From Festive Boom to Long-Term Growth: Capitalizing on Holidays | Modern Restaurant Management

The festive season represents the single biggest opportunity of the year for many venues to increase revenue and profit. But too often, that surge in revenue and footfall fizzles over January and beyond. The challenge that many restaurants and bars face is that they are ill-equipped to truly take advantage of this season in a way that enables them to grow revenue and build loyalty beyond the December rush. 

There is a powerful opportunity to use existing customer data to reach out to guests before and during the festive period, yet many operators don’t have an effective customer acquisition and outreach strategy in place that entices guests back throughout the season and after it ends. Another common problem is that data is stored in the wrong places, and is often not aligned with POS data. Ultimately, teams are not focusing on the best and most effective revenue-generating tactics, or using the right tools to support them. 

The Festive Season Magnifies the Operational Gap

The festive season is crunch time and every guest touchpoint needs to count: from initial table booking to final payment. Each step of the guest journey needs to deliver maximum impact, especially for operators who are depending on festive season revenues to carry them through the early part of the following year. Unfortunately, this time of year can also expose and magnify operational gaps. 

There are often staff shortages, teams experience burnout and are stretched as they juggle manual processes during the busiest period of the year. Aside from staff exhaustion, there are other common challenges that operators face. While many appreciate the need to invest in technology to support their businesses and automate processes, a recurring problem is that a lot of the systems they use are outdated and disconnected. Table booking systems, loyalty programs and payment technologies often run in silos, which makes personalised marketing impossible and also impacts the guest experience. 

Another issue faced by larger, multi-venue operators is that head office teams often have limited venue visibility – and access to meaningful data – that explains what is working on the ground at a site level, in real time. Without accurate information, management teams cannot precisely attribute operational and marketing efforts, which in turn means they cannot amplify and replicate what is working. This lack of insight can lead to missed marketing opportunities as a result of guest data being stuck in disconnected data silos, tools and spreadsheets. 

Developing Loyal Brand Advocates

Consumers now expect brands to understand and anticipate their needs, and hospitality is no exception. Treating every guest the same not only wastes valuable data, it undermines the opportunity to build lasting loyalty. This is why it’s important for restaurants, pubs and hotels to unify their customer records. Have they ensured that their table booking, Wi-Fi login, payments and reviews data all flows into one unified CRM? Is this profile information accessible to all team members, top-to-bottom? Does it equip them with the required knowledge of preferences, history and loyalty that makes for a magic level of hospitality? 

Ensuring this level of data-based intelligence is possible enables marketing and operations teams to personalize marketing at scale. Festive offers can be sent based on guest preferences, purchases and visit history. Loyalty can automatically be rewarded without relying on staff to remember names, or to ask guests if they have a loyalty card. A consistent hospitality brand experience can be delivered across all locations, even venues operating under different sub-brands. Essentially, consolidating data delivers personalized marketing that feels familiar, and not just an anonymous service. It can drive repeat visits, and, hopefully, turn first-time diners into long-term, loyal brand advocates.  

It is also vital for heads of marketing and operations to be able to prove which campaigns are working and driving growth. Have operators joined the dots between their marketing campaigns and the guests driving revenue? Can they see which campaigns brought guests in, what they spent, and whether they had a good experience? These are the questions that can be answered when those key channels are unified.  Bringing it all together enables operators to track the ROI across every location and brand, identify high-value guests and what attracts them, and it enables future promotions to be optimised based on real transaction and visit data. 

Guest Engagement Reimagined

A unified guest engagement platform can drive success over Christmas and beyond. Consider this scenario: A customer books a Christmas meal through an immersive table booking flow on your website. During the meal, they log onto guest Wi-Fi and their data flows into your CRM system, augmenting the information taken from their table booking. 

There is no duplication of data and no data is lost. They eat their meal and have a great time, get the bill and pay. What they ordered – and how much they spent –  is automatically saved in the CRM, and staff can instantly see on the payment screens that this is the second time the customer’s payment card has been used at this venue this month. It’s a prime opportunity to acknowledge and thank the guest for their loyalty. Simultaneously, this triggers a marketing offer and staff are able to immediately offer the guest an automatic 20 percent-off voucher for their next visit.

After the guest has left your venue, the marketing team’s automated comms immediately sends a personalised ‘thank you’ message and review request. This is typically the best time to seek a review. Negative reviews can be dealt with swiftly (and before they are published online), and positive reviews can be rewarded with additional loyalty points or rewards.  Since menu preferences are now known, future marketing campaigns to this person can be refined in January and throughout the following year. 

Now imagine this level of personalized guest experience at scale – across every brand and venue thanks to data unification. The potential is immense. The festive boom brings more than just increased footfall. It brings data, insights, and huge opportunity for growth. That data, and all that it offers, is richer than ever before. New bookings. Group events. Walk-ins. Returning regulars. They all offer great potential for building loyalty, long-term revenue and profitable growth.