Top 4 Ways to Increase Hotel Revenue for Tournament Directors

• Posted: Jun 24, 2022

1. Offer Real Discounts Compared to Standard Rates

Teams like to book the cheapest rate. This may seem obvious but most tournaments (and traditional travel agencies) do not focus on this at all. The best way to increase your revenue is to find ways to offer the cheapest rates.

How Lucid Travel Helps:

• Discounted Room Blocks - Lucid’s experienced team of travel agents can reach out to hotels for your events to negotiate discounts, comped rooms, hotel reward points, and more.

• Automated Deals - Lucid pulls in rates from 40+ vendors including OTAs (like Expedia, Booking.com, etc), hotel direct rates (through the GDS), and non-public wholesale rates (these deals are not available online). This allows tournaments to offer deals at any hotel, automatically - while still earning revenue on each reservation made.

2. Allow Teams to Book at Any Hotel (not just the room blocks set up)

Most tournaments only set up room blocks at certain hotels. If they host Stay-to-Play events, teams are limited to the hotels set up by the tournament director. The best case scenario is to set up a strategy that allows teams/travelers to book at any hotel (while still allowing tournament directors to earn their rebates).

How Lucid Travel Helps:

• Automated Deals - Lucid pulls in rates from 40+ vendors including OTAs (like Expedia, Booking.com, etc), hotel direct rates (through the GDS), and non-public wholesale rates (these deals are not available online). This allows tournaments to offer deals at any hotel, automatically - while still earning revenue on each reservation made.

3. Have a Stellar Marketing Plan

Getting hotel deals set up is only half the battle. Making sure that you appropriately market your hotels to teams/travelers is typically what most tournament directors struggle with because they simply do not have the time.

Here are the most effective marketing strategies (in order of importance):

1. Integration in your Registration Process - This means that you make sure hotel information is available to teams that register automatically. This is done by having your hotel links and information on the page directly after a team registers and in an email directly after as well.

2. Text Messaging - Text messaging is the best way to get through the noise. People open and respond to text messages far more often than email and other mediums.

3. Email Messaging - You need to have multiple email reminders sent to teams registered for your tournaments. The best time to send emails is 60 days out, 30 days out, and 14 days out from your event start date.

4. Website - Adding hotel information to your website and event web pages is one of the easiest ways to increase hotel sales/revenue.

5. Social Media - Making sure you post hotels deals to social media is another great way to get the word out.

How Lucid Travel Helps:

• Integration with Registration Partners - Lucid is partnered with several of the leading tournament registration companies in the sports space including Exposure Events, LeagueApps, GotSoccer, TourneyMachine, AES, SincSports, DanceComp Genie, and more. This allows you to directly connect your event registration process with your hotel/lodging strategy saving you time and increasing your revenue.

• Email Marketing Automation & Reminders - When your event registration data is added into Lucid Travel, all the teams/contacts will receive automatic reminders about hotels at the times that they are most likely to book rooms:

  • 60 days from check-in

  • 30 days from check-in

  • 14 days from check-in

  • 7 days from check-in

4. Gives Teams Incentives to Book Hotels

Lastly, you have to give teams a reason to book with you. Billionaire Charlie Munger said, “Show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome.” Here are the 2 best ways to do this:

1. Implement a Stay-to-Play Policy - This is very popular in certain sports and with larger tournaments. Stay-to-Play just means that teams registered are required to book their hotel rooms using the tournament directors process in order to play in the tournament. Teams that don’t follow the rules are typically required to pay a fee. This is by far the best way to increase revenue from hotels but it can rub some teams the wrong way if done poorly.

2. Offer a Team Rebate if a Team Books 8+ Rooms - This is an easy way to give teams a reason to use your hotel deals but it requires paying back some of the rebates you earn on the hotel sales.

How Lucid Travel Helps:

• Best-in-Class Stay-to-Play Reporting & Process - With Lucid Travel, you can load in the teams/contacts coming to your event and use our automated Stay-to-Play report to see a very simple table of the team registered on one side and the teams that have booked rooms on the other so that you can easily follow up with the teams that haven’t booked. The Lucid team can also follow up with the teams that haven’t booked for you (to make your life even easier).

• Automated Email Marketing with Rebate Incentive for Teams - With Lucid Travel, you can load in the teams/contacts coming to your event so that they receive automatic email reminders to book their hotel rooms. The reminders are sent at the most common booking times to optimize hotel sales. The best part is that Lucid pays the rebate to the teams for you and it doesn’t effect your earnings at all!

To learn more about how Lucid Travel helps tournament directors save time and earn more revenue, click here.

You can also sign up for free or schedule a demo meeting to see how Lucid looks and works.