a difference between successful marketing and failed marketing in terms of results. Therefore, there is no time to take a nap in marketing work, whether in the off-season or the peak season.

How restaurants reduce costs is also an important means of "saving food". Every restaurant has tips for cutting costs. The first is salary cuts, with chefs bearing the brunt. The kitchen director of a restaurant told reporters that the monthly salary of well-known chefs used to be quite generous, but now the average chef's salary does not exceed 3,000 yuan per month, while the average chef only earns about 1,000 yuan per month. The number of customers in restaurants has decreased, so reducing waiters is also a means for many restaurants to save costs, especially hot pot restaurants, where the number of waiters has been reduced by nearly half.

2. Attitude response in off-peak and peak seasons

Restaurant marketing activities are a systematic, planned and coherent business behavior. Restaurant marketing work should try to be ahead of market changes. , especially when the market trend is clear. Chinese restaurants should formulate marketing plans for the post-holiday off-season before the Spring Festival peak season begins, and then make full use of the good popularity during the Spring Festival to carry out off-season marketing promotion work in advance. There are many specific methods, and the results are often twice the result with half the effort. If you wait until the off-season and popularity is low before launching marketing promotions, the cost of marketing will be higher and the difficulty will be higher.

More and more restaurants choose to decorate their stores during the off-season. In the catering industry, this is also called store renovation. Starting from March, Shaoxing Hotel began to carry out an overall renovation of the hotel. "After several years of operation, there is a certain gap between the current software and hardware and other hotels. Therefore, we will use the off-season to carry out renovations and give it a new look." Welcome the arrival of the peak season," a person in charge of the hotel told reporters.

Tengji Old Chef and Sichuan Meizi Hot Pot completed a comprehensive renovation of the restaurant during the off-season of catering last year. The person in charge of these restaurants believes that the current catering competition is so fierce that consumers attach great importance to the hotel environment. Through the renovation of restaurants, popular elements in the catering industry can be added and the hotel's transformation can be successfully completed. Only in this way can the hotel stand in the forefront. invincible position. The person in charge of a restaurant revealed that the restaurant renovation cycle is getting shorter and shorter, from once every 5 years to once every 2 to 3 years now.

Some restaurants partially renovate while operating during the off-season to reduce costs. Ruzuimei Fashion Restaurant will slightly adjust the soft decoration in the restaurant in April to give people a refreshing feeling. The person in charge of the restaurant believes that the style of a fashionable restaurant is not static. It is a trend to constantly adjust the design of the restaurant in time according to mood and seasonal changes. However, adjustment does not have to involve knocking, making a big move, or changing the soft decoration. It is enough to transform the restaurant into a full personality.

3. Know the market and respond

This requires making correct decisions based on the restaurant’s market positioning, customer source composition, consumption motivation, and post-holiday catering market adjustment trends. Judge and analyze, and then invest limited marketing resources into the most effective target market.

For the marketing of mid- to high-end restaurants, the most important customer groups during the Spring Festival peak season are group consumption by officials (including the government and the military), business and other social groups. During this period, many restaurants focus on the general public. The individual tourists have no time to take care of it and are a little negligent. However, after the Spring Festival, the customer source structure of the catering market will change.

Due to the concentrated surprise consumption before the holiday, the group's enthusiasm for consumption will be reduced after the holiday, and the frequency of consumption will also be significantly reduced. Correspondingly, the share of household consumption and individual consumption has increased. During the holidays, weddings, birthday banquets, 100-day banquets, etc., which are submerged in numerous reunion banquets and celebration banquets, become more prominent in the off-season and become one of the main sources of income for many restaurants. Another market, such as conventions and exhibitions, tourism groups, etc., almost comes to a standstill during the Spring Festival, but it will also become a part of the catering market that cannot be ignored after the festival.

In response to these market changes, restaurants should adjust their marketing methods according to their own positioning to be targeted, simple and effective. For example, mid-range restaurants can launch more affordable family packages and white-collar lunches to attract consumption by families and white-collar office workers; they can launch "affordable wine supermarkets" to reduce the cost of customers' wine consumption and effectively overcome the contradiction of customers bringing their own wine. ; Plan more detailed and thoughtful marketing plans for weddings, birthday banquets, and 100-day banquets, and use more preferential gift items to attract consumption for booking weddings, birthday banquets, and 100-day banquets, etc. Of course, for mid- to high-end restaurants, group consumption is still the mainstream, so there should be corresponding marketing measures for this part of the customer base, and we must not focus on one and lose the other.

4. Maintain old customers

There is a famous 2:8 law in marketing theory, that is, 80% of sales are often brought by 20% of customers. There is no doubt that these 20% of customers are the most important people in the restaurant. The restaurant should sort out the customers in the past year, find out who these 20% customers are, formulate a special VIP customer maintenance plan, and have a well-trained and dedicated team to implement these plans to the letter. Customer maintenance is of course a long-term job, but it is even more important during the off-season.

