How to activate different data sources for hotel revenue
The Arca in Hong Kong used unified customer profiles that included all spending behaviors to implement targeted marketing campaigns, resulting in a revenue lift of HK$ 1.6M (over $200k USD) and an average revenue of HK$117k (nearly $15k USD) per campaign
Communication is the key to a strong relationship. This holds true for you and your guests, too.
Consider this: 7 out of 10 guests prefer personalized communication, offers, and experiences. Guests also say that communication with a property makes them feel valued and cared for, and it influences whether they’ll leave a positive review.
But how are you supposed to give the thousands of guests who pass through your property the personalization they are looking for? Even a seasoned general manager is unlikely to remember all the guests who stayed with you for 3 nights and opted for a spa treatment.
The answer is data. Your guests share their data across many touchpoints, channels, and interactions with your hotel — you just need the right technology to collect, store, analyze, and activate it. However, it’s important to understand that just like your guests in real life, their data is not one-size-fits-all. Information about your guests comes from many sources, and each source gives you unique insights into what matters to them.
A Customer Data Platform (CDP) centralizes guest data from different touchpoints and weaves it into a complete, 360-degree view of your guests. A hospitality-specific CDP can take you even further. It pulls in crucial zero-party data from beyond your PMS, including hotel amenities like golf, spa, restaurants, and folios. A top-tier solution will also incorporate (and activate) guest interactions across your email and text campaigns, the voice channel, surveys, and reviews. The result: guest profiles that are much more robust than those built only on PMS or web data.
Integrations with golf, spa, restaurant, and folio data are unavailable in a basic CRM. But these data sources are goldmines for driving direct revenue, so why would you want to keep them locked in a silo? When data is collected and activated across voice, email, and messaging channels with a CDP, you can take your direct revenue strategy to new heights, and delight your guests along the way.
Take a swing at boosting your golf course profits
You can generate more ancillary revenue from your golf course by activating guest data. The key is using that data to develop tailored messaging and serving it up to guests at the right moment, on their preferred communication channel.
Let’s walk through what this can look like in action.
Caroline Brettell is a frequent business traveler with Avertine Hospitality Group, and she sometimes likes to hit up the golf course with clients. Her guest profile in Avertine’s CDP shows that she played a round of golf during her last stay, how much she spent at the course clubhouse, and based on a survey response, that she prefers phone calls for communication instead of texts or email. Your reservations agent can use this information to connect with Caroline, tailor their selling points, and secure the booking.
Your agent may say something like, I noticed you enjoyed a round of golf during your last stay with us. We’ve recently updated our golf carts and we’ve added a new selection of craft beers to the clubhouse menu. Would you like me to reserve a tee time for you during your upcoming stay?
For other guests who prefer to communicate via emails or text messages, pre-arrival emails and on-property SMS/text messages can also be effective for targeting guests who’ve enjoyed your golf amenities during previous stays. You could send a message welcoming back an avid golfer and offer a complimentary bucket of balls at the driving range, or a 15% discount in the pro shop.
A hospitality CDP lets you use guest data to focus your communication and offerings in ways that make your golf enthusiast visitors feel valued, boosting their loyalty while also incentivizing them to visit your course and spend money on additional amenities such as food, beverages, and merchandise.
Reinvigorate revenue from your spa
Wellness tourism is expected to hit $1.3 trillion by next year, fueled by the increasing popularity of specific treatments such as cold plunge therapy/cryotherapy (126% increase), lymphatic facials (83% increase), and seaweed baths (53% increase). Another notable trend is a shift from adults-only experiences to bringing the kids along for multigenerational spa retreats.
Staying on top of the latest wellness trends and learning from your spa customer data empowers you to create customized campaigns that maximize revenue opportunities. By incorporating enticing spa offers for the right guests, you both boost spa revenue from the get-go and inspire your health-conscious visitors to keep coming back for more relaxation and rejuvenation.
The key here is not to simply add popular experiences to your spa menu and call it good. You need to understand from your own customer data which new spa amenities appeal to your particular guests. Which offerings are doing well? And which aren’t performing as expected? Armed with these insights, you can make informed decisions about your spa services, and promote special offers on your website and social media channels that are most likely to inspire guests to visit and return for more indulgent experiences.
To illustrate, say you notice that many of your guests are booking couples massages. You can use that information to create a romantic getaway package, complete with a couples massage, champagne, and a private dining experience. Similarly, if customers are raving about your new hot stone therapy in reviews, you can feature it prominently on your website and social media, accompanied by a special introductory offer to entice more guests to try it out.
