Treat Yo’Elf
Imagine the concept of going in to a supermarket, ticking off your shopping list and leaving. No extra items were added to your
basket. Goals right?
Supermarkets subliminally set the tone for buyer behaviour. Those confectionery stands don’t line the checkouts by accident, you did not wander through the bakery isle or past the fresh flowers coincidentally. This is a science, known as strategic placement: the epitome of dangling the carrot.
You just have to look at the Instagram phenomena to know that the average shopper is a highly influenced individual and these retail giants know exactly what they are doing. The product placement from picking up a basket, to check out, is a finely honed art and this is not a niche strategy. In fact this has never been more relevant to what hoteliers are trying to achieve:
Show them what they want and what they never thought they wanted!
Avvio’s booking engine has been designed with this practice in mind. The common goal is to drive ancillary spend and optimise conversion revenue. The carrot is the placement of cross selling and up selling opportunities within the booking funnel. The idea is to create a guest centric flow through subconscious sales messaging and engagement. It goes back to our ‘Think like a Guest’ approach. Without understanding who it is you are targeting it is impossible to pre-empt their wish list.
Start with the following:
Wholeheartedly embrace Dynamic Packaging
In addition to selling rooms, our booking engine can also sell add-ons that can considerably increase the total transaction value.
Avvio’s Dynamic Packaging enables our customers to create extra add ons that the guest can choose to add to their reservation at the time of booking to personalise their stay. Hotels should be incentivising guests to add on dynamic packaging at point of booking to make sure their guests have the best experience possible. As a hotel you get free choice as to what products you want to make available to add to a booking: it could be a late check-out fee, a round of golf or a spa treatment.
Offer Early check-in/Late check-out
Currently, the only way for Avvio customers to optionally offer early check-in (ECI) or late checkout (LCO) to a guest is by adding it to the reservation as an upsell. This is not ideal as you cannot control the inventory or pricing for these options on a date or room basis. A new solution has been created which enables you to configure ECI and LCO, with options to configure the price and allocation per room type. This is an easy way to maximise revenue off guests who are already checking in to your hotel whilst ensuring operational efficiency.
Add bespoke upsells to vouchers
To help drive average booking value, Avvio customers now have the ability to add bespoke upsells to vouchers. The new bespoke upsells allows hotels to create a completely unique experience for the recipient! This means that you are able to complement a voucher sale with a pre-configured upsell(s), not unlike dynamic room packaging.
If at first you don’t succeed, try again!
There’s more to ancillary revenue than just increasing booking value. By creating unique, customisable packages you create a truly personalised booking experience for your guests.