Up-selling seems to be the norm for businesses nowadays. When was the last time you were booking an airline ticket, on an airline website, and weren’t offered some “valuable” extras?
Now hotels are doing this as well. Of the major chains that I personally frequent, Hilton and Hyatt have both implemented the technology from a company called Nor1 to offer customers ability to buy additional services or “waitlist” for space available upgrade at a price. Sometimes this is offered at the time of reservation, on the email confirmation, or when one is checking the reservation on the website.
I think that this is rather easy to sell to hotels. They can generate some extra revenue of the services and room upgrades that they are offering. The version that Hilton uses it able to corporate the elite upgrade to the picture as well. It shows what is the “free” space available upgrade to elites, and what other upgrade offers the hotel has for a price.
For a loyalty guest that holds a status with Hilton or Hyatt these Nor1 upgrades are somewhat troublesome. The logic that Nor1 uses assumes that the hotel offers the guest the absolute minimum required by the loyalty problem, when often some hotels go way beyond what is required. By choosing the Nor1 upgrade offer, the guest might well up paying for the upgrade that he would have received nevertheless.
Here is one example about how the Nor1 works at a Hyatt hotel. I just recently stayed at the Hyatt Regency Dubai and was offered the following Nor1 options:
- Awaken package
- Airport transfer
- Club room
- Regency suite
Why Nor1 is offering options 1 and 3 for a Diamond member because there are already complimentary due to the status? Also the club room includes the airport transfer. The price that the Nor1 offers for a regency suite upgrade is exactly the difference between the price of the base room and regency suite. Don’t quite understand how this would be beneficial for a guest at all?
The screen captures are not from my reservation but used to illustrate the process. I just made a reservation for future that I canceled after being offered all these extras.
The offers that I have seen for Hilton properties have made more sense. I will write about the Hilton process at some later point.