The Paradise Resort Gold Coast, for instance, drove 389+ room nights with a customized one-time email campaign that appealed to families. The offer spoke directly to this audience’s preferences by including two daily meals and a discount to the property’s waterpark, while highlighting the kids club, live shows, and family-friendly activities.
Dish up restaurant data to whip up more profit
The importance of exceptional food-and-beverage (F&B) experiences among travelers can’t be overstated. According to an analysis by the American Hotel & Lodging Association (AHLA) and Oxford Economics, a staggering 69% of all U.S. hotel guest spending goes toward non-hotel room costs, including F&B, while only 31% is spent on lodging. And according to our 2024 Hospitality Benchmark Report, F&B is the most popular upsell category. There is a very high likelihood that your guests will be taking advantage of your property’s culinary offerings during their stay.
To maximize this golden opportunity, collecting and analyzing restaurant reservations data is crucial. You can leverage this information to showcase appealing offers and promotions that engage guests while they’re on your property, or even build anticipation before their arrival through tailored pre-arrival messages.
Incorporating an AI-powered text messaging solution can further enhance your F&B strategy. You can automatically send a text to guests after their recent dining experience and then ingest their responses back into your CDP. From there, you can quickly identify areas for improvement and boost your restaurant’s reputation by inviting guests to post reviews.
Guest data collected from the restaurant experience can also help you identify your big spenders and target them with more upsell opportunities. For instance, maybe you notice that a guest consistently reserves a table for six when they stay with you, and spend a high-dollar amount per person. You can use these insights to create a personalized email or SMS campaign when they’re on-property, offering them an exclusive wine-pairing dinner featuring your executive chef’s signature dishes.
By capitalizing on your restaurant data and combining it with immediacy and personalization, you can create memorable dining experiences for your guests. Furthermore, you can contribute to your property’s overall revenue growth by effectively driving more traffic to your F&B outlets.
Folio focus: Cash in on guest spending habits
Imagine a guest booking one of your rooms online — Andrea. She selects a few add-ons like early check-in, a spa treatment, and a round of golf. During her stay, she pays for upgraded Wi-Fi, a session with a personal trainer, room service, and purchases a few items from your gift shop. In a traditional setup, this data would remain siloed in all those different systems. If all of these transactions are captured on the folio data in the PMS, a properly integrated hospitality CDP will pick up all of that line-by-line detail. This will, in turn, provide a complete picture of Andrea’s on-property spending behavior.
Analyzing your customers’ folio data allows you to identify patterns and segment your guests based on their spending habits. For instance, you may learn that visitors who book suites tend to spend more on ancillary products and services than those in standard guest rooms. By capitalizing on this insight, you can create a segment for these “high-value suite guests” and significantly impact your property’s Total Revenue per Available Room (TRevPAR) by tailoring their experience. This could include offering early check-in and late check-out privileges, tailored F&B offers, or providing exclusive access to premium resort facilities and events.
A great example of how all this works in action comes from The Arca in Hong Kong used unified customer profiles that included all spending behaviors to implement targeted marketing campaigns, resulting in a revenue lift of HK$ 1.6M (over $200k USD) and an average revenue of HK$117k (nearly $15k USD) per campaign.
Folio data can also reveal which guest segments are likely to spend money on specific amenities, so you can create highly focused offers. The Paradise Resort Gold Coast, for instance, drove 389+ room nights with a customized one-time email campaign that appealed to families. The offer spoke directly to this audience’s preferences by including two daily meals and a discount to the property’s waterpark, while highlighting the kids club, live shows, and family-friendly activities.
By collecting folio data and using segmentation, you’re empowered to make your guests’ stays more memorable, drive higher upsell rates, and ultimately lift your overall RevPAR from key segments.
Channel surf to revenue success
Your guest data is gold. And it comes from sources far beyond the confines of your PMS — like your spa, golf course, dining facilities, and more. To stay ahead of the competition and get your revenue numbers to really start climbing, you need to access and harness the power of your data, connecting with your guests through the most effective channels.
This is where a hospitality CDP comes into play. It pulls in all that valuable information from the different corners of your portfolio, and makes it easy to activate it via web, email, text, and voice. The right CDP empowers data-driven decisions that unlock new opportunities to craft personalized experiences and laser-focused campaigns that hit the bullseye every time.
About Revinate
Revinate empowers hoteliers to directly connect with their guests.
Our Guest Data Platform and communication solutions unlock revenue for hoteliers and put them in control of the full guest experience — initial research, booking, check-in, throughout the stay, and even after check out — all via the communication channels that guests prefer, whether it's voice, text, email, or web.
More than 12,000 hotels globally bank on Revinate to drive direct revenue and deliver delightful guest experiences.
Ask us how we do it. Visit our website to get a demo.
