November 6th, 2024

The Definitive Guide to Black Friday for Hoteliers

by Pete DiMaio

Other industries use massive sales at the end of the year to push their profitability from the red to black, the reason behind the term Black Friday. Even among the massive success in other industries, far too many resorts and hotels aren’t taking part in this giant annual shopping spree. Millions of dollars in bookings are lost yearly. The sooner hoteliers can make Black Friday sales work for them, the sooner revenue projections and rate yielding for the following year can take place.

TravelBoom’s guide to Black Friday for hoteliers will walk you through everything you need to know for your Black Friday and Cyber Monday sale strategies. Already know what you’re looking for? Jump to key sections like Background, Strategy & Plan, Measuring Results, and the Cheat Sheet Summary.

Background on Black Friday for Hotels

Through extensive experience and research, TravelBoom has found definitive proof that guests want hotels to participate in sales. We have also found that these sales do not cannibalize bookings, and that the revenue on the books allows a more aggressive rate management strategy for the upcoming year.

Typically we have seen peak bookings on Cyber Monday with that one day representing the highest booking value for the year as well as highest conversion rates for the year.

These results aren’t unique cases. When properties offer sales and promote them effectively, they’re likely to see the same successes. Here’s the reasoning behind why Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales are so effective for hotels:

Spending Sprees: The Shopping Momentum Effect, when someone starts spending money and wants to keep doing so, leads to a higher volume of purchases across all industries during this time of year
No ‘Mo FOMO: Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) makes shoppers more likely to purchase when your sale is positioned as a true “this time only!” deal. Travelers don’t want to miss out on the opportunity to save money on a fantastic trip.
‘Tis the Season: Black Friday and Cyber Monday kick off the holiday shopping season, and a recent emphasis on sustainability and experiential gifting positions gifts like family vacations and romantic getaways as exciting holiday gifts.

Launching Your Hotel’s Black Friday/Cyber Monday Strategy

The value of running a Black Friday/Cyber Monday is clear, though how to create an effective Black Friday sale strategy for your hotel can be a bit more confusing. TravelBoom is here to demystify building a strong hotel sale strategy, step by step.

TravelBoom’s first recommendation is to start your planning early. Give yourself and your team the time you need to build an amazing program, and you’ll see the results in bookings, revenue, and ultimately a higher RevPAR.

Meet With Your Revenue Management Team

Getting your revenue management team and the other teams at your hotel on the same page is critical. Meet with them to clearly understand your early-year pace, anticipated rack rates for the upcoming year, and how they plan to yield rates throughout the year. This is how you’ll determine a correct and reasonable starting point for your rates, and decide how aggressive of an offer you can promote.

This revenue management meeting will also be fundamental in ensuring that your Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale offer is the best possible for the entire year.

Develop Best Offer Possible

Once you have met with the revenue management team, you need to develop the best (the very best) offer you can put together. Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales are most effective when you can create urgency and a fear of missing out.

This is the salient point of the entire sale. Your offer must be the best deal your property is going to offer all year. If you break ranks later in the year, you risk destroying your guests confidence and ruining any chance for future Black Friday success.

Your offer doesn’t always have to be about the price. Your hotel can find success in offers and deals that go beyond price. For instance, TravelBoom has found the following can work very well for hotels looking to offer sales that aren’t rate-based:

Value adds, such as gifts with purchase and discounts at on-site amenities
Complimentary room upgrades during the sale for guests who have already booked their stays or even guests already on the property
Resort credits for future use
Gift card sales with bonus value (purchase $100 gift card and get a $10 bonus card)

This is why advanced planning is important — give yourself time to craft the perfect offer for your audience that will wow your guests and encourage them to whip out those wallets.

Monitor The Competition

Whether you’re a seasoned Black Friday marketer or diving in for the first time, it is paramount that you keep a close eye on the competition. Take note of the offers they have run in the past, what their pricing strategy looks like, and how they promote their sales. Competitor monitoring for Black Friday and Cyber Monday can be difficult since everyone will be launching their sales at roughly the same time. However, these strategies can help:

Try The Wayback Machine, where you can enter competitor sites and see snapshots of past versions of their websites. Check out snapshots from Black Fridays and Cyber Mondays of the past. You may even find success on the week or two leading up to these dates.
Save examples of what your hotel’s competitors are doing this year. This will help with next year’s plan.

Have a plan, but be flexible during the sale and adapt if needed. Keep a close eye on your analytics and post-performance so you don’t miss out on opportunities to adapt.

Develop Your Promotional Strategy

Your promotional strategy should utilize every place where your property has a presence, including avenues that typically may not be productive for your day-to-day marketing. Some of the best places to promote your hotel’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales include:

Your property’s website
Paid search (don’t forget your audience matches)
Paid and organic social
Email marketing
Partnerships with your chamber, CVB, or destination portals
Paid online options you might typically overlook such as YouTube, OTT content, Instagram, TikTok, and others
Targeted print campaigns

Beyond your outlets, consider your sales tactics. Remember it’s all about urgency and FOMO. We’ve found countdown timers work incredibly well: in every test, the countdown timer improved conversion rates whether on websites, emails, or paid search.own timer improves conversion rates whether on websites, emails, or paid search.

