Upselling Technique in Selling Hotel's Rooms (Leader's guidelines)

Hello Guys, welcome back to my sharing. In this time I would like to share you my experience in tourism industry especially hotel. In this part, I would like to tell you my experience in front line, which become one of the success matter in front office, which is ROOM UPSELLING, in a role as Front Office Manager (Leader)

What is Room Upselling?

Room Upselling is one of the strategy that hotel can do in order to increase the revenue stream by offering the higher room category for the guest.

Let see for example there is hotel A with 100 rooms. The category of the rooms are: Superior room, deluxe room, lagoon access room, and suite room. For sure that the rate in every category will be different based on the size, view and facilities.

There are some ways that a customer can do in order to book that hotel, which can be direct (direct booking (website, telephone, email or walk in), through OTA (online travel agent), through offline travel agent, and through company. On those booking, most of the people will book the standard one, for example superior room. And they usually book only by seeing the picture and description only which is given online, no personal touch. This customer behavior will be a big chance for the front liners to gain more revenue by making the guest spend more to higher room category. 

So what are the tricks to boost upselling as a leader of front office team?

As a leader, you are the key person who will be able to bring your department get success of its aims. It is the same as upselling program, when I was a Front Office Manager in one of the 5 stars hotel in Bali, I did some strategies that I thought it brought a great success for my upselling program. Well as the leader, you have to do this things:

1. Set the upselling structure, as direction of the team to sell and gain more revenue.

When you want to upsell to the higher room category, in order to make it interesting you can not make it equal with the publish rate. By paying the additional, make it still lower than publish rate, so people will be more interested. The ideal will be from 10% to 20% lower than publish rate. 

Let see for example the guest booked superior room with IDR 1.000.000 per night. Then you offer the guest to upgrade their room upon arrival to Lagoon access room which has rate IDR 2.000.000. In this example, you can set the upselling rate by additional IDR 600.000 to 800.000 from Superior to Lagoon access room. Means that when the guest agree to take lagoon access, the guest only pay 1.600.000 to 1.800.000 per night, which is cheaper that they book directly that category.

2. Create departmental upselling target.

Without targeting, the goal is nothing. So target must be formulized. How can we determine the upselling target? It will be depend on the hotel environment and room type that it has. Normally for the target can be based on the room revenue budget that has been set. Ideally the target is from 4 to 6% from total room revenue budget. Let's see the example that the room revenue budget is one month is IDR 2.000.000.000. If we take 5% for the upselling budget, the target for the upselling for that month will be IDR 100.000.000. As simple as that. But to realize this number will be your big home work.

3. Make a special board for upselling. 

This program must be driven with full effort, and controlled day by day, week by week, and month by month. Put the target on the board, and record the movement day by day. Everyone will see the progress, even your GM will know that you work hard to gain more revenue. Make it statistically readable, so everyone see your professionalism.

4. Create a competition.

Choose one of your team, perhaps one of your Duty Manager or Supervisor to be your upselling champion, who help you to drive the upselling program to be successfully. Make sure you choose the person who can become the best upseller, and can drive your whole team to do upselling. Compete them with their individual target. You should divide the whole target to be individual target, so you will have everyone of your team has own upselling target. Let's see for example for one person will have IDR 5.000.000 upselling target in one month. Put the result of them on the board that you have, so you can easily see who perform and who doesn't. Make it like a race, depend on your style. It will be able to create spirit to be better in upselling.

On daily briefing, daily achievement and month to date achievement must be always mention, and remind your team to the remining target. Give reward and punishment, so it can encourage them to show their best to achieve their target.

5. Create rewards

Rewards will be one thing that people want. As this function is increasing the revenue of the hotel, the best reward that you have to apply is commission, cash commission from the upselling achievement that they do. Ideally the commission as the reward is 5 to 10% from the total upselling value that they have. I believe that it could be your booster to drive your team to do upselling, because I really understand that the successful of your program will be depend on your team. It is impossible you can do all program by yourself without full support from your team.

Another rewards can be formulized as well, for example the best upselling with certain amount can get free dinner, free spa, or others. It is interesting right/

Well, those are about the upselling technique that you can do as a leader, and in the other session I would like to share you the technique that can be done by the team or staff to get deal with the customer in upselling.

Happy reading, and hopefully bring inspiration to you.

The Function of HAVE and HAS in English

Hi Liftupper, welcome back to my sharing. At this sharing, I would like to share the use of Have and Has. Especially for you guys who are still learning English, it would be very important to know, because your language will reflect yourself. When you are using the right grammatically English, you have lifted up yourself, as a high educated person.

Well, let us now see how the different.

Basically, the function of HAVE and HAS can be divided into three, as below:

1. As a full verb (Have / Has + Noun)

    Let's see this formula: Subject + Have/Has + Object

    Look at these examples:

    - I have a beautiful cat.

    - She Has a new car

    - They have some books about English.

2. As an auxiliary verb (Have / Has + To)

    It has the same meaning with must, which has function as Necessity.

    Let's see this formula: Subject + Have/Has + To + Verb 1 + Object (Adv)

    Let us see below examples:

    - We have to finish this task by today in order to avoid any punishment from our teacher.

