When guests book a property to spend their dream leisure holiday or their comfortable stay during a business or bleisure trip, they are looking forward to local recommendations from their hotel staff or their vacation rental host.
Most of the times, they know no one in the destination they visit and get very generic advice from taxi drivers or local shop owners. Health and hygiene is very important but local experience matters a lot to them.
Each guest has their own character, aspirations, interests and of course expectations. At Guest Like Local we are travelers as well as hosts. We love to take a double-sided approach, both as traveler and as host/hotelier.
Making it too obvious that you are trying to cross-sell for improving your revenue metrics is just not perceived well. We have seen plenty of that and in the longer-term, this approach does not yield more revenue.
The typical London packages in the UK
One obvious way is to cross-sell the typical user experience in your location. Take London as an example: Hotels are selling bundles of the room with Michellin starred restaurant dining while enjoying views of The Shard.
While this is clearly more geared towards domestic tourism, a walking tour of the area that includes passing by some hidden gems with exclusive items for sale that only locals know, mingled with some historical local facts is truly a wonderful experience.
An experience that will be both memorable to the guests and in the same time, will give them that feeling of exclusivity, given that the tour can be slightly altered to accommodate any personalized guest preferences.
The guests are more likely to leave a positive review, despite not dining at a Michellin starred restaurant but instead experiencing the local traditional fish & chips meal.
Personalization is key to long-term profits
The important aspect is to focus on over-delivering to guest expectations. What will cause them increased amusement, exclusivity and ultimately the highest quality experience of the local destination?
Guests will not only be happy to pay extra for this invaluable service, but they will also write raving reviews on Social Media and in local business listings, whether on a major OTA like Booking.com & Airbnb or in Google Maps.
After all, the experience is what counts. And your experience in hosting guests from all over the world in your accommodation gives you the comfort of understanding the needs and the personal aspirations of the guests within the first 30 seconds of interaction with them.
Establish the connection early in the guest planning journey
Typically when guests have made the decision to travel to your destination and booked your hotel, villa or apartment, this is when they start looking for information that will get them the most out of their planned vacation.
This interaction needs to happen before they book their experience on generic and often questionable listings on major tourism sites like TripAdvisor.
By questionable we do not mean to say TripAdvisor is a bad travel site. We have booked experiences that have top reviews but in the end they do not live up to the expectation: these top reviews were from past years and now the service is not up to a high standard.
With Guest Like Local’s upselling and cross-selling platform, you have the opportunity to present your cross-selling offers right after the guest books. And more importantly without bombarding them with several messages.
While we do recommend that you exchange some email or WhatsApp messages before sending out your Guest Like Local shop to the guest, the fact that these offers are hand-picked for maximizing their experience and not based on their profit margin is what will bring long-term success and a very important new revenue stream for your hotel business.