A Revenue Manager's Guide to

Using Personalisation
to Increase
Direct
Revenue

Incorporate these
effective strategies,
recommended by our
team of experts, to
enhance your direct
booking strategy.
Table of Contents

03 Introduction 13 Cross-Selling

Optimising
04 Length-of-Stay 15 Performance

07 Low Occupancy 16 Conclusion

09 Guest Personas 17 More Resources

11 Sold Out Dates 18 Exclusive Offer

2
The Power of Conversion
and Personalisation
Strategies
Operating costs have risen and OTA commissions continue
to climb. Increasing your direct revenue is just as, if not
more important than ever. Being creative and calculated
with your revenue management strategy is crucial to see an
impact on the bottom line.

Messaging, discounts and offers that you promote can have

a big impact on occupancy and ultimately revenue. And
these days, a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t have to be
your only option when it comes to promoting your offers
and discounts.

Conversion principles, a good understanding of your guests

and utilising personalisation technology can help you to
show the right message at the right time to the right traveller
to maximise your revenue and enhance your revenue
management strategy.

In this ebook, we’ll cover 6 campaign strategies that utilise

conversion and personalisation techniques that our team of
experts recommend implementing to enhance your
revenue management strategies, increase direct bookings
and ultimately, reach your revenue goals.

3
Increase Length-of-Stay
with Targeted Offers
Most hoteliers have experienced low
occupancy on certain dates—whether
it’s days of the week or times of the
year.
This is not an unusual occurrence but
there are smart strategies to target
25%
of independent
these days and generate revenue hotels offer
from them, without losing revenue length-of-stay
from other, more popular dates.
discounts
This can be done by upselling with a
length-of-stay (LOS) discount.

Share of hotels offering LOS Offering a length-of-

discounts by hotel type stay discount is not
50% uncommon.
43%
In fact, 33% of local
40% chains do length-of-
33% stay discounts (e.g.
10% off 3 nights).
30%
25%
The more
20%
sophisticated the
revenue operation
the higher the
10% chance they have
implemented a
length-of-stay
0% discount.
Independent Local Chain Major Chain
*Data from OTA Insight

4
Get in Front of Your Guests
Although many hotels are already offering length-of-stay
discounts, the problem is that they are tucked away and
most visitors are not aware that there is an attractive
discount available if they select a longer stay.

Guests will only see the additional discount if they have

already selected that specific number of nights in their initial
date selection. Ultimately, hoteliers are missing a big
opportunity to unlock more revenue and increase
occupancy.

OT TI
More Nights Equals
H

More Revenue
Increasing the length of stay can lead to a significant revenue uplift.

For example, if a guest booking a 1-night stay is tempted to add another

night, that’s 100% more revenue (pre-discount)! Even a relatively small
sweetener, like a 10% discount, can help push this over the line.

Offering a length-of-stay discount also helps reduce the problem with

shoulder dates like Sunday or Thursday. Many people book a 1-night
stay on peak nights like Friday or Saturday but they can be
encouraged to extend their stay to help low occupancy,
shoulder nights like Thursdays and Sundays.

Also, as you know that your guests wouldn't have selected the
additional date without a prompt, you can measure the best
promotion based on revenue gained vs discount size.

5
 How to Set Up a Length-of-Stay
Discount Campaign

Decide on your length-of-stay offer and the type of stay that

you want to encourage.

Think about a specific date range or guests with certain

arrival/departure days and build your offer around that, for
example:
“The longer you stay, the more you save—add one
more night to unlock a 10% discount.”
“Stay for 4 nights, pay for 3.”
“Add Thursday night to your stay and save 15%.”

6
 Personalise Your Length-of-
Stay Campaign
Your guests expect a personalised experience, and you can
bring that to their online too. The right message, at the right
time, can encourage guests to add those extra nights.

Here are some examples of how you can use Hotelchamp

Convert audience personalisation to target your campaigns
based on your goals and offers:

Goal: Increase length-of-stay

If 1 night is selected, show the 2-night upsell message etc.

Goal: Add shoulder dates to stay

If Friday and Saturday nights are
selected, show the message to add
Thursday or Sunday night.

