Hotel Upselling: 8 Benefits That Will Surprise You

Hotel upselling is excellent for enhancing the guest's experience and increasing revenue. However, understanding how to upsell a hotel room without being too pushy is key to success in the practice.

This blog post answers these questions, "What is upselling in the hotel sector? How can hotel upsell software change the way deals are closed? What are the benefits of utilizing hotel upselling software to close more sales?" and more.

You'll also learn exciting hotel upsell tool facts and general information about the practice. By the end of this article, readers will understand the importance of hotel upselling software and can make the intelligent decision of implementing it into their organization or not.

What Is Hotel Upselling?

Hotel upselling is the best way to get a massive return on underutilized inventory while providing patrons with a memorable experience.

Guests are offered accommodations with specific features over and above what they initially requested through sales techniques utilized by the hotel’s employees.

One way of upselling guests on higher-level services is cross-selling. This involves employees recommending additional items to complement the guest's booking. Upselling can occur at any touch point, but it can be the most effective when the guest checks in because they can enjoy the upgrade immediately.

Traditionally, hotels have approached upselling with antiquated processes that include static pricing and manual tracking with little insight into their team's performance. Relying on these traditional methods not only leaves money on the table but also causes missed opportunities to enhance the guest experience by offering a higher quality room product at the right price.

With LuxSell URS, the process of curating upgrade offers alongside price points allows staff to match the best upgrade offers with guests easily. LuxSell’s offers consider guest willingness to pay and compression at the room type level. Real-time performance metrics allow hotel managers to identify areas for improvement and celebrate areas of success.

Revenue Management Solutions That Optimize Pricing 24/7

From upsell opportunities to accurate price management, Luxe Pricing is here to maximize your revenue.

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Now, let's look at the direct benefits of hotel upsell software and dive deeper into each one.

7 Hotel Upsell Software Benefits

Hotel upselling software can streamline the personalization of a guest's stay. The patron can adjust their accommodation features with relevant offers correlating to their preferences.

However, if you have ever attempted to manage an upsell program manually, you'll know how time-consuming and arduous it is.

Below we discuss the top eight hotel upsell software benefits you can experience when utilizing Luxe Pricing’s LuxSell URS.

1. Upgrade Pricing

LuxSell uses a learning framework (which we’ll discuss in more detail in the next section) to provide the best offers based on each reservation. Factors such as guest willingness to pay and room types constraint are considered to maximize chances for successful upgrades. By moving guests up the proverbial “upgrade ladder”, existing booking can generate more revenue, and inventory is also freed up so selling can continue.

2. Limited Input from Revenue Management Necessary

If upsell pricing is managed manually through digitally shared documents or pen and paper, the time commitment for RM is high as upsell pricing is often more dynamic than the traditional “time of purchase” pricing that RM is usually focused on.

This complexity and time commitment associated with a manual approach to upselling often leads to incompleteness with how the program is managed. LuxSell URS allows revenue management or hotel operations to drive high-level strategy while staying out of the weeds. Teams can view and monitor real-time performance and implement improvements to the program as needed with minimal intervention required from RM.

3. Builds Stronger Brand Reputation

Upselling packages guests enjoy may get them to mention a hotel to friends or family. These individuals might post five-star reviews that ameliorate a hotel's online reputation and display that it provides the outstanding experience promised.

Upsell offers for guests are created based on their reservation profile rather than looking at private or personal guest information. A reservation profile looks at factors such as:

• Length of stay
• Arrival time
• Booking channel

This helps create more effective upsell offers because it creates a general overview of the guest, whether they have one stay with the hotel or hundreds.

Hotel upselling gives hoteliers the opportunity to build stronger relationships with their guests. The more loyal someone is to your hotel, the stronger their trust in the experiences you’re offering them.

4. Better Customer Service

When guests are happy, your hotel will inevitably flourish. Optimizing business processes and letting them run autonomously allows revenue managers to perform their job more effectively.

HouseCount RMS connects to your property management system and can make recommended price changes based on the current market. This process can be automated or handled by revenue managers to take the hassle out of being competitive.

With additional free time on their hands, employees can focus on client queries, service or room requests, and other tasks.

Revenue Management Solutions That Optimize Pricing 24/7

From upsell opportunities to accurate price management, Luxe Pricing is here to maximize your revenue.

Learn More

5. Hotel Capacity Management

Hotel capacity, or yield management, balances customers' demands and provides a service delivery system that satisfies their needs. Therefore, accurate hotel capacity management should allow businesses to match demand with supply.

Hotel upselling software lets hoteliers find the balance between the cost per room and available room capacity that meets demand. Luxe Pricing has dynamic pricing tools that automatically increase prices when room types compress.

A wide selection of room types with excellent variations lets hotel owners target different guests' budgets.

6. Boost Revenue

Hotel upselling software is the best way to boost revenue and maximize a hotel's daily returns. Whether implementing dynamic pricing for when a guest books their initial stay with HouseCount or offering dynamically priced upsells to each guest at arrival with LuxSell, both software offerings work in tandem to streamline these tasks and free up revenue managers' time.

When hotel operations are streamlined, it allows for a more productive workflow and higher business process efficiency. Therefore, optimizing a hotel business with hotel upsell software is the most significant way to boost revenue.

7. Automated Price Testing

Hotel upselling software provides the tools required to store and analyze the pricing of all inventory sold. This allows systems to discover what works best during various economic conditions or seasonal periods while still providing control to hoteliers to edit upsell pricing at their discretion.

