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.
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