Let your guests upgrade to a higher priced room and/or rate as a result of a self-driving yet personalized yield management procedure – Upsell Rates. As a big driver of additional revenue, guest upgrades are a major part of the MyBooking Portal and proper and logical configuration of the feature will enable you to succeed in gaining that extra revenue.
What does the feature do?
The feature has 2 main uses:
- Allows guests to upgrade on the MyBooking Portal (SSP)
The available upsell rates are displayed to the Guest on the MyBooking Portal (SSP) prior to check-in and Clock Kiosk (on self-check-in). Guest can find all special offer details and check the upgrade price (the difference between the current booking price and each offer) and select an offer to upgrade into. Once the guest selects the desired offer, the booking is updated and the rate price is recalculated, room type and/or rate changed and a new confirmation email will be sent.
Important: The 'Special Offers' list is uniquely calculated for each booking and consists of rates applicable to this booking only.
2. Provides your staff with a list with appropriate upgrade options which they can offer to guests at check-in
Configuration
Activate the feature and choose the rates to be included in the Upsell list. Navigate to menu Settings-> All Settings-> Guest Engagement-> Self Service Portal-> section Upsell rates (Special Offers).
Select 'Yes' from the dropdown menu (1), afterwards, click 'Select Rates' (2) and mark the rates that you want to include in the Upsell/Special offer feature.
- There are free rooms of the respective room type for the booking period.
- All restrictions of the rates are compatible with the booking attributes (arrival, stay, departure, adults, children, etc.) and all other restrictions permit the rate to be available.
- The total price of the upsell rate is GREATER than the price of the booking (extra services selected in WRS or posted manually are not calculated in the booking price).
Upsell Index
Sometimes the automated upgrade suggestions may be inappropriate. For example, under a special offer, an Apartment may be sold at a lower price than the regular Double room, or Half Board sold at a lower price than standard B&B. The upgrade index is an additional parameter which helps avoid this.
- You can set the upsell index for each room type. Then only room types with a higher index than that of the booking room type will be offered. To set it up, navigate to menu Settings->All Settings->Rooms->Room types-> edit each room type and enter the number in the 'Upsell index' field.
- You can set the upsell index for each rate. Then only rates with higher rate index than the booking rate one will be offered. To set it up, navigate to menu Settings->Rate Plans-> load the rates in question->edit them->in tab 'Upsell' click 'Include in upsell suggestions' and enter the index.
Using Restrictions
With the Upsell Rates, the following restrictions can be applied:
- 'Min days before arrival' to allow upsell to be available for a certain number of days before arrival
- 'Minimum free rooms' to allow upgrades to be available only if there are a certain number of free rooms available.
Examples
To make the setup of an upsell suggestion more clear, here is an example
- Our property has 3 room types - DBL, COM, APT
- We offer 3 rates per room type - RO, BB, HB
We want guests to be able to upgrade either to a higher rate from the same room type or choose any other room type and rate.
Our setup of the indexes for the rates will be:
- RO - 1
- BB - 2
- HB - 3
With this setup, if a guest originally booked a COM room type on BB rate, they will be offered - COM on HB; APT on BB, HB.
As you see, DBL is not offered at all, due to the lower prices. Furthermore, the APT on RO will not be offered as well. This is because the price of APT on RO is lower than COM on BB and the system will not offer it.