How to sell to Hokkaido's lodging and restaurant industry | 8,789 establishments in Sapporo and how to avoid peak seasons

Many establishments, but little time to read

Sapporo has 8,789 accommodation and food service establishments, more than construction (6,908) or healthcare and welfare (7,677). However, during business hours this industry hardly ever looks at paper.

Send to this industry at a single uniform time and your fax gets buried under other paper and thrown away. It is one of the few industries where designing the sending time alone changes the results.

Timing: don't miss Hokkaido's tourism calendar

• Summer (Jul–Aug) and winter (Dec–Feb) are peak seasons — in the middle of tourist season, no proposal gets considered, however good
• Welcome/farewell party and year-end party seasons (Mar–Apr, Dec) — restaurants are swamped
• Aim for the off-season — right after peak season, when they think about preparing for the next one, is when decisions get made

Because Hokkaido's tourism waves are sharper than Honshu's, getting the timing right also pays off more.

How to split the list

• Lodging — hotels / ryokan / guesthouses and pensions. Splitting by number of rooms changes the proposal
• Food service — business type (izakaya, restaurant, café, ramen, yakiniku, etc.) and number of seats
• Chain or independent — chains decide at head office, independents decide at the owner level. Both the destination and the copy are different
• Area — within Sapporo by ward; elsewhere in Hokkaido you can also group by tourist area (Niseko, Furano, Noboribetsu, Hakodate, etc.)

Themes that work in the copy

• Cost of goods and purchasing costs
• Staff shortages, shifts and hiring
• Attracting customers (reservations, inbound tourists, repeat visits)
• Equipment, consumables and hygiene

How to think about response rates is explained in What response rate can fax DM get?. Because this industry is large, it can work on volume even with a low response rate, which is an advantage.

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