Is telephone sales an effective solution for your hotel?

How effective is telephone sales for your hotel?

It is important to know what the conversion rate of your hotel reservation service is.

Many hoteliers will focus on the conversion statistics on their website, but how many calls are actually converted into bookings?

Selling by phone is a very important channel for hotels because the fact that travelers try to contact you directly by taking the first step towards you makes them easier to convert.

So why do many hotels still have a weak sales process?

For many years, reservation services have been considered operational services and not commercial services.

Generally, a reservation agent will not focus on buying signals or the motivation for the trip of a potential customer and will only mention the price...

So that raises the next question,

What image of your hotel do you want to give? What will make the difference for a traveller to reach a reservation?

As a hotelier, it is imperative that you train your staff to make bookings that exceed the price. You need to set up a personalized sales process for each traveller and have a unique discourse in line with the needs of the traveller.

Here is a list of tips to improve your speech:

• Sell the destination and location of the hotel.
• Talk to the person on the other end of the phone by name.
• Ask questions about the traveller's motivations for this trip to offer him the service that best suits his needs.
• Reservation agents should be aware of events taking place around the hotel as well as good restaurants, nearby transport and activities to be able to give recommendations to travelers.

You can also draw up a list of standard criteria that must be met, such as:

• Answer after a maximum of 4 ringtones
• Courteous welcome with offer of assistance
• If a transfer is required, the staff is courteous prior to the transfer and the call is transferred properly.
• No unpleasant background noise
• All reservation staff demonstrate appropriate service etiquette (efficient, friendly, attentive, professional, and sufficiently multilingual).
• The staff determines the arrival and departure dates/the number of nights/the number of guests.
• The staff asks if the guest has already stayed in the hotel.
• Staff determine the customer's needs by asking one or more qualifying questions - for example, the purpose of the visit, a special occasion, etc.
• Staff indicate taxes and service fees/living expenses (if applicable).
• Staff asked for the name and contact information of the caller.
• Staff summarize information including name, dates, number of rooms and guests, room type, and rate.
• The staff informs about the cancellation and warranty policy
• The staff spontaneously provides the confirmation number or offers to send it by email.
• The staff thanks the caller for choosing the hotel
• The booking process is complete in less than 10 minutes
• The reservation staff provides an accurate description of the hotel and accommodation.
• Arrival time is confirmed.
• Offer at least one type of other service - spa, restaurant, concierge, etc.

To monitor your performance more closely, here are the KPIs to keep a close eye on:

• Pick-up rate: here the number of calls handled out of the total number of incoming calls. This rate can also take into account the concept of reactivity in relation to predefined criteria.
• The SLA (service level agreement): it is a contract or part of a contract by which a service provider undertakes to provide a set of services to one or more customers. In other words, it is a contractual clause that defines the specific objectives and the level of service that a customer is entitled to expect from the signatory service provider. (example: I want to answer my calls in less than 20 seconds).
• The Conversion Rate: in this case it corresponds to the percentage of travelers who call and who make a reservation as a result of this call.
• The Request
• The average accommodation basket
• The Average Extras Cart

The advantage of this direct telephone relationship part is that it also makes it possible to create a link between file follow-up and outgoing calls to take the time to follow the traveller's buying process. (example with hotels in the mountains that offer options to then proceed with the act of purchase)

To make life easier for your reservation agents, do not hesitate to create a book of the rooms you offer in your hotel so that they can have all the characteristics at their fingertips.

If it is difficult for your establishment to take the time to manage all this, HDB has put in place a turnkey solution.

What HDB Solutions' GuestVoice solution could do for you...

With GuestVoice, turn phone support requests into direct sales for your hotel.

You have the opportunity to offer your travelers a 24-hour multilingual customer service with unique support to meet each of their needs.

For your hotel, you thus benefit from freeing up time for your employees who can focus on other tasks, and you make yourself available at any time for your travelers at the other end of the phone by also taking advantage of a management of call overflows that can be adjusted according to your wishes.

Finally, our available salespeople are continuously trained to respond as accurately as possible and with personalized interaction to travelers at the other end of the line.

Do you want to know more?

Request a demo: https://blog.hdb-solutions.com/demande-de-demo-guest-voice/