Below are three basic pricing strategies utilized by hotels looking to test pricing:

1. Cost-based or cost-plus pricing - This pricing method adds a fixed percentage on top of what it costs the hotel owners per room per night.
2. Setting pricing based on constraint- Occurs when a hotel has a higher demand for a specific type of room than a room available for sale, so therefore, the price is increased.
3. Value-based pricing - This strategy concentrates on setting prices primarily based on the guest's perceived value of a room. Value pricing focuses on the customers, meaning hotels base their pricing on how much the guest believes the room is worth.

These strategies are perfect for hotel owners who are just starting with price testing and want to learn what works best for their business.

How LuxSell URS can Fully Automate Price Testing

By using a machine learning framework called micro-experimentation, LuxSell is constantly learning how to provide the best upsell opportunities via continuous testing. Every upsell conducted contributes to the learning framework, adding to the system’s knowledge base and allowing smarter recommendations to be made.

Let’s illustrate how it works with an example. A guest either arrives at the front desk to check-in or calls in advance to book a room. In both instances, the employee opens LuxSell, and the software provides them with an offer to present to the guest. As well the agent can also view dynamic pricing for all of the hotel’s room types if necessary.

Unlike other hotel upsell tool offerings that are often clunky and difficult to use, LuxSell offers a streamlined, simple, and intuitive interface that agents can easily adjust to using. This allows agents to make better sales with minimal time and effort on their part. LuxSell is also extremely flexible, allowing supervisors to manually set upsell pricing if required. Otherwise, the advanced pricing algorithm takes care of everything in the back end.

Revenue Management Solutions That Optimize Pricing 24/7

From upsell opportunities to accurate price management, Luxe Pricing is here to maximize your revenue.

Learn More

Hotel Upselling Tool FAQs

What Is Cross-Selling in Hotels?

Existing customers are targeted with cross-selling sales techniques.

Hotels utilize cross-selling to convince guests to spend more by buying an additional service or item relating to the room they booked. For example, including a bottle of champagne or a couple's spa treatment package are suggestions to offer guests that will enhance their experience.

What Are Examples of Upselling in the Hospitality Industry?

Offering extra services, rooms with unique features, higher room categories, and other supplementary items that can generate income forms the basis of hotel upselling. Other common examples of pre-arrival hotel upsells include:

• Guided excursions
• A bottle of wine upon arriving
• Bag storage
• Early hotel check-in
• In-room meals
• Transportations such as car rentals, taxi services, shuttles, or airport pick-up

Any other services hotels promote to guests that generate more earnings could be classified as an upsell.

What Is the Importance of Upselling to a Hotel?

Appropriate upselling at the right moment shows genuine attentiveness to the patron. Also, the art of hotel upselling is one of the biggest revenue generators for hospitality establishments.

Here are the three primary benefits hoteliers experience when upselling in their organization:

1. It helps understand guests better
2. Increases customer satisfaction
3. Boosts monthly earnings

Upselling can also be used to survive unpredictable economic times or local crises. For instance, hotel owners may face booking cancellations and lower occupancy rates during uncertain periods. These losses can be mitigated by implementing a hotel upselling strategy to increase revenue per booking.

What Is an Upselling Technique in Hotels?

There are numerous ways hotel staff can upsell additional rooms or services to guests of the establishment. However, some hotel upselling strategies and techniques may result in easier sales than others.

Understanding the customer and identifying the perfect moment to upsell is critical when promoting additional services, products, or packages. All guests are potential upsell clients, so never be too pushy because it makes customers feel pressured and may cause them to book elsewhere.

Here are a few techniques that could be used to upsell hotel guests:

• Include targeted upsells on the hotel's website
• Offer products or services to enhance the guest experience on the final booking page
• Expand the hotel's reach by connecting with other local businesses
• Utilize a CRM to identify trends and determine potential upsell opportunities

After upselling to a few guests, employees develop an idea of what works best and with which buying persona. Monitoring these purchasing traits and amalgamating the data into the sales process helps sales teams identify opportunities.

What is an Upselling Hotel Script?

An upselling hotel script is a document, file, or pop-up message that provides a hotel employee with conversational prompts. It can be tailored to suit specific customers or based on previous interactions with the company.

What Types of Upselling Can Occur at the Front Desk?

Front desk employees have an excellent opportunity to upsell customers as they check in at the hotel. Workers are equipped with an upselling hotel script, so they know what to say and when to say it.

Pre-stay phone calls to guests also present another chance to upsell extra amenities or inventory. Upselling within a mobile app or check-in kiosk should not be ignored either. These sales mediums offer many opportunities to get in front of customers before they arrive at the hotel.

Front desk employees can be educated on the hotel upselling software and taught how to reach out to guests with it. Essentially, turning reservation staff into sales representatives.

What Is Call Center Upselling?

Reservations agents are the perfect candidates when it comes to speaking to guests. These individuals already contact the client to ensure everything is on track for arrival, so why not utilize them to upsell additional services?

After collecting and analyzing data with an RMS or CRM platform, hotel owners can increase the happiness of their guests by offering exemplary extra services or better rooms. With the knowledge of the customer, offering the correct add-on to the right person becomes more effortless.

Key Takeaways for Hotel Upselling

As technology advances at an alarming rate, all sectors must adopt new practices to stay ahead of these digital times. And the hospitality industry is no exception!

Hotel upselling software makes extracting guest information easier and helps build a strategy based on the data. Luxe Pricing’s HouseCount RMS and LuxSell were developed to assist hoteliers with increasing their revenue through an innovative platform.

Organizations can personalize offers across a range of distribution channels to offer each guest a highly customizable experience. There is nothing better than improving customer satisfaction levels while simultaneously increasing profits.

With Luxe Pricing, hotel owners can manage their establishments in a way that is unmatched by any software. The intricate and functional dashboard allows hoteliers to take complete control or automate tasks required to run a successful operation.

Request a demo to see how Luxe Pricing can maximize profits, boost client retention rates, and streamline business processes.