Goal: Add a Bleisure stay (pictured)

If check-out day is Friday and guest
persona is a business traveller, show
the add weekend dates upsell
message.

7
Sell Low Occupancy
Dates with Value-Adds
Often when a set of upcoming dates are performing poorly,
the first instinct is to lower prices for these dates to try and
incentivise people to book these dates. However, this cuts
precious revenue and there’s a better solution that can
increase conversion and won’t damage revenue.

Offer a value-add for these dates.

What is an Attractive Value-Add?

Low occupancy offers should
take advantage of things that Free priority room
are in high supply as these do upgrades increased
not cost any revenue and would conversions by
be left unused if the guest didn't
book.

Value-add offers can include:

Free priority room upgrade
10%
even when adding
Free priority late check-out "*if available".
Free bike hire

8
How to Set Up a Low Occupancy
Dates Campaign
Conversion techniques like flash sales or time-scarce offers
can be utilised to encourage guests to make the most of a
limited-time offer and prompt them to take action.
Countdown timers in the Hotelchamp Template Library can
be customised per user—for example, every person sees a
unique countdown based on when they were on the
website.
Target visitors by the date they search for and also the day
of the week they are searching for and you can show these
value-add-ons to the exact group you are trying to convert.

OT TI See just how easy it is to set up a

H

campaign like this in these videos

9
Reduce Revenue
Cannibalisation with
Persona Targeting
Very often, blanket discounts are used to influence
conversion rates. However, discounts cannibalise revenue
heavily and direct revenue is a precious resource that
doesn’t need to be sacrificed to move the needle on
conversion—and the reality is, not everyone needs a
discount to be convinced to book directly.

OT TI Price Sensitivity and

H

Personas
Often business travellers are not very price
sensitive and a discount won’t necessarily seal
the deal. Instead, the best strategy is to target
discounts only on those who are more likely to
need it, for example, families who need to book
two rooms to fit their kids in and a 10% discount
could be the deciding factor.

For those who are less sensitive to discounts,

such as business travellers, offering a freebie
that doesn’t have heavy costs, like a free drink
that they can enjoy in the bar after a long day,
can tempt them to choose you for making their
business travel more enjoyable.
10
How to Set Up Persona-Specific
Campaigns
Decide on the offers that you want to promote for each
persona, for example:
A free drink for business travellers
10% off rates for families
A free bottle of wine for couples

Business

Business traveller on
the checkout page
→ Free drink

Families

Family, spent 10
mins on rates page
→
10% off

Set up your audiences for targeting your offers. With

Hotelchamp you can target based on booking engine
selections for your own customised groups or you can
easily choose from the most common personas:
Families
Couples
Business travellers
Solo travellers
Bleisure travellers

11
Target Denials and Sold-
Out Dates
A guest has gone through the exploration, consideration
and evaluation phases and has decided to book with you.
Great news! Until something terrible happens. They input
their dates into your date selector and BAM. No availability.

This is called “denial”. Denials are when someone who was

interested in booking a stay with you was denied a
reservation. A common reason for this is no availability on
their chosen dates.

This is particularly painful because, after all of that work (and

sometimes cost) of acquiring the visitor and keeping them
engaged throughout the guest journey, typically when they
hit this wall, they won’t end up staying with you anymore.

OT TI
H

A Denial Isn't Always the End

It doesn’t have to be this bleak. You don’t have to
throw this opportunity away and lose these
potential guests who have chosen your hotel and
want to stay with you. Instead of giving up on this
guest because there’s no availability, there are a
couple of options that you can utilise to retain
them and keep you both happy.

12
How to Set Up a Denial Campaign
Using Hotelchamp personalisation, set up a message
that is triggered when there is no availability.
For some guests, their dates can be flexible—if they’ve
first chosen dates that are sold out, promote a special
offer, like a voucher if they book another date.
Vouchers be stacked on top of any existing offers and
can be sent to a visitor's email inbox in case they want
to think about it.
Or if there is another hotel in your chain in the same
city, direct them to this other hotel. This can also be
used perfectly in combination with a voucher.

