How to upsell to hotel guests: before arrival, at check-in and during the stay

Start from what guests already ask the front desk for, and what your reviews say they enjoyed or missed. Booking.com's research for its partners found the extras travellers would most buy are food, especially breakfast, transport such as parking and shuttles, spa treatments such as massages, and tours and activities. A list to choose from:

• A better room: larger, with a view, a balcony or a bathtub.
• Meals: breakfast for guests who booked a room only, dinner, a festival or New Year's Eve dinner.
• Transfers: from the airport, the station or the bus stand, and a car for the day.
• Time: an early check-in for a guest arriving off a night train, a late check-out for one leaving on an evening flight.
• Occasions: a cake, flowers or a decorated room for a birthday or an anniversary.
• Things to do: a guided walk, a temple visit, a cooking class, a safari booking.
• Comforts: laundry, an extra bed, parking, a massage.

• Know what each one costs you: the food, the driver, the staff time, the room you could have sold to someone else.
• Set one clear price, with tax included, and use it everywhere: on the website, in messages, at the desk.
• Price an upgrade as the difference between the two rooms that night, and don't sell your last top room cheaply on a night it would sell at full price.
• Build the better room up from the one booked. Booking.com advises that the upgrade includes everything in the room below it, or guests may turn it down.
• Bundle what goes together, such as a room with dinner and a late check-out for an anniversary, at a price below the three bought separately.

Between booking and arrival, guests are planning and open to ideas. Send one message a few days before they come, and keep it useful first:

1. 1Welcome them by name and confirm the dates and the room.
2. 2Give the check-in time, directions and parking.
3. 3Ask what time they will arrive.
4. 4Offer one or two things that suit the booking, such as a transfer from the station for guests arriving by train, or breakfast for a room-only booking, with the price.
5. 5Say how to say yes: a reply on WhatsApp, or a link.

On Booking.com, scheduled message templates in the extranet send a message by themselves at set points, such as when a guest books. Booking.com also offers paid upgrades to its guests by itself between booking and check-in, with a side-by-side comparison of the two rooms. It is called Room Upsell, it works only for a hotel with more than one room type, and there is nothing to set up beyond adding all your rooms in the extranet. A booking can be upgraded only if:

• The guest chose to pay at the property.
• It is on a flexible policy, or a non-refundable one where you have set a grace period and the guest accepts within it.
• A higher-priced room with the same occupancy and bed configuration is free.

When a guest accepts, Booking.com changes the booking, shows it as a Paid upgrade in your reservations, and puts the cheaper room back on sale. Booking.com says the service costs nothing beyond your usual commission, and suggests at least four photos of each room type and one of the bathroom, and room names that make the better room's value clear.

On MakeMyTrip and Goibibo, a package puts a stay, meals and other inclusions in one offer, shown at the top of your room list on MakeMyTrip. In the InGo-MMT extranet:

1. 1Go to the Property tab, then Inclusions & Packages, then Create a package, or click the “Create a Package” button under Manage Rates & Inventory.
2. 2Select the room and the rate plan. Packages can't be made on a room-only (EP) meal plan.
3. 3Name the package, and choose to copy the rate plan or turn it into a package rate plan.
4. 4Add at least three inclusions from two or more kinds, such as sightseeing, spa, food and drink or transfers.
5. 5Drag the inclusions into the order guests should see them, and save the package.

• MakeMyTrip's Linked Rates set the prices of breakfast-only, breakfast with lunch or dinner, and full-board rate plans from your room-only price, by adding the meal prices per adult and child once: find it under Linked Rates in the Rates & Inventory tab.
• For Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, MakeMyTrip lets you add a gala meal charge, compulsory or not: under Property, then Policies, open the “Notices” tab, click “+ADD A NOTICE FOR YOUR CUSTOMERS”, choose “Gala Meals”, set the details, the price per room or per person and the dates, and click “Save Changes”. It shows on both sites and on the booking voucher.
• On Booking.com, value adds such as free breakfast, an airport shuttle or a late check-out are added under the Property tab, in Facilities & Services, and meals can go into rate plans.

At the desk you know what the guest doesn't: which rooms are still free tonight. Before each arrival, look at what is free in the better rooms and decide what you would offer, and at what price.

• Offer one thing, by name, with its price, after the guest has been welcomed and before the key is handed over.
• Describe what the guest gets, not what it is called: a balcony over the garden, a quieter floor, a bathtub.
• Offer what fits the guest in front of you: a late check-out to someone on an evening flight, dinner to a family arriving tired.
• Accept a no at once, with the same warmth.
• Note every offer and every answer, so that you learn which ones guests want.

Give regular and returning guests a free upgrade when a room is free; the goodwill is worth more than the difference. If the desk staff share in what they sell, make it a team reward rather than one person's, so that no one presses a guest.

• A welcome message on WhatsApp on the first evening, with the restaurant's hours, the laundry and the number to call.
• A card or QR code in the room with every extra and its price.
• The evening before departure, offer a late check-out if the room isn't needed, and ask about a transfer.
• Offer another night only when the room is free, and at the price it would sell for.
• Tell guests what is on in town, and what you can book for them.

If your restaurant, spa or bar is open to people who aren't staying, Google lets it have its own Business Profile, so that the town finds it too.

• Add your extras to your booking engine, so that guests can choose them while they book: breakfast, a transfer, an early check-in, a celebration.
• Put them in the confirmation email, with the prices.
• Offer direct guests something the booking sites don't, such as a free late check-out when a room is free, so that booking direct is worth it.

Our guide on getting more direct bookings goes further.

• One offer at a time, and never more than once for the same thing.
• The full price, tax included, before the guest says yes. Nothing added to the bill that wasn't agreed.
• Nothing ticked in advance on your website.
• A guest charged only for what they said yes to, and told when they will be charged.
• Every offer delivered as described. A late check-out promised and forgotten turns into a bad review.

• Add up the month's revenue from extras and divide it by the rooms sold: that is what extras bring per occupied room.
• For each offer, divide the times guests said yes by the times it was offered, to see which offers guests want.
• Note when each yes came: before arrival, at check-in or during the stay.
• Drop the offers no one takes, and offer the popular ones earlier.
• Read your reviews for mentions of extras, good and bad.

EHL Hospitality Business School notes that an upgrade offered when the guest books lands differently from the same offer at check-in, and that both moments should be planned. Your own counts show which works for your guests.