For many hotels, the focus of an upgrade program is immediate financial growth: higher RevPar and ADR. However, when it comes to the downstream benefits, they are often underestimated—benefits that impact guest experience, employee satisfaction, and long-term loyalty.
Let’s dive into why a robust upgrade program goes far beyond dollars and cents.
All of us who have spent our careers in hotels know one truth about hotel buildings everywhere – not all rooms are created equal. I remember early in my career I worked at a beautiful oceanfront resort, and we had one room where you could only see the feet of people walking on the patio up above! Some rooms are just better than others. From a CX perspective, upgrades are a great way to make certain that the rooms that get used are the most likely to be your best. This has the potential downstream impact on your net promoter scores and reviews.
To me though the most important impact is on the team. Most upgrade programs come with a commission that can make a meaningful impact on the team’s earning potential.
At that same oceanfront resort I mentioned earlier, I remember so vividly starting a hotel upgrade program and watching the 10% add up -- at first covering my taxes and eventually feeling like a bonus every payday.
As the dad of a toddler at the time, I can assure you this had a meaningful impact on my life. I also take the service profit chain very seriously and when team members are well-compensated, it leads to better service, great service creates guest loyalty and guest loyalty trickles down to even more financial benefit.
This simple commission program created a cycle of positive outcomes.
It’s not just the compensation though; Beyond compensation, team members who excel at selling upgrades also gain deep knowledge of the hotel’s room products. This means that even when they aren’t asking the happy anniversary couple if they want to upgrade, they can problem-solve and know the hotel they serve better.
As you can see, robust call center and front desk upgrade programs aren’t just about making more money (even though that’s clearly important). They also create a virtuous cycle of benefits across the resort – from increased guest satisfaction to enhancing the team member experience and knowledge, the impacts are felt across all dimensions of the resort.
The next time you are asked to talk about all the benefits of your hotel upgrade program, don’t just list revenues … start with those, but keep going to the impacts on guest service and the team members who are selling the upgrades. The program likely has far more downstream impacts than you realize.