COVID has hit the global hotel industry hard. But as with every crisis, new opportunities surface. During the financial crisis of 2008/09, we saw Airbnb and Uber emerge.

Many revenue-generating ideas were born over the past year. From staycation and workation to renting out equipment and even offering outsourced services like housekeeping. Hoteliers have been creative in finding ways to keeping their business afloat.

What was born out of a need for survival might lead to a more permanent shift in a hotel's business model.

The idea of non-room revenue is nothing new and even pre-pandemic was something more and more hotels embraced. F&B or MICE revenue management is still in its infancy for the overall industry but terms like Total RevPAR have evolved from buzzword to serious KPI.

Is now the time to look at non-room, ancillary revenue? Where are the opportunities?

Diego Fernandez Perez De Ponga
Diego Fernandez Perez De Ponga
Corporate Director Revenue Management Palladium Hotel Group

I think there are two big opportunities here, first one would be the upselling and the second one the F&B sector.

These two areas will lead the biggest opportunities after the crisis...

A) Upselling: I have the feeling that Upselling has been forgotten from the customer journey perspective, and the hoteliers has forgotten that from a long time (probably since the beginning of the upselling methology), 

We used to upsell only during the check in and during that phase it was like a forced process for receptionists.

Since the pandemic started hotels has been forced to maximize the income so the upselling method has been improved.

A lot of companies have risen in that day to give us the opportunity to incorporate upselling to the whole customer journey and this is helping hoteliers to improve that incomes.

B) F&B: This is the second big opportunity for the industry, its time to grow the revenue management culture in that sector and there a lot of revenue managers ready for that., unfortunately there are a lot of revenue managers without job so they are trying to develop these skills in other industries so some of them are focus on F&B industry so we will see a lot of new cool things In the next months like an RMS solution for F&B sector and the consolidation of the Revenue Manager role in that industry.

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