From order takers to revenue makers: Empower your hotel reservations team
What if instead of just handling incoming calls, your reservations team became an integral part of your sales operation? What if they didn’t simply take orders but could anticipate needs, drive direct bookings, and cultivate guest loyalty?
With the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) predicting a record-breaking 2024 for travel and tourism, and domestic travel poised to dominate 70% of spending by 2030, establishing a sales-minded reservations team could be the key to growing your business and setting you apart from your competition.
We’ll explore how to coach and empower a top-tier reservations team through the story of Jenn, the Director of Reservations at Avertine Hotel. It’s the 2025 budget season, and Jenn is on a mission to find the right call center solution to help her agents reach peak performance, drive direct revenue, and boost the hotel’s NOI. She’s an insightful, empathetic leader of her department who holds the team to high standards — the only thing holding them back is the lack of a comprehensive voice channel solution that maximizes the power of guest data.
Incorporate the power of call data
Jenn knows that data is power. Without the right technology to track essential metrics, managers and agents are operating in the dark. She’s looking for a solution that automates call data collection and gathers real-time information on agent key performance indicators (KPIs). Jenn wants to understand what her agents are doing well and find opportunities for improvement without manually sorting through call logs and spreadsheet exports, or by hovering over anyone’s shoulder.
By analyzing call duration, Jenn can pinpoint inefficiencies, and spotlight her top performers based on their conversion rates. Call data helps boost overall agent performance and enables targeted follow-ups across channels — translating into increased bookings, outbound sales opportunities, and happier guests. Call data also opens doors to those vital personalized experiences and second-chance bookings.
A great example of the power of call data comes from Ojai Valley Inn. The inn initially lacked meaningful data to train and coach their agents and increase conversions. After implementing Revinate’s solutions — Revinate Marketing, Reservation Sales, and the RezForce on-demand contact center — the results were striking:
- Call conversions surged by 16% over 12 months
- Average stay value increased by 23%
- Marketing efforts saw open rates exceed 50% with a 2.3% click-through rate
- Each campaign drove an average of 300 room nights
When Jenn saw customer stories like Ojai Valley Inn’s, she became even more confident that Reservation Sales could help her reservations team reach new heights.
Review call recordings
Reviewing call recordings is vital for targeted coaching on intelligent selling techniques. It’s important to Jenn to provide helpful, actionable feedback to her agents instead of vague recommendations. Jenn had to waste a lot of time and manual effort finding a call worth reviewing. With Reservation Sales, she will be able to easily find labeled calls to identify coachable moments.
Upskill with call scoring
Call scoring is a standardized method of evaluating your agents’ performance on calls by assessing specific elements of their customer interactions based on predetermined criteria.
For example, by checking if agents hit key points, like simply asking for the booking, you can significantly boost conversion rates.
Jenn wants to focus her scoring efforts on non-converting calls to highlight improvement areas. Every missed opportunity is a lesson in disguise. So, this approach not only shows agents what to tweak on the next call but also provides valuable data for setting team goals.
Enhance the conversation with integration
Seamless technology integration is imperative for transforming your hotel call center team into top sales performers. A robust hospitality-specific Customer Data Platform (CDP) unifies data from your PMS, CRM, survey, restaurant, spa, and golf systems into a single, comprehensive guest profile. Connecting a CDP with your call system lets you place a guest’s complete history at your agents’ fingertips.
This integrated tech stack aligns your entire team, from front desk to marketing. Plus, it empowers your agents to follow up effectively with targeted emails and phone calls, turning one-time inquiries into loyal, repeat customers.
Generate more bookings with call center coaching techniques
Jenn understands that maximizing the voice channel starts with assessing agents’ skill levels and performance. Her aim is to transform the reservations team into a high-performing sales force by focusing on continuous improvement and leveraging data-driven insights.
To help with that, Jenn lives by these six call center coaching tips to jump-start conversions and lift direct revenue:
1. Ears wide open
Active listening is a fundamental skill for reservation agents. It’s not just about hearing what a person is saying, it’s also about uncovering a potential visitor’s hidden motivations and desires.
By tuning into subtle cues, agents can sell intelligently, matching offerings to guest preferences and anticipating needs. For instance, an agent may pick up on a potential customer’s interest in local culture and cuisine. This can lead to the agent recommending a culinary walking tour or cooking class, both delighting the guest and driving ancillary revenue.
2. Leverage the power of notes
Many guests don’t book on the first call, often needing up to three touchpoints. By training your agents to record conversation details, you set the stage for building greater guest loyalty.
