What is upselling in vacation rentals and hotels?

Valery Saavedra

3 years ago

Upselling is a term that is becoming very fashionable in our sector. A clear example is the increasingly common practice of upselling in hotels and vacation rentals. So let’s start by defining what we mean by upselling!

Upselling in general terms, is the ability of the host to convince the guest to purchase something additional or something more expensive. But Upselling is also (and this is what attracts us the most) about making the guest experience better. To take great care of the guests we already have by allowing them to personalize experiences.

We have been seeing upselling everywhere over the last 10/15 years: When we buy a ticket on an airline and they ask to have a better seat, at fast food restaurants when they ask ‘Do you want some fries with that?’ or in a supermarket when we are done with our shopping, we arrive at the cashier and we can still get that extra sweets that drives us loopy.

In our sector, we can see upselling when a vacation rental or hotel prompts additional services to guests, such as an earlier check-in or late check-out, a session at the spa, a breakfast buffet, taxi to airports or train stations… etc. Vacation rentals or, more commonly, hotels, can also upsell rooms to guests by offering better rooms (otherwise known as room upgrade).

Creativity has no boundaries here! 🎉

Upselling + Cross-selling in vacation rentals and hotels

Apart from upselling, there is another related technique that we should understand and this is called cross-selling. To define cross-selling properly let’s establish the fundamental differences between both concepts:

Upselling is when we improve the same experience of something that is already purchased with some extra benefits or features.

For example, if we go to buy a phone, the salesman offers us a better model of the same phone with a better camera/screen, a bigger size, more storage…

Cross-selling is offering another experience (or another category of product) that compliments the original one.

Following the previous example when we go to buy a phone, the salesman offers us a headset, a last generation charger or a beautiful cage. Those products are nothing close to a phone, but they are complementary.

On Amazon, they are masters in cross-selling. We have seen the following expressions there so many times: “Frequently Bought Together” and “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought”. And we’ve probably succumbed to this selling technique at least once. In my case, I would dare to say that more than 20 times. 🥴

And let’s finish this post by numbering some benefits of doing upselling nowadays in our sector. We have identified the following benefits for our hosts: