You're a motel owner / operator.  Maybe a hospitality franchisee.
Your facility is well-located near a busy highway exit.  So are three brand-name competitors.
You have 120 rooms, and average 75% occupancy.
You want to boost that occupancy rate to 85%, maybe even 90%, so you can earn thousands of dollars extra each month.
How can you do it, and simultaneously deliver a bigger ROI in the process?

One way is to modernize the motel's major sign and software in order to implement occupancy-based pricing, like the airlines do.

Huh?  What is occupancy-based pricing?

Airlines and motels are similar; airlines sell a limited number of seats per flight, while motels sell a limited number of rooms each night.
Each seat or room that goes unoccupied and unpurchased is a revenue opportunity lost forever.  You already know this.

Airlines price seats according to WHEN seats sell.  They know via extensive booking history and formulas that they can raise or lower their prices BY THE HOUR, if necessary, to maximize the revenue that could be generated by a specific flight's passenger load.  They don't necessarily have to sell every seat.  It's knowing the time coupled with the price the passenger is willing to pay that maximizes the airline flight's revenue.
Hotels and motels could do the same if only they had the tools to do so.

And now they do.  The outdoor LED message board, coupled with dynamic or automated programming can be used together to provide occupancy-based 
pricing for almost any hotel or motel.

An outdoor LED (light-emitting-diode) message board can be programmed at will.

Let's say it's a slow night, and it looks like occupancy at the normal rack rate of $79 will be only 60% (72 rooms), or $5,688 income for the night.
If you instantly could advertise a special, tonight-only rate for bookings after 8pm for just $49, could you fill 12 more rooms via walk-ins (adding $588 or 10% to the night's revenue)?  If you could do it for one night, couldn't you also do so for 30 nights per month, generating an incremental revenue of $17,640?

Conversely, maybe you're having a great booking night (85%, 102 rooms, just 18 remaining un-booked) because of a storm or nearby event or convention.  Why not advertise what's left? Your outdoor LED message sign could say "Just 6 convention rooms left" (even though there are 18 un-booked, a scarcity threat creates demand) and keep the price at $79.

You could do both of these, plus many other up-to-the-minute messaging activities, all from your PC, if you had an outdoor LED message board.

"Oh, but LED message boards are so expensive, and we don't have the money lying around to buy and install one of those things," has been a common refrain heard when the outdoor LED message board subject is broached.

"We have a tool at our disposal to help clients afford the incredible messaging capability an outdoor LED sign provides", says John Reynolds, owner of Sign-A-Rama Bolingbrook, IL.  "Just like leasing a car, you can lease a sign.  It works like this...provided you qualify, and many do, you can LEASE a sign, including installation, and make monthly payments for a period of from two to five years, then buy it outright for one dollar at the end of the term.  And a good quality LED message center from a reputable company with service capability should last you a lot longer than five years", he says.

The payback potential of adding an outdoor LED messaging center to the motel's advertising arsenal could be very swift.
"Let's say you're leasing the "quarter mile" outdoor LED message center (its text can be read from a quarter mile away), including its installation cost, for about $624 per month (about $21 per night).  That might sound expensive for some, but that pales in comparison if the sign is bringing in an additional couple hundred dollars each night in walk-in revenue over and above current norms.  "When you see those kinds of numbers, it's a no-brainer", Reynolds adds.

Many times, clients have told Reynolds that the dynamic pricing strategy sounds great, but when things get busy in the motel, distractions and unplanned absences sometimes prevent pricing updates to be made on a timely basis.  "That's an easy problem to fix", says Reynolds, "because for an easily affordable extra fee we can remotely program the sign to change its price at any time based on what the client wants to do.  One client employs a $5 price drop, Monday through Thursday, every half-hour between 7:30pm and 11pm.  That's a total of 8 price changes over the course of 3.5 hours, and it's all automated.  For him, it works such that the sign easily pays for itself".

Sign A Rama Bolingbrook counsels clients on what they need to know about outdoor LED message boards during the pre-purchase phase. "We advise, based on what the client wants to say, how far the message needs to be seen, the local regulations, the electric draw, all of the dozens of things that go into picking the right product at the best value.  Selecting an LED message center is a much bigger and more complex decision than picking out a TV off the shelf", adds Reynolds.  If you're considering adding or replacing a current sign with an outdoor LED message board, you want to work with a company that understands advertising, not just signs.  Sign A Rama Bolingbrook can be reached directly at 630-739-0110.