Hotel Marketing Departments Aim To Capitalize on Bleisure Demand, Shifting Booking Patterns

Hotel sales and marketing departments have revised their strategies to win back guests, particularly business travelers and groups, which have lagged in the recovery of hotel demand from the pandemic.

In the spring and summer, Hotel News Now has reported on the various ways hotel marketing has evolved to meet higher demand and compete for business, including reestablishing relationships with corporate accounts, growing group bookings and more.

Hotels reliant on business-transient demand and group bookings have reevaluated how to bring corporate clients back for meetings, HNN contributor Laura Koss-Feder reports. Dan Surette, chief sales officer at Omni Hotels & Resorts, said his company made some adjustments in its sales department as business travel vastly decreased during the pandemic.

"Early on, there was very little business travel and we consolidated our transient global sales and our property sellers that were dedicated to this segment," Surette said. "We kept a handful of seasoned sellers that could support the hotels and the customers as we headed into the next [request for proposal] season; we have slowly grown that team as business travel has started to return."

Omni also offered special rates to corporate clients to entice them to extend their business trips to include vacation days.