The Low Season Survival Guide for Pubs, Hotels & Restaurants – Part 1.

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Proven Ways Professional Hospitality Businesses Stay Profitable Year-Round (Without Discounting or Relying on OTAs)

When the clocks go back and peak visitor numbers dip, many pubs, hotels, and restaurants start to feel the pressure. The temptation is to discount rooms, run constant specials, or hand huge commissions to OTAs just to stay afloat.

But the most successful hospitality businesses—the ones who thrive year-round—don’t rely on slashing prices.

They rely on strategy.

At Alexander Marketing, we work closely with pubs, inns, restaurants, boutique hotels, and holiday accommodation providers across the UK. And year after year, we see the same truth:
The low season can be your most profitable season—if you use it properly.

Here are 10 proven, high-impact ways to stay profitable through winter (and even grow), without discounting or depending on third-party platforms.

1. Turn Your Low Season Into a “Local Season”

When tourism slows, locals become your best opportunity.

Create offers, events, and messaging designed specifically for your local audience:

  • Sunday roasts, midweek dining clubs, locals-only tasting menus

  • Coffee loyalty cards

  • Local supplier showcases

  • Quiz nights, workshops, live music, themed nights

Market directly to people within a 5–10 mile radius using:
✔ Facebook Ads (low cost, hyper-targeted)
✔ Local partnerships
✔ Email lists
✔ Community groups

Local trade is the heartbeat that carries great hospitality businesses through quieter months.

2. Position Your Business as a Winter Experience

Winter isn’t dead season.
Winter is cosy season — and customers love that.

The hospitality businesses that thrive lean into:

  • Fireside escapes

  • Winter warmers

  • Seasonal menus

  • Festive atmospheres

  • Post-walk pints

  • Snug Sunday stayovers

If your place is cosy, warm, atmospheric, or unique in winter… shout about it.
Create content that feels like winter: fires crackling, steaming dishes, blankets, candles, snow-covered exteriors.

Make your venue a destination.

3. Build a Strong Direct Booking Strategy (and stop paying 15%+ OTA commissions)

OTAs bring volume—but they take a huge margin.

Low season is the ideal time to strengthen your direct booking strategy:

✔ Add a Best Price Guarantee
✔ Create direct-only perks (late checkout, drink voucher, room upgrade)
✔ Strengthen email funnels (abandoned basket emails alone boost revenue by 10–20%)
✔ Improve your website’s booking flow
✔ Use retargeting ads to recover browsing guests

The goal?
When someone finds you on Booking.com… they book directly with you.

4. Launch Seasonal Packages — But NOT Discounts

Packaging increases perceived value without lowering price.

Examples:

  • “Winter Warmer Stay” → dinner, breakfast, mulled wine

  • “Hikers’ Retreat” → packed lunch + maps + boot drying + local trails

  • “Midweek Escape” → bottle of wine + early check-in

  • “Foodie Break” → tasting menu stayover

Packages improve average spend while making your low season more attractive.

5. Strengthen Your Email List — Your Most Profitable Winter Tool

Email is the most powerful tool hospitality businesses have. It drives repeat visits, seasonal bookings, and local loyalty.

During low season, focus on:
✔ Collecting more emails (table bookings, Wi-Fi, competitions)
✔ Sending valuable, story-led newsletters
✔ Promoting events and packages
✔ Rewarding returning guests

The inns, pubs, and hotels with strong email lists rarely suffer in winter.

6. Host Events That Fill Slow Nights

Events transform dead nights into revenue nights.

Examples that work exceptionally well:

  • Tasting menus

  • Fire & Feast nights

  • Wine or gin pairings

  • Comedy nights

  • Craft workshops

  • Murder mystery dinners

  • Meet-the-brewer events

  • Seasonal celebrations

Promote these heavily on:
✔ Social media
✔ Email
✔ Your website
✔ Posters in-house

Events fill seats, create buzz, and give people a reason to leave home in cold weather.

7. Create Content That Makes People Want to Visit

Winter is when good content really matters.

Focus on content themes that convert:

  • Comfort food shots

  • Steaming hot drinks

  • Fireside ambience

  • Staff behind-the-scenes moments

  • Short videos of winter dishes being prepared

  • Menu highlights

  • Midweek specials

  • Walk → eat → stay content

Customers need to see the experience before choosing to book.

8. Create & Make Use of Local Partnerships

Partnerships help you tap into audiences you don’t yet reach.

Some examples:

✔ Walking groups
✔ Cycling clubs
✔ Local shops & attractions
✔ Breweries, bakeries, butchers
✔ Dog walkers & pet shops
✔ Wedding suppliers
✔ Activity providers (kayaking, climbing, tours)

Cross-promotion grows both audiences — especially useful in low season.

