Many resorts look at the reducing costs, adding service fees, running promotions and increasing occupancy.   But, if you haven’t looked at romance – specifically honeymoons and destination weddings –  for driving new revenues, you’re missing out. These lucrative niche markets are often the most overlooked areas on a resort’s spreadsheet where revenues can be increased easily, and affordably.

Consider a honeymoon registry: Honeymoon registries are part of a 19 billion dollar gift registry market and a 12 million dollar honeymoon market.  Are you part of it? Today, couples are skipping the blenders and the toasters and opting for “experiences”.   Honeymoon registries allow a bridal couple to create gift registry a wish list of the items and activities of their honeymoon as wedding gifts.  Their friends and family can then purchase a wedding gift that gives them the opportunity to participate in creating memories that couples will cherish for a lifetime.

Increase your destination wedding bookings and revenues:  Destination weddings are popular with both wedding couples and hoteliers – couples love the ease of and cost savings of a destination wedding, and hoteliers love the group bookings that come with it. 30% of all destination weddings from the US take place outside of the continental US – where the Caribbean is one of the most popular destinations.

But how do you increase the number of wedding bookings and drive new revenues?  First, take a look at your weddings page on your website as if you are a bride or a groom.  Today’s bride may want the wedding itself to be “old-fashioned”, but they want the planning and booking of their wedding to be easy, on-line and mobile. They want to be able to book their wedding online if they’re in Chicago and it’s 10 o’clock at night. With this in mind, does your wedding website offer what today’s wedding couple want?  Is it filled with detailed information to help them make a decision?  Does it offer images and pricing?  Is it easy and “mobile responsive”?

Alternatively, rather than re-creating the wheel (especially if you have limited marketing and technology resources) seek out a technology solution that complements your wedding page with these type of interactive services.  As an example, properties using The Wedding Optimizer ™  as their wedding technology solution are seeing an average increase in the number of wedding bookings of over 200%, and wedding revenues for “wedding options and extras” of over 300%.  (This is in addition to, or above and beyond, the F&B and room nights which will obviously also increase as your number of destination weddings bookings grow).

So ask yourself, do you have what today’s wedding and honeymoon couples want?  And if you don’t have a honeymoon bridal registry and / or an interactive wedding booking platform, add these to your romance portfolio and watch the revenues grow.