Stayntouch, a company focused on cloud-based hotel property-management systems and guest-centric technology, has launched UpsellPRO, an upselling tool designed to expand and maximize revenue opportunities for hoteliers.
Powered by attribute-based selling and dynamic pricing, UpsellPRO helps hotels unbundle room reservations and market individual room features to guests during the booking process. UpsellPRO is available as a built-in product within the Stayntouch PMS, building on the company’s existing upselling capabilities.
“One of the nice parts about Stayntouch and a cloud-based PMS is that it is constantly evolving,” said Jacob Messina, CEO of Stayntouch. “Many times the user interface stays exactly the same, but the technology and the product continues to be improved.” While attribute-based selling has been around for a while, it has been difficult for hoteliers to execute on. “And part of that is because you have systems that were not built for this,” he said. Stayntouch was originally built for flexibility in terms of selling, he continued. “One of the earliest versions of the product was [a] booking engine [that helped hoteliers] monetize other components of hotels. So we're taking that and we're adding a lot of fuel to that fire.”
The platform will let hoteliers sell—and monetize—each element of a room individually, letting guests book a room in the category they want but upgrading for a better view or higher floor. Once the guest is on site, automated offers for room upgrades, amenities and (monetized) early check-in or late check-out can be sent to a guest’s smartphone or the hotel’s welcome kiosk. “What we're doing is making sure that you, as a customer, can pick the things that are meaningful to you, and then we identify the room based off of real-time inventory and pricing for you in that moment.”
Hoteliers will be able to set up their room inventory—and set up prices for different types of views—just once and then leave the system alone. “An ocean view versus a garden view [has] different value types to a customer,” Messina said, noting that those values can change seasonally.
According to a 2021 joint report released by Stayntouch and the NYU Tisch Center of Hospitality, 68 percent of travelers believe attribute-based selling would provide clarity when booking a hotel, with 46 percent willing to pay more to select their preferred room attributes.
Profitability and Revenue
Messina noted the growing focus on profitability compared to revenue in hospitality. “A personal passion of mine is how to make hotels run more efficiently and to be more profitable, and the industry has gotten into a little bit of trouble, a little distracted, in years past by focusing on top-line revenue. That is only one indicator of success, and it's not always the most telling one.” Hoteliers, he continued, need to think of their bottom line as well as the operational efficiencies that they can drive—and how technology can help them achieve those efficiencies.
Hoteliers, Messina continued, need to monetize “every component of their building, their spaces, their experience. And if they don't have a tech stack that supports that, then they're leaving money on the table.” To that end, UpsellPRO’s real-time consumer and performance data provides information about guests’ room preferences and price sensitivity. Hotels can use this data to further analyze their performance over time and understand the value and demand behind each of their attributes, services or amenities.
Messina emphasized that security is “definitely” a top priority for Stayntouch and all other hotel technology companies. “If it's not, you're doing something wrong,” he said. “We have dedicated security resources and firms that we've worked with that are constantly working on our product to make sure that it stays PCI-certified as well as certified for personal information.”