Upselling is one of the sales strategies commonly used to increase revenue by offering products that are more expensive than the products that consumers want to buy.
No exception in hotels, upselling is usually carried out when new guests arrive at the hotel to check in by offering more expensive rooms or other activities that guests have the opportunity to buy.
Usually, there is an incentive program for reservations and the reception team offered by hotel management helps motivate staff to make this up-selling program run well.
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Definition of Upselling
Upselling is often said to be one of the arts of selling.
The upselling technique is a strategy that can be understood as a selling technique to persuade customers so that they want to spend more money.
Also read: Sequence of Service Restaurant: Definition and Procedure for Implementation
So that customers buy products of the same type at a higher price. Or products with additional advantages such as additional bonuses or guarantees of better quality/details.
In up-selling sales techniques, we are not required to know the customer to find out his needs.
ut in the up selling technique, we are required to master the advantages of one product in order to offer it to customers.
For example, if a customer has booked a deluxe room, then we can offer to upgrade to a suite, for example.
Of course, we have to explain the benefits that customers get when upgrading the room.
In this example, we are driving customers to spend more money on the products they buy.
Example of SOP Upselling at a Hotel
The upselling concept is a method implemented with the aim of providing benefits to guests, employees, and management so that they can motivate employees as the spearhead of this up-selling program.
Besides that, training programs need to be implemented, so that employees really understand and are able to carry out standard operating procedures to do up-sells.
This situation will help avoid protests from prospected guests, and time is spent more effectively. The following is an example of an upselling SOP that can be used as a reference:
- Always greet every guest with a smile in your voice and face.
- Always Establish and maintain eye contact with guests.
- Ask open-ended questions to understand guest needs and requirements, provide timely advice and offer alternatives by upselling.
- Understand guest profiles from reservation details and identify guests who are most likely to occupy higher category rooms.
- Bookings made through the company or negotiated rates or by the sales team will most likely not take higher category rooms and therefore their bill is usually paid by their company.
- Honeymooners, family vacation trips, long stays, online travel agents (OTA), direct bookings, direct arrivals, etc. Most likely will choose the upsell offer. This is because in most cases guests who come to stay at the hotel do not know the different rooms offered by the hotel.
- Be fun and like a business, because you are selling yourself as much as you are selling hotel amenities and services.
- Find out the guest’s name right away and use it at least three times during the conversation.
- Always use appropriate titles such as Mr, Miss, Mr, and Mrs when greeting guests and never call guests by their first names, always use last names with appropriate titles.
- Attempt to identify guest needs as these needs may not have been identified during the reservation process.
- Customize guest needs with room furnishings or amenities or views (ocean view, pool view, mountain view), etc.
- If a guest stays several nights then he will be attracted to a larger or more spacious room.
- If guests are on their honeymoon, offer rooms with views such as sea facing, pool facing, mountain facing rooms, etc.
- If a guest has a reservation in a lower category, state the main differences and additional features they get when compared to a higher category room.
- Inform about additional fees or rate differences with encouraging statements such as for X amount difference you can get a room with a sea view.
- Upsell the room by showing the features and benefits first, then mention the price difference.
- If there are two different types of rooms available, state the advantages of the two rooms so that guests can choose the best one that suits their needs
- For walk-ins always provide details of a lower category and higher category to avoid the risk of losing revenue when trying to upsell to guests.
- Always thank guests after a successful upsell.
The up-selling program is a program that is very possible to run because the majority of guests do not know and recognize hotel products, so they often order rooms or other standard hotel products, which do not match their needs and desires.
This opportunity needs to be used by management to increase hotel income. It’s easy? Let’s practice!