Hotel upselling and cross-selling are both great ways for you to boost incremental revenue on bookings. Both strategies revolve around a similar goal but it’s important to understand their differences. Upselling involves getting a customer to spend more on their current product consideration, such as upgrading their choice of room, while cross-selling involves selling ancillary products or services, such as a spa treatment or a local tour, on top of their room.
UPSELLING
So why does upselling work? Just put yourself in your customer’s shoes for a moment. They’ve been researching online, found your hotel, browsed your site and learned about your offering. Now they’re in the booking process and they’re in buying mode. This is a critical juncture, because many customers are open to buying a more expensive product than they initially planned, as long as it represents good value. Also it’s convenient. They have their credit card out and, with a single click, the purchase is done.
Now you’re clear on why upselling can work for you let’s look at some ways you can implement it today.
- Room Upgrades
It’s important to let customers know about the great value upgrade options you have available during the booking process. See here how this hotel shows that a Deluxe Double/Twin Room can be easily upgraded to a Superior Room for just €10 or to a Junior Suite for €40 a night.
- Scarcity
Advising visitor’s when there’s a limited number of rooms left can also be a powerful tool to help boost conversions. Human behavior is such that we are likelier to purchase something if we’re informed that it’s the very last one. If people really believe that they’ll be missing out on something, they’ll be prompted to act more quickly to receive it.
- Urgency
Urgency is similar to scarcity in that it taps into our inner FOMO (fear of missing out). A limited time offer is a highly effective marketing strategy that can often turn a looker into a booker. People love limited sales, just look at the continued success of Black Friday. See this example where one of our hotels ran a 7 day sale and used a countdown clock to show the days and minutes left on the offer in real-time.
