Upsells are a simple, straightforward way to drive more revenue, increase engagement, and build customer loyalty. Implementing the right upsell strategy can improve the guest experience and your bottom line.

Lodging businesses that leverage the power of upsells can increase guest satisfaction by allowing guests to customize their stay, build customer loyalty through personalized experiences, and mitigate external risks with additional revenue sources.

5 Best Practices To Upsell Throughout the Traveler Journey

Below you’ll learn how to implement effective upsells throughout the traveler’s journey from discovery to post-stay.

1. Discovery

Before guests step foot on your property or even book a room, you can showcase various upsell options on your website. People won’t buy what they’re unaware of, so ensure you showcase your offers. Often, upsells like parking, pet fees, or breakfast will help travelers with their purchasing decision, as the uncertainty of whether or not these services are available often delays the process.

Consider implementing a storefront on your website explaining all of your add-ons and packages. Travelers should also be able to add upsells to their booking, so your ancillary services should be integrated into your booking engine to streamline the process.

2. Pre-arrival

After a guest has booked, but before they arrive, it is a great time to reach out to travelers as they start to get more excited about their trip. Not only will a quick text help you to form a connection, but it will also provide an opportunity to link out to an online marketplace with add-ons like airport pickup or early check-in.

Be friendly when sending pre-arrival communications and strike a balance between providing helpful pre-arrival information (like room confirmation) and upselling opportunities.

3. Arrival

On the day of guest arrival, things can often be chaotic for travelers. Send a digital registration form on the morning of arrival to create a frictionless arrival and check-in experience. This will reduce the friction of finding passport and credit card details and allow you to include last-minute upsells like room upgrades and valet parking. Your staff and guests will thank you for streamlining this process and providing self-serve upgrade options.

4. In-stay

After the stress of a travel day wears off, guests are usually ready to relax and enjoy their stay. Check-in through SMS or messenger to see if their experience is meeting expectations and if they’d like your help to plan any activities during their stay. Here you can link to the list of local businesses you’ve partnered with or any in-house services you offer, such as spa treatments or outdoor activities.

Letting guests browse your offerings online will increase the likelihood of purchase as studies show customers spend, on average, 20% more when ordering themselves. See more helpful tips on how to maximize in-stay upselling.

5. Post-stay

You’ve said goodbye to guests, but thankfully, communication doesn’t have to end once they leave your property. It costs more to attract new guests than retain old ones; therefore, loyalty initiatives are vital to a long-lasting relationship.

Follow up every few months with guests through SMS, messenger, and email to update them on new additions to your property and provide promotion codes to book again. Use as much personalization as possible in these post-stay communications based on information collected during their stay to write resonating messages.

5 Tips for More Effective Upsell Campaigns

Upselling must be done right for guests to derive value from your offerings and not just feel like you’re trying to make some extra cash. Follow these tips for more effective upsell campaigns.

  1. Tailor your upsells for the type of property type you have. Ensure your upsell offers make sense. For example, hotels are better suited to offer upsells like room upgrades, spa services, and in-room food and beverage options, while hostels may find more success with bike rentals, outdoor adventures, and welcome drinks.
  2. Your upsell options should enhance the guest experience. Always think of ways that you can deliver more value to guests. Study your guest demographics and identify what would interest and excite them.
  3. Use imagery to showcase your upsells. Whether upsells are listed on your storefront, booking engine, or integrated marketplace (hopefully all 3!), ensure you have clear, accurate images to accompany each item.
  4. You don’t have to do it alone. Partner with local businesses to develop unique upsell opportunities that showcase the culture and community of your local area.
  5. Use technology to support your upsell strategy. Manually managing upsells throughout the traveler’s journey would be practically impossible without the help of technology. To increase efficiency, look for a hospitality management platform with upselling and guest messaging functionality.

Improve Guest Satisfaction & Boost Your Bottom Line

While crafting an upsell strategy that spans the entire traveler journey can seem overwhelming, it streamlines processes for employees and guests when put into practice. By automating upsells with guest messaging technology, your guests can serve themselves and purchase exactly what they want. This eliminates the number of questions flooding your chatbots, email inboxes, and phone lines and gives guests the power to own their vacation and make choices that best suit their needs.

The result of an effective upsell strategy with meaningful touchpoints throughout the traveler journey is higher guest satisfaction, loyalty, and more revenue.

Free Guest Satisfaction Survey Templates

Hoteliers may learn what their hotel is doing well and where it needs to improve by monitoring satisfaction levels through guest surveys. The bottom line benefits from satisfied customers’ recommendations and repeats business.

Click here to download the “Guest Satisfaction Survey Templates”.

More Tips to Grow Your Business

Revfine.com is a knowledge platform for the hospitality & travel industry. Professionals use our insights, strategies and actionable tips to get inspired, optimise revenue, innovate processes and improve customer experience. You can find all hotel & hospitality tips in the categories Revenue Management, Marketing & Distribution, Hotel Operations, Staffing & Career, Technology and Software.

This article is written by our Expert Partner Cloudbeds

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