5 Efficient Ways Of Cross-Selling In Your Hotel

Cross-selling and up-selling play an essential role in any hotel’s strategy and success. They offer many benefits, including boosting profitability and improving the guest experience. However, you need to know not only which service or offer you want to cross-sell, but when and how to do it! Indeed, not all hotels offer the same range of services. Some hotel owners might even think that cross-selling is not relevant to their establishment. However, with a bit of creativity, you can take advantage of numerous opportunities to increase revenue.

To start with, think about all the examples around you. When booking a seat on a plane, the airline will almost always offer you paid extras, from adding extra baggage or switching seats to a row with more leg room, to buying insurance or renting a car. When you’re buying clothes or tech online, you will be offered a range of other items to add to your basket. These usually have some link to your initial purchase. In fact, 35% of Amazon’s revenue comes from cross-selling! With that in mind, imagine the potential it could hold for your business.

In this article, we’re going to take you through 5 ways to cross-sell within your hotel. The examples are directly inspired by hospitality customers of Customer Alliance!

First of all, let ́s quickly differentiate between cross- and up-selling. Both have the same goal, but they are not quite the same thing. Up-selling is focused on getting customers to spend more on something they are already buying. For example, a room upgrade. On the contrary, cross-selling applies to offerings that can be added when booking a room that are designed to enhance their stay. This includes things like spa treatments or tickets for a sightseeing tour. Keep in mind: your hotel has far more to sell than just rooms. Let’s have a look at some other ideas.

Of course, not all hotels boast a Michelin-starred restaurant. But do you offer breakfast for your guests? If so, don’t hesitate to promote it, perhaps by offering a small discount when guests book directly via your website. Guests who won’t be able to have breakfast in the hotel (as they have to catch a flight or train) might also appreciate a breakfast box to go.

As many hotels face the problem of filling up their restaurant with their own guests, it’s important to promote your facilities. An easy way to do that is via an automated and timely pre-stay message prior to your guests’ arrival. Next to providing driving directions and important information about the hotel, it is the ideal channel to highlight any services and products that will enhance their stay. For example, you can offer to add breakfast to their room rate or make a dinner reservation at your restaurant.

Even if you don’t have a restaurant, there are still selling opportunities for food and beverages. You could offer your guests regional products from local farmers and producers. Think chocolate, wine and spirits, jam, traditional biscuits…the list is long! Or how about a bottle of wine or champagne upon arrival?

When it comes to your bar, there’s nothing to stop you from having promotions to sell more cocktails rather than just beers or glasses of wine.

Wellness areas are growing in popularity and represent a competitive advantage for hotels. A fitness studio, massages and treatments, a sauna or a swimming pool are increasingly desired by guests. From families looking for a swimming pool to couples wanting to try some treatments or business guests wanting to relax, everyone is in search of wellness. Therefore, these facilities offer a great opportunity for some cross-selling practices. With a pre-stay message, for instance, your guests can enhance their experience by booking a body treatment or massage prior to their arrival.

Take control of your services and personalise your offer to boost your cross-selling initiative. First, identify the services and offers you struggle to sell and combine them with those which are popular among your guests to benefit from their visibility.

For example, say your romantic dinner menu doesn’t sell despite the fact that your main target groups are couples. Creating a special package that includes the romantic dinner can increase its popularity. This could be a romantic dinner and a couples’ massage, or a romantic dinner and a bottle of champagne upon arrival.

It’s simple: you need to know and understand your guests and offer them an experience that’s most relevant to them.

Of course, you don’t have a theme park in your hotel, nor a museum! But that should not stop you from strengthening your relationship with local businesses. By teaming up, you can offer your guests exclusive deals for the various activities your city or region has to offer. Negotiate discounted rates in advance and boost your sales by selling things like tickets for museums or bike rentals. Such additional services make the stay of your guests even more pleasant and personalised, while you generate additional revenue.

Transport and parking facilities are important issues for guests. Indeed, when you are travelling to a new destination, these are often the first things that cross your mind. So, besides informing your guests of how to get to your hotel, try to think of alternative services for your cross-selling initiative.

For example, cooperate with a local taxi company to offer your guests discounted rates. For guests travelling by car, parking spaces have become a rare commodity in cities. If you don’t own any parking space yourself, negotiate with car park owners for special prices or to include a voucher or discount code for your restaurant on each parking ticket.

You’ve heard us mention pre-stay questionnaires a few times in this article, but how do you actually introduce them? Having the right software on your side is key. A Voice of the Customer platform that includes surveys will not only automate the sending of the questionnaire but also gather all your responses in one place. This helps avoid creating additional work and makes sure you can respond to requests in an efficient and timely way.

By gathering just a few basic details about your guests before they arrive, you can then personalise your cross-selling efforts with the most relevant offers for them. You can also provide them with all the essential information that will improve their stay and boost guest satisfaction.

As you can see, there are many ways to cross-sell, even if you don’t have the infrastructure of a luxury hotel. You can implement cross-selling tactics at many different touchpoints. Whether offering a bottle of wine upon arrival, a spa treatment or parking spaces, you can increase your revenue with ease (without disrupting your operations).

Put these ideas into practice and you will quickly see the results. A pre-stay communication with automated messages and personalised questionnaires is the ideal communication channel to cross-sell your services and products efficiently. Just as the increase in revenue, the guest experience will take on a whole new dimension!

Looking for advice and ideas to help you with cross-selling in your hotel? Contact us now. One of our experts will present some concrete cases of other hotels that use our Customer Experience Management solution to make additional sales.