Who wouldn’t want to make a few hundred thousand more in immediate room revenue and see most of that go to the bottom line? In fact, it may be the largest account your hotel can go after, particularly if you are a focused service property. Where can you find this low-lying fruit and how can you harvest it?
NB: This is an article from Cayuga Hospitality Consultants
Subscribe to our weekly newsletter and stay up to date
Your Single Largest Account is at your Front Desk by Converting More Reservation Inquiries
And this is the best form of revenue…..the single room requests that come into your front desk in the form of phone inquiries and walk-ins. Imagine what losing one of your top accounts would look like. With front desk reservation inquiries, if you lose one, you are still booking hundreds of thousands of dollars more in incremental room revenues…..yes, hundreds of thousands of dollars. Most hotels don’t even know it, because they don’t track conversions (reservations made as a % of incoming calls/walk-ins). They also don’t know that the vast majority of hotels in America are converting between 30-40% and they should be converting 80%. How?
- By using elite service and selling protocols that have proven results.
- By implementing training processes that include reinforcement which keeps the process measured, accountable, tracked, and even tied to a cash incentive for the front desk agents who use the right skills. As a side note, 99% of all training fails to succeed because they don’t know how to reinforce it properly. More on that in future postings.
Higher GIS/GSS scores, greater guest loyalty, lower staff turn-over and a hotel that distances itself from its competition.
Essential Skills to Increase Hotel Front Desk Conversions
Having conducted training for over 10,000 hotel companies, we know the right skills needed and optimal process to convert phone and walk-ins into revenue:
- Answer the phone in 3 rings or less
- Use a unique greeting that distances you from the competition
- Qualify the caller/walk-in so you can customize their stay
- Personality Partner so how you say something is more impactful than what you say
- Create value and the experience
- Offer room type options and rates
- Ask to confirm (80% of untrained hotels don’t even ask to make a res)
- Be ready to find out why they are not confirming in an elite way
- Overcome their concern with fallback options that don’t negatively affect your ADR
- Convert 80% of the inquiries at higher rates than you are getting today
Owners, take your new-found incremental revenue and calculate using the right lender multiplier and you now have considerable additional equity that you can borrow against for renovations, raises, incentives, buy more hotels and the list goes on.