9. Sell Gift Vouchers (Peak Winter Revenue)

Gift vouchers often generate thousands in revenue at the quietest time of year.

Create vouchers for:

  • Dining experiences

  • Afternoon tea

  • Weekend stayovers

  • Themed menus

  • Brunch & prosecco

  • Chef’s table nights

Promote heavily from November to January — and make purchasing seamless online.

10. Invest in Your Website, Photos, & Brand During the Off Season

The low season is the best time to fix the things you never have time for in the summer.

Use this time to upgrade your:
✔ Website
✔ Booking engine
✔ Menus & copywriting
✔ Brand identity
✔ Photography & video
✔ SEO
✔ Social strategy

Every improvement you make in low season compounds in peak season.

Your future guests are already looking.
Make sure what they see converts.

Final Thoughts: The Low Season Isn’t the Problem — The Strategy Is.

Smart hospitality businesses don’t brace for winter…
They prepare for it.
They use it.
They leverage it.
They grow through it.

Whether you’re a pub, hotel, inn, restaurant, or food-led business, these strategies will help you:

  • Increase direct bookings

  • Build local loyalty

  • Strengthen your brand

  • Protect profitability

  • Reduce dependence on discounting or OTAs

  • Grow sustainably all year round

If you’d like help implementing any of these strategies — from social media to websites, email funnels, brand identity, or photography — Alexander Marketing specialises in hospitality growth.

Get in touch and let’s build your low-season success plan.

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How To Measure SEO Results – Rand Fishkin Moz

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An interview with Rand Fishkin from Moz being asked all the tough questions. Questions like “what is is the role of an SEO? how to measure SEO results?” and “what are the future trends in online marketing for 2015?”. Recorded in October 2014 but still a lot of very relevant stuff in here.

Rand’s insights were excellent as usual.

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SEO Things You Should Be Doing in the First Year of Your Website’s Life

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By now, most site owners realise the importance and value of SEO in the development and growth of their site. A properly optimised site is going to rank better in the search engines, see more targeted traffic being directed over, have a higher conversion rate and much more. However, SEO is incredibly long term and nothing can rush time. It takes time for a site to build a good trust factor with the search engines and until that happens, most of your off-site SEO efforts are going to produce minimal results.

If you recently launched your site and are already looking into SEO, here are a few things you should focus your time and energy on.

Start a Blog
Start blogging right away. Start with at least one blog post a week and see if you can work up to one a day within the first year of your blog’s life. That may seem like a huge ordeal now, but you’d be surprised at how easy it gets to write a 350-500 word blog post with practice. You’ll learn how to better formulate your thoughts, present a single idea and flush it out entirely with time. If you aren’t confident in your writing ability or are struggling to come up with topics, turn to your employees and co-workers for help. The worst thing you could do is launch a blog and then not routinely update it with fresh content.

It takes a long time to hone your writing skills, find and develop your niche, build your reputation and attract loyal readers to your blog, so don’t expect to see major results fast. However, just like your site, as your blog ages it earns more trust from the search engines. Individual blog posts can start to rank for targeted keywords, increasing your online brand presence.

Build Your Social Network
If you are just getting onboard the social media marketing train, you’re in for a surprise! Social media marketing takes a lot more time than most companies realise, and it needs a solid strategy to run on. Don’t walk into social media blind and hope you’ll figure it out before something goes wrong. Take the first year of your site’s life to really develop your social profiles and connect with your target audience. What kind of content are they looking for from you? When is the best time to engage them? Which sites do they spend most of their time on? If you want your social media marketing efforts to be effective, you need to understand the behavior of your target audience so you can better reach them.

Focus on On-Site Optimization
The first year of your site’s life should really be spent focusing on the site itself. Don’t worry too much about developing a full blown link building strategy just yet; it’s more important to make sure your site is in the best shape it can be! Work on creating great webpage content, developing an internal linking structure that helps keep your visitor engaged, tweaking your landing pages to improve their conversion rate and so forth. Your website is going to be the hub of the rest of your Internet marketing. It doesn’t matter how great everything is off-site if your website doesn’t measure up. At the end of the day, it is your website that is going to convince visitors to act. Does it matter how many show up or how they got there if you website fails to convert?

Plan an Editorial Calendar
Content pretty much fuels all of your SEO and social media marketing. Without great content, you don’t give your target audience a real reason to check out your site, profile or blog. In addition to all the content you have to create for your sites, you also need to start looking into 3rd party sites where you can publish guest content. Take the first year of your site’s life to build relationships with industry bloggers and other site owners that allow guest articles to be published on their site. Identify which popular industry blogs cater to your target audience and start laying the groundwork to get one of your articles published there. If you can create an editorial calendar for you to follow, you’ll be able to get a jumpstart on your content marketing.

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