Now is the perfect time to pause with purpose. Ahead of the festivities and January bookings, it’s important to assess the lay of the land. What do you want to achieve in the year ahead? What can help you to get there? How will you harness your strategy to encourage bookings? SuperControl Co-Founder, Melinda Kennedy, reflects on the passing year and shares why it’s good to pause, plan and prepare ahead of 2023.
Pause
…And breathe. As we push through the year’s final months, it’s crucial to realign and reflect. Most importantly of all, now is an excellent opportunity to celebrate your wins. We often forget to reflect on what we’ve achieved and narrow our focus exclusively to areas of improvement. The self-catering industry is fast-paced and ever-changing. Whether your goal for this year was business growth, optimising revenue or perhaps managing your work-life balance, take a moment to revel in the magic. As a self-caterer, you’re creating moments of magic for your guests on a daily basis – you’re helping to create lifelong memories, and that’s something to celebrate.
Plan
“If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.” – Yogi Berra.
It’s all too easy to fall into the trap of ‘business as usual’ without planning for what’s ahead. I get it. I’ve been in the self-catering industry since 1999, and it’s certainly no easy feat. Our industry can be uncertain. We can’t always predict what’s next, and guest booking behaviour is ever-changing. Uncertainty aside, planning will enable you to stay in control. There’s a host of tools at your disposal to help you understand how to align your business goals to data and actionable outcomes. Here are a few worth your consideration:
- Reporting, statistics, and analysis: Utilise SuperControl’s native reporting system to understand booking lead times, revenue and your competitive edge.
- Pricing strategy: Understand your pricing structure in depth with tools like dynamic pricing.
- Booking channels: Be seen in the right place, time and price with the search engines of travel.
Some questions to ask yourself when planning for the year ahead could be:
- What does ‘good’ look like for you in terms of your business outcomes?
- If you were to achieve your objectives, how would this better your business or life?
- Who needs to be involved?
- How will you know if you’ve succeeded?
By putting the right tools in place and shifting your mindset, you have the potential to make 2023 a year worth shouting about. Whether you want more bookings or to set aside more free time to pursue your life’s passions, aligning your objectives to an appropriate action plan will help you on your journey to success.
Prepare
You’ve taken time to pause and realign. You’ve drawn up plans and determined what you want to achieve in 2023. What now? Prepare. Take your plans and start putting them into action. Often what holds us back from achieving our goals is not building windmills. What do I mean by this? It relates to one of my favourite quotations:
“When the winds of change blow, some people build walls, and others build windmills.”
In essence, ‘building windmills’ means rejecting the fear of change and, instead, taking advantage of the opportunities that change cultivates. By harnessing an experimental mindset, you’ll break down the potential barriers in the way of your success. At SuperControl, we’re all about trialling and testing. You never know what you might discover. Whether that’s optimising your account, integrating with booking channels or investigating the benefits of dynamic pricing, there’s much to consider.
If you’re hoping to break the mould in the year ahead, take this time to finetune your SuperControl account. There are bucketloads of functionalities on offer that’ll support your goals, and our help centre guides are a great place to start. If you haven’t already, I recommend you explore the potential of tools such as auto emails, guest login and payment processing.
2023 will be here before we know it. Please know that the entire SuperControl team has got your back. We’re delighted to play a role in your journey and hope to help you thrive in the year ahead.
If you’re not already a member of the SuperControl community, why not make 2023 the year to join us on the road to remarkable self-catering?
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