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Upselling as a Competitive Advantage: How Hotels Can Drive Revenue AND Loyalty by Offering Rooms, Attributes, and Ancillaries

23 December 2022

It's a wrap! Today we highlight the last episode of HN Summit Series - Property Management Stack 2.0. The last episode of this series was sponsored by Oracle Hospitality.

In this episode Jason G. Bryant, Vice President Nor1 – Oracle Hospitality, Sara Ramis, Chief Marketing Officer of Barceló Hotel Group (BHG), and Mark Fancourt, Co-Founder at TRAVHOTECH joined moderator Simone Puorto, Founder | CEO | Futurist to discuss, share thoughts and perspectives upselling as a competitive advantage: how hotels can drive revenue AND loyalty by offering rooms, attributes, and ancillaries.

Everyone agrees upselling generates incremental revenue for hotels, but when used most effectively, that is, by engaging guests with customized stay options, a comprehensive upselling strategy creates competitive advantage and drives loyalty and repeat business.

Offering a range of products and services - room upgrades, attributes like views or high floors or fireplaces, ancillary products like early check-in, late check-out, or food and beverage - across the entire guest journey from booking to on-site is a critical piece to a hotel’s overall revenue strategy and competitive positioning.

To "four airlines," CarTrawler chief commercial officer Aileen McCormack said, ancillary revenue is already the "predominant revenue source." She calls this phenomenon the "ancillary revenue revolution." However, in our industry, up/cross-selling seems to be perceived as mainly a "vanity metric."

A friend of mine always says that "there's no such thing as ancillary sources of revenue. If you're selling a service or a product, that's revenue, period." However, with few exceptions (golf resorts, casinos, SPA hotels, ski resorts), our industry is traditionally room-centric.

The benefits of upselling, however, are numerous:

Increase in booking value;
Better guest experience and, consequentially, positive impact on reputation and guest retention;
A deeper understanding of guests' need to hyperpersonalize their stays;
Increased direct revenue, as most upsold services/products are sold directly at the hotel and not through intermediaries.

Thinking out of the box of the "usual suspects" (room upgrades, early check-ins/late check-out, stay extensions, F&B, wellness packages, tours and activities, events tickets), how can our industry exploit such a lucrative activity?

About Oracle Hospitality

Oracle Hospitality brings more than 40 years of experience in providing technology solutions to independent hoteliers, global and regional chains, gaming, and cruise lines. Our hardware, software, and services enable customers to act on rich data insights that deliver personalized guest experiences, maximize profitability, and encourage loyalty. To learn more, please visit www.oracle.com/Hospitality.

About Oracle

Oracle offers integrated suites of applications plus secure, autonomous infrastructure in the Oracle Cloud. For more information about Oracle (NYSE: ORCL), please visit us at oracle.com.

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