UPSELLING TECHNIQUES

UPSELLING This refers to the efforts of reservation and reception staff to convince guest to hire rooms in the higher catagories. The front office staff should not merely work as order taker. They should try to sell the higher priced rooms to the guests. They should also keep in mind that no negative selling should take place. The guest doesn’t mind paying higher price for the rooms if he is getting amenities worth the money he is paying. At times by selling a lower priced room to a guest makes dissatisfy as he was never offered better rooms with higher price tags. Properly trained front office staff can substantially improve room sales and hence average room rent.

UPSELLING Hotels normally have several categories of lettable rooms and many tariffs depending upon the furnishings, size, views, location, type of rooms etc. To up -sell, front office must be trained not to be a mere order taker but must be a professional sales person. The front office staff must understand guest’s psychology and sell the right room to the guest and not always the higher priced room to the guest. In case the higher priced room is sold to the guest by force then it will be taken as a negative selling and the guest will never come back to your hotel.

DISCOUNT AND ALLOWANCE Discount is offered to the guests to attract him so the sales can be increased. The fact is by giving discount hotel tries to increase its sales and hence increases profit. Discount can be offered under the following circumstances, 1. OFF SEASON DISCOUNT: During off season hotels offer a percentage of tariffs as discount, on rack rate or offer discounted tariff to attract more guests. 2. GROUP TARIFFS: Group of 10 persons and more are offered special discounted tariff to attract them. The quantum of discount will depend up on the size of group, season (off or peak), quantum of business the company gives throughout the year, number of days the group will be staying. 3. AIRLINE TARIFFS: Airline crew, airlines executives, lay over passengers on airlines account are offered special discounted tariff as they usually give more number of room nights throughout the year. The discount will entirely depend on the room nights offered by the airlines throughout the year.

DISCOUNT 4.SPECIAL TARIFFS: Companies giving more number of room nights business are also special tariffs to attract them to your hotel. 5.FHRAI MEMBERS: The members of Federation of Hotel and Restaurant Association of India are offered 30% discount by the member hotels and restaurants. This discount is offered as a customary and is offered to members only as per rules. 6. CONFERENCE TARIFFS: These day’s hotels especially resorts offer special tariffs to companies to attract them to hold conferences in their hotels. The special tariff may be inclusive of sightseeing, pick up and drop facilities etc. 7. FOOD/ ITEM NOT SERVED: Sometimes guests complaint either at the time of checking out or before but after the bill has been raised that the food / services charged for were never availed by them. If the hotel is convinced that the bill has been wrongly raised then the discount is offered to the guest for the amount he is over charged.

DISCOUNT The receptionist on his own cannot offer discount or special tariff to a guest. All companies who are offered special tariff to a guest, are only offered discounted tariff by reception and if any other guest is to be offered discounted tariffs then it is offered only by the managers or by those who are authorized to offer discounted tariff to guests.

ALLOWANCE Allowance is offered to a guest due to deficiency in services. Sometimes hotel is not fully operational or due to one reason or the other, the management has taken a decision to offer allowance to all residents on rack rates. At times due to some unavoidable circumstances the hotel residents are unable to get peaceful atmosphere and are offered allowance on rack rate. At times the food served to the guest was not of hotel’s standard and there was a deficiency in service and the management took decision to offer allowance to the guests on food. To offer allowance, receptionist raises allowance voucher, approved by an authorized person and enters in the allowance register, as otherwise the account will not tally. In brief it can be said that allowance is given due to deficiency in service and the discount is given to attract more guests and in increasing the sales and profit.