Room service is an important area for potential sales that hoteliers should make sure to add to their marketing plan. So you’ll want to adopt the best ways to optimize room service sales.
Optimizing sales of any description in the hotel industry isn’t without its challenges, but by focusing some attention on your current guests, you may be onto a winning strategy.
In our helpful article, we will walk you through the best ways to optimize room service sales, A hallmark of luxury travel.
Let’s start with perhaps the most important way to pamper your guests and offer them nourishment and convenience, with the best room service menu.
1. Revamp your room service menu
The Room Service menu can get worn quickly. Maintain a printing schedule to ensure the menus are kept fresh and clean. This will give guests greater confidence in the quality of the food.
Although as we’ve just seen, room service gives your guests a luxury experience. However, modern travelers are looking for a menu that suits their needs.
From layovers to business meetings. Your room service menu needs to reflect the requirements of your guests if you want to give a boost to this revenue.
Room service is all about comfort and nourishment. Providing guests with the perfectly executed menu options to be delivered directly to their room is one of the seven best ways to optimize room service sales.
A digital menu can relieve work around maintaining up to date clean menus. The ability to order directly through the menu can also increase orders. Screenshot from Get.hotefy.com
According to a recent survey by Thedailymeal, comfort food is top of consumer’s requirements with breakfast items making up 6 of the most requested items, which includes healthy options such as freshly made granola and yogurt, along with crab cakes and lobster roll.
The right balance
Getting the right balance of convenience, easy to eat and comfort will give your guests a reason to order.
Our top tip is to revamp your food and beverage menu to reflect data trends collected from guests who stay in hotels similar to yours.
However, keep it unique and don’t simply follow the crowd.
So this leads us on quite nicely to our second best way to optimize room service sales. That of using your guest data to make smart decisions.
2. Review guest data
Before changing your room service menu blindly into a plethora of promotions. It’s critical to review the most recent room service trends so you know what changes you should make.
Rather than guess which item will be the most popular. It’s much better to carve out some time to gather and review actual room service ordering data. If you’re not sure how to approach the data review process, here are three sources of information you can use:
- Room service receipts: Take some time to gather two years’ worth of your guest’s room service receipts so you can clearly start to smartly analyze the data you uncover. Make sure you make a note to make this a regular exercise.
- Your hotel record base: Here again, put some time into organizing this data to give you a clear picture of the type of customers your hotel attracts to give you the crucial information you need. For instance, if your hotel is more family orientated, a luxury establishment caters to business travelers or any combination.
- Hotel data review companies: Data-driven companies, such as these, organize data from hundreds of hotels to identify the most popular room service items.
- Data from apps: Some of the best hotel apps will make it simple for you to review data. Not only on room service orders but to gather a wealth of crucial information about your guests. Data from orders, users, and payments can easily be accessed and analyzed.
You might find it works best to review all data at the same time.
This will allow you to compare the most commonly ordered room service foods and beverages at your hotel. Combined with the latest industry trends.
You can also discover if your menu is missing any of the most popular food and beverage items.
3. Digital ordering
As we saw above, a hotel concierge solution app can help to increase room service sales. It gives hoteliers easy access to important data.
Hotel chains such as Hyatt and Omni Hotel are giving business guests the convenience of scheduling meals in advance. It’s not surprising that this encourages busy guests to order directly from an app.
Other hotels such as The Del Lago Resort & Casino saw an increase in room service requests since it combined the use of bedside tablets and mobile applications.
Here are three other important reasons:
- Easy ordering: Guests can find information simply and easily order from the room service menu.
- Swifter communication: Encourages simpler and more effective communication between guests, the staff, and hoteliers
- Encourage guests to order other services: Ordering room service will encourage guests to browse and book other services. Such as spa treatments or taxi hire, for example.
For more reasons on why the best concierge app designed by hoteliers will help to increase overall sales in your venues check out our other helpful article, 10 Reasons Your Hotel Needs A Guest App In 2021
“Ordering room service will encourage guests to browse and book other services such as spa treatments or taxi hire’
4. Personal Service
Perhaps your hotel offers a luxury stay with spa facilities. Or is a more budget-friendly family or business venue, all your guests will appreciate the personal touch.
Competition in the hotel industry is becoming ever more increased with the advent of low-cost layovers such as AirB&B.
To keep your guests coming back and also maximizing their purchasing power by optimizing room service sales and your overall offering, take the time to offer individual touches.
This could be as simple as handmade biscuits or a trending specialty coffee.
Adding a little extra for guests with birthdays may see them ordering a bottle of your best champagne along with complimentary nibbles.
5. Speedy Service
If your hotel venue caters to a large number of business guests, it could be that your standard room service offering takes too much time.
Standard room service, needed by business travelers can be challenged by delivery time as outlined by hotel experts.
Chris Hunsberger, an executive for The Four Season Brand developed a room service program consisting of a 15 to 20-minute turnaround from order to delivery.
This program focused mainly on business travelers, however currently it accounts for around 20% of the brand’s room service revenue and also extends to other types of guests and also children.
If not managed properly, poor room service quality can strongly damage the hotel’s reputation and guest loyalty. So how else can you boost room service sales?
Read on to find out more.
6. Ghost kitchens
Unprecedented difficulties are being felt by all members of the hospitality industry. Many hotels and food operators have decided to collaborate.
These types of collaborations mean that hotels can offer room service without the need for staff or kitchens.
Ghost kitchens can optimize room service sales by cutting costs on room service. Providing flexibility for guests, and generating higher profit margins.
For example, the hospitality technology company Butler offers in-room dining service delivery to hotels.
This means lower operating costs but Hotels are still able to offer in-room service options.
7. Restful and attractive rooms
It goes without saying that guests who are staying in rooms that are in need of sparkle or look old and tired, will not only probably not return, but may also choose to dine out.
Keeping room standards as high as possible will ensure that your guests feel relaxed and comfortable enough to use your room service facilities.
A regular spend on room updating will be offset against higher room occupancy and also a higher profit on room service.
The easy way to optimize room service sales…
Room services may evolve and change. Based on the new customer’s purchasing behaviors, but there is no doubt it is here to stay.
If hoteliers are willing to make important changes to their room service offering, and properly understand their target market’s needs, it will bring rewards.
As we’ve seen in our helpful article, offering digital ordering is one of the seven best ways to increase room service sales.
Take a free trial today. Discover better communication and ease of ordering for your hotel room service with the Hotefy experience.