13
 How do Direct Incentive
Vouchers Work?

Potential guest is Enters email to get

browsing website Incentive Voucher

Guest shows email Measure if guest is a

upon check-in or out direct booker and apply
reward for guest

Collect e-mail addresses

Best for value-add Direct Incentives
14
Boost Revenue with
Cross-Selling
Restaurant website pages get a huge amount of traffic and
they’re often specifically designed to get visitors to make a
reservation or get information. However, this group of
restaurant bookers are also a big segment that could be
persuaded to add an overnight stay to their restaurant visit
(or vice-versa!).

Romantic packages, staycations and other nice packages

can lure local and regional visitors to spend more. This is
called cross-selling, as you are highlighting an adjacent yet
complimentary addition to the guest stay.

A combined package can bring in 3-4x more revenue than

just the restaurant booking so it can be a big revenue
generator.

This is also a great way to incentivise local visitors who

may be initially just browsing for a nice dinner in your
restaurant or treatment at your spa but can be
tempted to book a future stay at your hotel.

OT TI
H

Get Creative
Romantic packages, staycations and
other nice packages can lure local
and regional visitors to spend more.

15
How to Set Up a Cross-Selling
Campaign
Define the offers that you want to cross-sell, for example,
A Staycation offer built around your restaurant
A romantic weekend for two with luxurious spa
treatments

Define the audience for your cross-sell offers. With

Hotelchamp you can easily customise your
messaging, choosing from our library of
templates and personalising your
offer based on:
Geo-targeting: e.g. Free parking or
local or regional visitors T TI priority late check
Pages: e.g. a restaurant O out are enticing
H

page value-adds for

Staycations that
appeal to locals.

16
The Power of Data to
Optimise Performance
Data is powerful. By understanding your results, you can
make data-driven decisions that optimise your hotel’s
website performance.
There are a number of powerful
ways to measure your
conversion campaigns and see
the impact they’re making.

Utilising a
reporting tool,
such as the
included, real-
time reports in
Hotelchamp,
you can:
Get an accurate performance data pulled from a
Google Analytics integration.
Compare performance with custom date ranges and
against the previous period to see changes over time.
See a breakdown per campaign of important metrics to
help make optimisations, including:
Views: how visible is the message?
Click rate: how engaging is the message?
Conversion rate after click: is the offer enough to
make guests book?
Revenue after click: compare the revenue to the
discount and optimise
Measure the performance of all properties you manage
Receive a report right in your inbox every month
17
Personalisation and
Revenue Management
By combining conversion strategies with personalisation
technology, you can create a revenue management
strategy that is effective and drives direct bookings.

One size doesn’t fit all when it comes to revenue

management and conversion strategies—you can create
multiple, targeting offers that maximise conversion rates
and revenue—without unnecessary cannibalism and hurting
profit margins.

Take Control of Your

Direct Channel
Want to start enhancing your revenue
management strategies? Our team of experts can
help you to implement a strategy that drives direct
revenue and helps you to achieve your goals.

Click the button below to find out how we can

help take your strategy to the next level.

Find out more

18
Exclusive Offer: 1-Click
Upsells Coming Soon
A frictionless website experience is critical for making it easy
for your guests to book on your website. This is especially
important when it comes to upselling them with new offers.

Want to be one of the first to utilise our NEW 1-Click Upsell

Interaction? Contact our team here and we'll share how you
can get this on your website as soon as it goes live.

Join waitlist

19
Further Reading and Resources

How To Offset The Impact Of Seasonality By

Increasing Mid-Week Occupancy Rates

How Amrâth Hotels Increased Direct Bookings

With Multi-Touchpoint Seasonal Offers

How To Use Direct Booking Benefits To Convince

Guests To Book Direct

How The Langham, London Increased Direct

Bookings From First-Time Visitors

How The Langham, Chicago Generated $30k In

Additional Revenue In 2 Months With One Simple
Message

Why Hotels Should Invest In Direct Bookings Over

OTAs

How To Create A Successful Staycation Campaign

Free Ebook: 7 Strategies To Convert Metasearch

Traffic

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