Upselling techniques in hotel businesses aim towards selling superior services to guests than what they have already booked. These services are just like upgrades on reservations or bookings.
Hence, this makes upselling a unique technique for maximizing profits. A survey by Hotel Speak with over 1000 hotels across 25 countries states that, wellness service offerings such as spa and massages accounted for over 20.4% of all upgrades.
As not all hotels have wellness offerings, so room upgrades is the second major upselling consideration with a rate of 20.2% sales of all upgrades.
The booking engine you use for your direct booking operations can be customized to feature the upsell services or products. And every time a customer selects an upsell product, it gets updated in your property management system (PMS).
Integrating the upselling of products or services to the booking engine is a secondary job, but deciding how to use upselling is still the primary thing to do.
You need to be strategic on what you pick for listing as an upselling service or product. It should make sense to the guest who is about to book rooms or services with you.
So, this article consists of a few ways on how various upselling techniques in hotel businesses can make a growth impact on your profitable revenue.
Perks of Using Upselling Techniques for Your Hotel Business
Before listing the many ways you can use upselling for your business, it is important you know what to expect out of it.
Some of the key perks of upselling are:
- Hotel facilities will have greater utilization.
- It will improve the guests’ overall experience.
- Hotel occupancy rate will increase.
- There will be an evident spike in hotel revenue.
The best part of adapting upselling techniques in hotel businesses is that you do not have to spend much money on marketing those suggested products or services.
5 Unique Upselling Techniques for Hoteliers
If you are aware of the upselling strategy, then here are a few ways for you to get started with its implementation. These techniques will eventually help you decide on what you have to add to the upselling list and how:
1. Identifying the Target Audience for Upselling Services or Products
The first technique to master upselling is identifying the right audience for it. You need to look for the types of guests who would possibly like to get add-on services to add extra ease, comfort, or luxury to their trips.
For instance, the usual target audience for upselling can be honeymooners, business travellers, huge family vacationers, and others.
But remember, not all customers ought to be a good fit for this technique. So, never try to force your add-ons on guests who don’t need them.
Check your PMS for the updated data from the booking engine and channel manager to find the guests who booked your upselling products in the past. They can be the perfect target audience for you to start this strategy with.
By checking out the historical data, you can predict what you can upsell to those guests in their upcoming bookings. You need to act wisely upon the choosing factor, as the idea of upselling is to boost customer experience and not deteriorate it.
2. Pick the Right Time to Propose Your Upselling Products to the Guests
It is one of the most crucial upselling techniques in hotel business! You need to pitch your products at the right time always. It means that you can pitch them either while they are booking, at their arrival, or during their stay at the hotel.
You can offer services such as including meals to the room booking proposals over the online booking engine at a slightly higher price. It will seem to your guests like a suggestion, and it is upon them to decide whether they need it or not.
Apart from that, you can also suggest room/suite upgrades for attention-seeking reasons at the time your guests are booking, at their arrival at the hotel, or during their stay.
All of this will eventually add a better experience for your customers with your brand. So, count on being impactful with what you offer.
3. Take Ideas on Guest Preferences
With proper implementation of this technique, you can literally take preferences from your guests in a humble manner to know what can make their experience even better.
After they are done booking through your website, consider sending them emails, asking humbly about their preferences and the services they expect to avail at your hotel.
Depending upon that, your team can plan out upsell products or services and propose them to the guests accordingly.
4. Be Partners with Local Businesses to Expand your Business Outreach
You need to be partners with the businesses or hubs that organize activities outside of your hotel. With the strategic partnership, you can add city tours, adventure activities, fun trips, and other such services to your upselling packages as well.
The guests will be happy to avail of it as they won’t have to go around places to get tickets and bookings for the outdoor activities. Such experiences will motivate the guests to stay for a longer time with you, and you will also earn their loyalty in return.
5. Upsell Even at Checkouts
The check-out upselling techniques in hotel businesses are different from what you offer them during booking and their stay period.
The front-desk staff can guide the guests through offers and deals they can avail of on their next visit or stay. Offer them discounts on your premium rooms or give them coupons for a few free meals on their next vacation trip.
When you propose offers to your guests during their check out, you are building a relationship with them. Hence, this gives you a better opportunity of upselling more to them in the future.
How Can AxisRooms’ Booking Engine Help with Upselling?
Our booking engine enables you to promote direct bookings for your property through your website or social platforms. You get all the features such as multiple payment options, tax setup, integration with channel manager for in-depth reports, and a lot more.
Among all of these features, we are also promoting upselling techniques embedded with our hotel booking engine. We are helping you earn more non-room revenue with the scope of upselling items.
With our booking engine embedded in your channel manager and PMS, you can promote special packages and add-on services/products to the target audience. Hence, it will boost your non-room profits.
Moreover, you can also automate personalized upsell offers to be sent to customers via email upon successful booking. All of it is possible when you make your hotel reservations through our AxisRooms booking engine.
Request AxisRooms’ Booking Engine Demo Today!
Put up a demo request over our AxisRooms website for exploring the features and efficacy of our booking engine. Following that, you can decide whether it fits your business goals or not.
We have used advanced technology and feature-rich inclusions to our hoteliering solutions to drive modern implementations for hotel businesses. It is time for you to check it out for yourself!
Impact of Various Upselling Techniques on Hotel Businesses
