How can hotels drive additional revenue through upsells?

What is hotel upselling?

Upsells are, simply put, offering your guests additional benefits to enhance their stay or trip. It involves making the guest invest more time on their current offering, such as upgrading their choice of room & meal plan, including a pickup service from the airport, etc. Upsells have many benefits for hotels. It increases revenue & profit, improves customer satisfaction and allows for greater use of the hotel’s amenities.
 

How to leverage upselling in the hotel industry?

Have you noticed that, while booking a flight on an airline, say Delta Airlines, passengers are always encouraged to book their meals, seat preference, check-in and, sometimes, even hotels?

The key phrase here is to know your target customers. Today, guests prefer eating at the same hotel they are staying at. The best way to leverage this is to create packages that provide room nights and meals included. Consequently, we advise you to change your menus.

If you run a hotel at a city-center business hotel and most of your guests are solo travelers then you could revamp your in-room dining menus. First, compile a list of the most popular dining dishes and then tailor the menu in such a way that it suits the single traveler. For instance, instead of a whole pizza, a single slice coupled with garlic bread sticks and a soft drink would do the trick.

Majority of guests today decide where they want to stay online and here we believe, the following strategies can help your hotel drive more upsells at various touchpoints of their booking journey:

• At the time of booking, it is a good idea to showcase add-ons such as dining, spa, a culinary class or any other amenity that your hotel provides.

• Send these add-ons in your booking confirmation vouchers to upsell via email.

• Even if your customers have booked through an online travel agent (OTA), mailers could be sent to enable them to make more purchases.

How to be an expert at upselling?

Online studies reveal that your return customers spend 67% more than those who are new to your business. Therefore, hotels need to upsell at every opportunity that would help improve the experience and build relationships with your guests.

Hotels need to ask the right questions to identify the areas of upsell opportunities. Involve customers, management and your team. Ensure that guests are aware of upgrades, promotions, offers, new amenities. Don’t make upselling a profit game but take it up as raising the customer’s awareness about your products and services. Finally, let your customers initiate their interests.
 

Top 5 Ideas for hotel upsells

Food & Beverage: Welcome guests to start their stay with a drink or meal at the restaurant & bar. Encourage various options such as cakes for anniversaries, delivery of desserts to the room after meals or other banquet deals for group celebrations. Guests will feel empowered towards making a decision rather than following the conventional menu.

Spa: Hotels can offer spa services for guests who have had a long travel journey. This also gives them the opportunity to book more appointments during their stay

Room upgradation: If you have noticed families making a reservation, your hotel can approach the guest and suggest a room upgrade a day or two before arrival.

Leisure activities: It is a must to raise awareness about leisure activities if your hotel or resort does the same. For instance, a resort in Andaman could upsell ferry trips, scuba diving, snorkelling and city tours.

Special amenities: Know your customer well. If it’s a family, then they would be looking for a holistic experience. It would be a good idea to upsell a room that has access to a bathtub, a larger balcony, a larger bed or a view of the swimming pool.
 

The Simplotel Advantage

Hotels need a booking engine that provides such add-ons, does re-marketing, can integrate with your property management system (PMS) & other software, and is seamless with the website. And this is what Simplotel’s Hotel Ecommerce (a high-conversion website & booking engine solution) provides.