5. Innovation is the driving force

After a busy peak season, restaurants cannot just take a break, because in a competitive market environment, business operations are like sailing against the current. Advance and retreat. After the holidays, dishes, promotional materials, in-store atmosphere, etc. should be adjusted in a timely manner according to changes in solar terms, consumption, and marketing themes. Many restaurants like to keep the festive decorations for the Spring Festival and refuse to remove them until the decorations are old and tattered. This is a significant feature of the lack of systematic marketing.

The off-season is relative. The person in charge of some hotels told reporters that the off-season in their hotels is not short, which serves as a good reference for many restaurants that are afraid of the off-season. Lu Jing, a marketing teacher at the School of Economics at Zhejiang University, believes that no matter it is the off-season of any industry, the test for them is how to use strategies such as mobilization, innovation, and guidance in marketing to keep the off-season going.

The person in charge of Dynasty Hotel told reporters that this year’s wedding banquet business was particularly hot, which made up for the disadvantage of fewer conference and business guests in the off-season. Therefore, the hotel hit a small peak in the off-season of March. The amount increased by more than 10% compared with the same period last year.

The introduction of innovative dishes in the off-season has injected new vitality into the off-season catering market. The reporter learned that most Shaoxing specialty restaurants such as Sichuan Weiguan, Shaoxing Restaurant, and Zuimei will replace the old dishes and introduce new dishes, and the prices are also quite affordable, which will undoubtedly arouse the appetite of many people.

Creating artificial festivals is another effective way for restaurants to cope with the off-season. During this period, major restaurants hold store celebrations and food festivals quite frequently, which are good ways to win over people. For example, Burton Western Restaurant will launch a themed food festival in the off-season, and British Western Restaurant will soon launch a Vietnamese Food Festival. These different themed activities have made the restaurant very popular.

6. Grasp the small peaks

In the off-season of catering after the Spring Festival, there are also some small consumption hot spots, such as Women’s Day on 3.8. Many units will organize female employees to have dinner together to celebrate. Female consumers will also meet up with friends to enjoy delicious food together. There will also be some different exhibition business opportunities in various places. For example, the 2009 Spring Food and Drinks Fair will be held in Chengdu in March. At that time, hundreds of thousands of merchants from all over the country and even abroad will gather in Chengdu, and there will definitely be many welcome and reception arrangements. Banquets will set off a big boom in catering consumption in the short term. Restaurants should formulate marketing plans as early as possible, carry out marketing promotion work in an orderly manner, and strive to make good gains during these small peaks in the off-season.

7. Advertising and Marketing

During peak seasons, your ads will often be submerged in a sea of ??ads.

In the off-season, moderate marketing activities combined with moderate advertising will make your restaurant more eye-catching in the entire industry, the effect of brand promotion will be better, and the effect of marketing activities will be better.

Peers are enemies. But there are also examples of colleagues who are friends. Aren’t Hongxing and Darong and the two most famous catering companies in Chengdu the best examples? There is a good metaphor: one chopstick is broken slightly, but ten chopsticks bundled together become extremely solid, and there is nothing anyone can do about it. If restaurants can put aside their differences and explore the market, then the cake in this market may be made bigger and more delicious. If a restaurant engages in a marketing campaign, considering the relationship between input and output, the momentum will definitely not be too great. But if ten or twenty restaurants jointly carry out marketing activities, the momentum will definitely be much greater with the combined strength of everyone. , the results of the activities will naturally be much better.

So, during the peak season, everyone is very busy. During the off-season, the restaurant bosses should move around more and contact each other more, maybe they can create some sparks and form a temporary relationship. alliance partnership.

8. Chopping firewood and sharpening the knife are both correct.

Promotions and discounts are not common to all restaurants. Five-star and other high-end hotels say no to discounts during the off-season for restaurants. Mr. Wang from the catering department of the International Hotel told reporters that in the off-season for catering, five-star hotels will not consider cutting prices and are not eager to sort out local or specific revenue details. Although business is much quieter during the off-season, many important tasks in the hotel are completed during this time. This task is to practice "internal strength", which is crucial to the improvement of the hotel's image.

Some specialty hotels will also conduct some basic skills training during the off-season. The person in charge of a restaurant told reporters that the off-season is not free for them. They sharpen their wood-cutting knives during the off-season so that the seeds sown in spring can harvest more fruits in autumn. During the off-season, they will intensify the efforts of chefs to innovate dishes, and will lead hotel chefs to inspect and learn from various parts of the country to find some good dishes, improve them and introduce them to attract more consumers.