May arrives, occupancy drops and the reaction is always the same: cut the rate. The problem is that a public discount teaches the market to wait for the discount, and next year nobody books at full price.
1. Swap price for value
Instead of COP $100,000 off, offer late check-out, a transfer, a dinner or the tour included. It costs you less, it is perceived as equal or better, and it does not touch your published rate.
2. Sell to people who already came
Your past-guest list is the cheapest asset you own. A well-written message to two hundred people who already stayed beats any campaign to strangers, at a fraction of the cost.
3. Change the audience, not the price
Low season for leisure travellers is high season for others:
- Corporate and training during the week.
- Events: weddings, birthdays, family gatherings.
- Long stays: digital nomads, project workers.
- Locals: day passes and weekend plans for people who live in the city.
The last one is the most wasted on the Coast: plenty of people in Barranquilla or Santa Marta go out at weekends and do not know you exist.
4. Keep awareness running
Switching ads off completely in low season is what makes high season expensive: you reach October with no audience that knows you and buy all your reach from scratch. A small, constant destination-content budget keeps the base alive.
5. Fix what you cannot touch in high season
New photos, Google listing up to date, saved replies rewritten, WhatsApp templates, the website refreshed, the team trained. In January you will not have time for any of it.
6. Plant next season
Four to six weeks before the next peak, ads should be running and your past-guest list already contacted. The best high seasons are built in the low one.
How to build the low-season offer
Three rules so it does not cannibalise high season:
- With start and end dates. A permanent offer stops being an offer and becomes your new price.
- With a condition. Weekdays, minimum two nights, prepayment: something that makes it different, not just cheaper.
- Not published everywhere. If it is for your list, keep it in your list.
What an empty room really costs
An unsold room does not cost zero: it costs its share of the month’s fixed costs. That is why it is worth selling at a thin margin rather than leaving it empty, as long as you do not break your public rate. This is exactly where value-added packages work: you hold the price and you fill.
What to do with the team
Low season is when you train, document and fix. A team that learned to handle WhatsApp properly in May is the one that closes twice as much in December. If your team is idle in low season and drowning in high season, that is a planning problem, not a demand problem.
If you want to map the year with seasons and budget, we do it with the ads.
Facebook and Instagram campaigns built to generate conversations and bookings, not just clicks.
Keep reading
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Digital marketing for hotels in Santa Marta: where to start
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How much to spend on Meta Ads if you run a small hotel
How to set the budget from your average booking and occupancy, and why splitting it across three objectives beats putting it all into sales.
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How to know which ad brought the booking (instead of guessing)
Click-to-WhatsApp ads are measured differently. Referral parameters, conversion events and the report that actually helps.
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