    - He has to negotiate with the his parents to allowed joining the outing.

    - It has to be perfect, otherwise it will not be accepted.

3. As perfect sentence (a sentence which indicate something that has been done)

    Have / Has + Verb3

    Let's see this formula : Subject + Have/Has + V3/Been + Object (Adv)

    Let us see these examples:

    - She has gone about an hour ago.

    - I have discussed this matter previously.

    - He has been here waiting for you.

Well guys, I hope you could understand this short lesson, and let me know if you have any questions by putting on the comment box.

Happy studying

IMPLEMENTATION OF KAHOOT APPLICATION AS A STRATEGY TO GROW THE SPIRIT OF COMPETITION FOR STUDENTS

Hello guys, welcome back for having new sharing. In this chance, I would like to share my research that I have finished earlier this year, and hopefully it could be a reference for any research or any implementation of Kahoot.

Before we go further, do you know Kahoot? or have you ever played Kahoot?

Well Kahoot is a platform that is used for knowledge game and has feature for compete one each other, not only for answering the right answer, but also can measure the speed of answering. So on this kind of play, the participants must test themselves to be the right and the quicker one answering every item that they have. To be honest it is so interesting.

At this time, I will not explain on how to use this platform, but perhaps I will let you know in the other post later. But I am going to share about the result of my research which has been published in a National Journal in Indonesia.

How interesting is this platform?

Kahoot is so interesting. I have used it for many times on giving some training on my work place in Hospitality, teaching students on the collage, and general training that sometimes I held. All participants are very exited with this game, and they always want more game after finishing one game. So Crazy. From this kind of respond, then I curious to learn deeper about this platform by doing research to my student at the collage, with total sample was almost 100 students. 

How was the result?

The result showed that by implementing Kahoot, students become more active and focus on every lesson that they have. As my habit to give them exercise by Kahoot at the end of the class, they always keep focus and listen every single part of the presentation. It showed that the result was better and the students were more exited joining the class, rather than the students that they did not have Kahoot exercise. It was really great result. 

In the meantime as some of my classes are online, Kahoot is also become very powerful platform that I can use to them, as there will be called Kahoot Challange, where they can do anytime they have. But the system will be just like the same. 

Well for more detail of the result, you may check my publication here, and for more publications, you may check on my page of Publication.

Thank you 

What is CARDVER or Card Verification on credit card transaction

Hey all Liftuper, welcome back to the news or knowledge on credit card transaction, which is mostly used on hotel industry.

Perhaps some of you have ever heard the term on "CARDVER" or Card verification. In some bank is called card authorization. The question, what kind of transaction is that? and how safe it is for the merchant and for the card holder. Well let us discus one by one.

CardVer, or card verification, or card authorization, is a transaction which has function to hold of freeze some money which is inputted on the EDC machine. It is not the final transaction which will be received by the merchant, but this transaction has function to hold only, as a deposit to cover the expenses of the guest. It is because we don't know yet how much will be the total expenses of the guest, and by this way we let the guest consume whatever they want, as long as the total expenses is still covered by the total amount on the cardver transaction. 

Where does the money go after the Cardver transaction?

After doing the cardver, the total amount on the transaction will be hold from the cardholder. But the money will not come through the the merchant. But, the money will be hold by the merchant;s bank. Let see for example the local bank that is used by the merchant is BCA. then whatever the bank of the client which we cardver the card, will be hold by BCA, and on the bank statement of the guest there will be stated HOLD transaction. Without the other transaction which is called Offline transaction, the money will not go to the merchant. In the other session we will talk deeply about Offline transaction.

How long will the money be hold by the bank?

The money will be safety hold by the bank for 15 working days to 30 working days, depend on the bank issuer, or bank of the client. But mostly will be around 15 working days. After this period of holding, the money will be released automatically by the system of the bank, and will be back to the client's card. 

What kind of card that we can do for Cardver transaction?

Not all of the card can be used for cardver transaction. The card must be CREDIT CARD. Don't ever do cardver to debit card because it will cause the money to be hold forever on the bank, which will create a complain to the client, as well as not good to the merchant as the money will not go through to the merchant. Sometimes it is confusing to identify which one is credit card and which one is debit card. Sometimes the guest also confuse about their card, so the merchant should really understand the different. Let us discuss about types of card in the other session.

What should we do if a debit card is cardvered by the merchant?

It sometimes a big problem if it is happen as money of the people is very critical issue. What you have to do when you realize it are as below:

1. Fill the form from your bank about cancelling the hold amount of the guest. Every guests they usually have their form. Fill the detail of the credit card that we want to release the holding amount.

2. Send the form through email to the bank and mark as urgent in order to be prioritized by the bank.

3. Communicate well with guest in order to keep a good relation, and show yourself that you are full responsible for the process.

4. Control the progress from your bank, and make sure it is followed up until totally finished.

5. Notify your guest once you have the information from your bank that the process is finished.

Well, that's it about card ver, and will show you later some important information to lift up your knowledge.

Welcome Liftupers

 Hey guys, welcome to this blog. 

I hope that this blog would be able to give useful information to lift up yourself to the higher stage of your career.

Cheers