Invest Time & Resources Into Creative

This once-a-year sale should have the benefit of your creative “A” game with a suite of ads, banners, emails, and creative layouts that contain a uniform sale message with compelling language. Start early, invest the money, and roll out a campaign that will not only make you proud but also push your customers to take action.

Have a Great Game Day Plan

Black Friday and Cyber Monday should not be sneaking up on your hotel’s staff, but creating a during-sale staffing plan makes a lot of sense. Before your sale starts, begin by:

Ensuring your call center staff are aware of the sale and are prepared for the high call volume
Make sure your site and hosting providers are aware of the sale and have a specific plan for handling additional bandwidth
Keeping lines of communication open: Black Friday sales start early, which means you’re going to need to have someone on call should issues arise. Have contact with your PMS provider, website team, marketing team, revenue management, and anyone else you can think of. Let them know that you may be calling and you expect someone to answer the line.

Measuring Black Friday and Cyber Monday Results

Results always matter. When you’re looking at large-scale sales such as your hotel’s Black Friday sale, you want to make sure your reporting ducks are in a row. This goes beyond UTM tagging some links — you need to put thought into what you want to get out of your campaign, and what kind of data you will need to make decisions about next year’s campaign.

As you build out your analytics strategy:

Ensure you set benchmarks for success
Go beyond “campaign” level tagging so you can properly group which elements of your campaign are working most effectively. Medium, Source, and Campaign Content are your friends—use them effectively
Consider phone and chat conversions and how those will best integrate into your reporting
TravelBoom loves ABT, or Always Be Testing. Since your Black Friday sale is very limited in time, consider advance user-testing of your creative and offer to ensure it resonates with your potential guests

TravelBoom Tip: Google’s Data Studio is easy to use and a powerhouse report display system. Create a dedicated Data Studio report and share with the team. This way you can isolate your sales campaign performance and view results in near-real time.

Black Friday Best Practices Cheat Sheet

Ready to launch your hotel’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday sale? Follow these step-by-step instructions and you’re going to find it pushes this year into the black as well as setting up next year for early success.

Plan Ahead: The time to start planning your Black Friday sale was last month, but starting now is not too late. A properly run campaign takes time to develop.
Include Revenue Management Early: Your revenue management team will need to do the heavy lifting to determine the right price point or percentage discount to lead the sale.
Create The Best Deal: The best deal should be that — THE BEST DEAL! If you don’t hold the line, your future Black Fridays will fail. Exclusive add-ons such as a free breakfast, t-shirt, or resort credit go a long way to really ramp up the FOMO.
Give Your Guest History The Best Deal: Plan to offer a great deal to your site traffic, but make sure your guest history either has “exclusive early access” or something that rewards them for already being part of your family.
Invest In Creative: You’re competing with thousands of deals from thousands of other hotels. Be sure your creative is eye-catching and compelling. It should also be uniform for the sale across all platforms (email, social, site, print, display, etc).
Countdown Timers Work: Seriously, just put them everywhere.
Align Your Paid Tactics: Making sure all your paid tactics are aligned is incredibly important for not only launching your campaigns but also taking them down. Don’t forget the multitude of opportunities you have access to but may not have taken advantage of in the past such as OTT, YouTube, and others.
Alert Your Technology Providers: Make sure your site and your booking engine can handle the surge in traffic and bookings.
Alert Your Staff: Your staff will need to be ready to field calls, chats, social media DMs, and be ready to jump in should anything start going sideways. You may want to plan for an on-call schedule and have extra staff on-hand.
Plan For An AAR: Congrats, you made it through Black Friday! Hopefully it was a great success. Now’s the time to meet with your team and document what worked and what didn’t work.
Schedule Next Year’s Kick-Off: Go ahead and create a meeting invite well in advance so you’re ahead of the curve in planning for next year.

In Conclusion: Hotel Strategies for Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Hotels and resorts have a great opportunity every year to take advantage of a sales feeding frenzy. Whether you enjoy the craziness of the season or not… it is likely your guests do. Do not waste the opportunity to jump in with the sharks and make Black Friday and Cyber Monday your property’s sale event of the year.

To recap, our data shows that Black Friday sales are effective for hotels and allow you to get ahead of the yield management curve. Properties that participate see the highest sales and conversion rates for the entire year. While properties do see a surge in bookings, they also don’t see a post-sale lull in conversions. This is a key point and our data over more than a decade of managing Black Friday sales for clients bears this out.

Can we help? TravelBoom Hotel Marketing is here to lend a hand and make your marketing efforts work double-time. Reach out to us today for help and check out some of these other great resources.