Imagine if an agent can easily see that a potential guest previously inquired about rooms with a view and enjoyed your restaurant specials on a past visit. Armed with this intel, they can offer an oceanview room and tempt the customer with mouth-watering menu recommendations, significantly boosting conversion chances.
These notes are pure gold for second-chance bookings too, allowing agents to pick up right where a previous conversation left off to create a seamless, personalized experience that transforms inquiries into reservations.
3. Strike a positive tone
Train your agents to infuse warmth and friendliness into every interaction with potential guests, while also adapting to match their vibe. It enables a swift bond between an agent and guest.
When faced with a complaint, an empathetic tone can work wonders, diffusing tension and making guests feel truly heard.
This is where call recordings can become invaluable. Use them to identify these golden moments and create coachable opportunities. By fine-tuning tone, agents aren’t just booking rooms, they’re crafting experiences that begin with the very first “Hello.”
4. The art of building rapport
With the right coaching, agents can learn how to transform routine calls into lasting connections that cultivate trust and loyalty. Ditch robotic scripts and teach your agents to embrace authentic dialogue.
Using a guest’s name is just the start. Invite agents to share personal anecdotes that resonate with the caller’s interests. Maybe your agent hiked the trail the guest is asking about, or has a favorite local coffee shop to recommend. These genuine exchanges create memorable moments, turning one-time callers into lifelong fans.
5. Turning call centers into profit centers
Empower your call center agents to become outbound sales rockstars with strategic, purpose-driven training. Spark some friendly competition with incentives tied to performance metrics. Whether it’s bonuses, recognition, or perks, rewarding top performers helps create a little friendly rivalry that helps keep your team motivated and drive results.
Just look at The Broadmoor. They scored 422 outbound bookings in a year, and saw a 98% YoY increase in outbound revenue using Reservation Sales. And Dream Inn Santa Cruz created a revenue-generating team that has grown their outbound booking revenue from $46K in 2017 to over $350K in 2022, an incredible +600% increase.
6. Never miss a call
Jenn doesn’t want to let high call volumes or offline hours cost the hotel bookings, so she’s looking for a pay-for-performance solution like RezForce to act as a 24/7/365 safety net, ensuring every call is answered, even when the in-house team is swamped or offline. These highly trained agents do much more than take reservations, they engage with your guests, capture lead data, and grow your marketing database.
Take Mohonk Mountain House, for example. By implementing Revinate Reservation Sales and RezForce for overflow calls, they’ve created a powerful outbound channel. The result? A whopping 11% of their total booked revenue now comes from this source.
Empower agents to reflect your brand on every call
When a guest calls a hotel, they want to speak with someone who embraces the brand and knows what they’re talking about. Jenn knows that this is foundational for building customer trust. Once guests feel confident with the brand, you can expect repeat stays, a stronger reputation, and a significant contribution to your bottom line.
Jenn’s tip: Develop a style guide and conduct group coaching sessions. Jenn encouraged her agents to practice using the brand voice in a variety of scenarios during these sessions. Confidence grew with more practice, as agents became comfortable implementing these standards in actual phone calls with guests.
Another one of Jenn’s recommendations is to treat agents like guests. Arrange familiarization trips that let agents experience the hotel, its locations, restaurants, and amenities first-hand. This call center coaching technique deepens connections with prospective guests. When an agent can enthusiastically describe the view from the rooftop bar and how incredible the signature cocktail is, they are that much more persuasive.
With this approach, Jenn’s agents understand that it’s not just about filling rooms. They’re selling the brand’s unique story and creating a cohesive message that encourages trust, brand loyalty, and advocacy — while simultaneously achieving higher conversions and increased stay values. In other words, they’ve transformed from mere reservation takers to skilled revenue makers.
The power of this transformation is exemplified by Hyatt Regency Lost Pines Resort and Spa. After implementing Reservation Sales solution, they built an on-site reservations team with destination expertise that now proactively reaches out to past guests and has a 60% call-to-booking conversion, nearly triple that of their global contact center.
Be the Jenn of your team. Champion the 2025 budget season with Revinate
After laying out all the benefits of Reservation Sales and how it would both empower her team to reach peak performance and improve the bottom line, the other stakeholders at The Avertine were excited to implement the solution. The benefits of collecting guest data and using it for personalization extend far beyond the call center — it has the potential to significantly increase the hotel asset value. Now, Jenn’s team are the rockstars of the property, bringing in direct revenue hand-over-fist.
Learn how you can be the Jenn of your team this budget season.
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.
Sanjana Chappalli
VP of Brand Marketing and Communications
Revinate, Inc.
