4 Tips For Stress-Free Upselling & Streamlining Your Hotel Operations

There’s no doubt about it: automated upselling and cross-selling are excellent ways to increase a hotel’s ancillary revenue and guest satisfaction. However, operationally it can be a bit challenging. Going through incoming requests, delegating tasks, and communicating with staff can be time-consuming and inefficient without the right approach.

Streamlining Your Hotel Operations

With everything else going on at the hotel, you may even risk overlooking a request and disappointing your guests. Follow the four tips outlined below to avoid these issues and delight your guests with amazing upselling and cross-selling deals all without stressing your operations teams.

1. Create SOPs and Checklists

You probably already have SOPs (standard operating procedures) and checklists for most departments at your hotel. But have you created them for your upselling deals? If not, it’s about time.

These documents should outline who is responsible for handling upselling and cross-selling requests as well as how your teams should fulfill them. Begin by deciding which deals to write an SOP for. You may not need one for simple requests like late check-outs but instead, focus on the more elaborate offers that impact several departments (e.g. an in-room movie night set-up or a romantic couple’s package).

Write your upselling SOPs like you would for other services or tasks. Add the necessary background information, including all key steps, highlight which positions are in charge (e.g. front office manager, room service manager, etc.), and provide example photos if needed.

Checklists can be a shortened version of the SOP. It should include the most important operational steps to ensure none are missed. This will allow all your staff to deal with upselling and cross-sell requests independently and in line with your property’s standards, even if they’ve joined your team only recently. Finally, always following the guarantees of the same step that all your guests have constantly good experiences.

2. Bundle Your Information

If you still approve and delegate your upselling requests manually, it’s time to start batching this task. Check for new requests once or twice a day, depending on the usual volume. Then, share the information with the departments concerned in one go. Only make exceptions for requests you need to take care of immediately. That gives your team the chance to review all required tasks at once and they get a clear overview of the coming days. Now they can work more efficiently by planning and batching tasks.

For example, sending your executive housekeeper a list of all the new orders for birthday surprise set-ups will help them plan the department’s workload and inventory. When it’s time to decorate the room, everything is ready and there are no surprises.

Lastly, ask the team when the best time is for them to get the information from you. Usually, the start or end of a shift works well since that’s when they do most of their admin tasks.

3. Adopt a Need-to-know Approach

If you think about it, this makes sense, right? Why should your chef get a notification when a guest pre-orders a welcome package for their pet? Avoid these unnecessary pings by updating your upselling tool’s notification settings from the start.

You have two options here:

1. Send all notifications to a dedicated email address. Then the staff responsible for this task sends the details to the relevant departments;
2. Set up your tools to ping the right teams directly. That way you eliminate the need for your staff to manually go through and assign tasks.

Here’s how this could look:

A guest books a romantic welcome package for the room via the hotel’s upselling platform. Instead of a general email blast, the notifications go only to the four relevant departments:

• Front office: add a request for the romantic welcome package to the guest’s profile;
• Restaurant: prepare chocolate-covered strawberries;
• Room service: deliver chocolate-covered strawberries and champagne;
• Housekeeping: prepare and set up flowers.

By implementing an all-in-one hotel operations platform, requests from your upselling system will immediately go to the correct department. Say good-bye to spending time sifting through emails and maybe missing guest requests in a busy inbox.

4. Streamline Your Communication

Most tech tools try to keep you updated on all the latest events by regularly sending you emails and browser notifications. This constant distraction and the need to check several different tools’ interfaces reduces your team’s productivity.

Remember: with communication, less is usually more. Don’t overburden your staff with too many calls, messages, and notifications. Instead, become more efficient by using innovative communication and operations management software. That way all your communication takes place in one spot instead of being spread out over countless channels.

You’ll find it easier to:

• Keep an eye on current and upcoming tasks;
• Delegate work, give feedback, answer questions and follow up when required;
• Avoid unnecessary back and forth or miscommunication;
• Cut back on distractions and get more done.

Your team will get many benefits from this approach. Below are a few of them:

• Save your staff’s time and energy;
• More peace of mind because nobody worries about missing important tasks anymore;
• Upsells, cross-sells, and other requests are handled quickly and effectively and your guests will be thrilled by your service.

Hotel technology helps to streamline your hotel operations and communication between departments. Following these tips you will be able to devote more of your efforts to what’s most important: making your guests happy by creating a memorable stay experience.