Every year, Revinate publishes a Hotel Marketing Benchmark Report to provide the industry with actionable and comparative insights from hotels around the world. We analyzed more than 368 million emails sent in 2020 from Revinate’s Marketing customers so that we can provide a unique review for a unique year. Below is a snapshot of the Section 8, Revenue Upsells

You can download the full 2020 Benchmark Report for free here.

Upsells are common in our day-to-day lives. Airlines promote seat upgrades to enhance flight experiences and McDonald’s has been upselling its customers for years simply by asking, “Do you want fries with that?” In hospitality, upsells enhance the guest experience while generating more revenue for hotels. 

The key to maximizing revenue via amenity upsells and room upgrades are personalization and timing. By tapping into your database and leveraging guest preferences and stay history, you can customize upsell offers that are relevant to individual guests. 

To ensure that your guests take advantage of your upsell offers, reach out to them before the stay, when they’re getting excited for their visit. The pre-arrival email is the perfect channel to drive upsell revenue, as Revinate Marketing customers have discovered. 

Some of the most popular upsells in 2020 were food, beverage, and special one-time campaigns. In the F&B category, pre-purchased breakfast was the most popular upsell. 

In 2020, with many guests looking to stay safe by limiting their indoor time, hoteliers also got creative with upsells and created promotions for outdoor and sports related activities. These proved to be big revenue drivers during the pandemic.

Check In / Out Upsells

Two popular upsells that Revinate Marketing customers utilized are Early Check-In and Late Check-Out. These upsells are highly profitable and allow guests to maximize their time with you.

Include these offers in the pre-arrival email to capture additional revenue from guests who don’t want to be inconvenienced by pesky check-in and check-out times. 

Late check-out can also be sent when the guest is on property. Who wouldn’t want to wake up on Sunday to an offer to keep sleeping in and check-out later?

Room & Amenity Upsells

When it comes to room and amenity upsells, room requests were the most common, capturing more than 75% of the category. Guests proved that they have strong preferences when it comes to their room location and size.

Similarly, guests like to request extra amenities during their stay, such as extra towels, blankets, and pillows. Extra amenities accounted for more than 14% of the requests in this category. 

While not as popular, mini bar upsells consisted of 10.8% of these request types. 

Get More Upsell Insights

Get access to more specific insights and uncover what upsells work. View the full Benchmark Report with extended upsell data including Outside Activities, Food & Beverage Upsells, In-Hotel Activity, Transportation, and Special and Unique upsell campaigns worldwide.

In addition, the report covers 9 topics including marketing campaign performance, hotel database size, trends in 2020, and amenity and room upsells.