To begin the year well, let’s take a look at the dates to remember: vacations, events, public holidays, etc. Depending on these specific days, your activity will be more or less important. It is therefore crucial to anticipate these changes.
Integrate the Google Calendar
Add this calendar on your phone/desktop: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/kontestapp.com_6oat4k4rjd0tue6dbvslab9ft4%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics
This calendar will allow you to note some interesting dates for your activities. But how to choose them? For the example below, we will take the case of a Parisian hotelier.
Selecting dates can be done in different ways. Let’s see which ones.
1 The generic chestnut of any business dealing with the public
It will be mostly public holidays or annual celebrations. Almost all companies communicate on them:
- January 1: New Year’s Eve (holiday)
- February 14: Valentine’s Day
- April 21: Easter
- April 22: Easter Monday (holiday)
- May 1: Labor Day (holiday)
- May 8: End of the 39-45 war (holiday)
- May 30: Ascension Day (holiday)
- July 14: National holiday (holiday)
- August 15: Assumption (holiday)
- November 1: All Saints’ Day (holiday)
- November 11: Armistice (holiday)
- December 24: Christmas Eve
- December 25: Christmas (holiday)
- December 31: New Year’s Eve.
Here are some dates to know, because some of them can have a significant impact on your activity. If your activity is mainly based on business tourism, the end of year holidays will bring you more rest than customers. You know from experience that there will be few people in your hotel. It’s up to you to decide whether you want to take advantage of this time to do some work or try to attract a more family-oriented clientele. For New Year’s Day, it is preferable to promote the destination as a party place with your establishment nearby. If your clientele is more mainstream, it would be better to target holidays falling on a Thursday (May 30 – August 15) – or a Tuesday (Bridges) – in order to increase your number of overnight stays/client. They could then stay from Wednesday evening to the end of the weekend with adapted offers!
2 Take into account school vacations in France… and elsewhere!
Knowing the school vacations allows you to anticipate the tourist flows and therefore the potential clientele. We will keep our example by putting ourselves in the shoes of the staff of a Parisian hotel, which receives mainly French and some German and Dutch guests. His hotel operates mainly between September and November and between January and June.
Having these dates in mind allows you to direct your communication on three axes:
- Retain your regular customers on your regular dates by adapting your offers and using yield management;
- Capture your regular clientele on different dates. This allows you to “test” other dates with a clientele already acquired;
- Capture a different clientele: If until now you only had French, German and Dutch customers, why not try other nationalities such as Belgium or Switzerland (to avoid translation costs). Check out the possible bridges in these countries and their vacations to catch their eye via targeted posts.
3 Look for events that match you
This method is the most complex, but also the most effective. When everyone else is going to rush to the simplest (vacations and vacations), stand out by finding key dates in places accessible from your workplace. Concerts, movie previews with actors coming to the venue or even trade shows. For trade shows, you can even adapt your offer with a few small details that make a difference: make your reception staff aware of the event and accessibility and add the program in your rooms with practical information. Why not adapt the opening hours of your restaurant/PDJ or your services. In one calendar, you have many possibilities, for all budgets. It’s up to you to decide how much time and budget you want to devote to it. But remember, it’s all in the details.
