39-room historic hotel: turning extra space into a bookable choice
Updated: 4 days ago
39 rooms, 11 PMS categories — 47 ways to sell them. A good reservations agent sells the same room differently to different guests. GauVendi does that on the website, automatically. The rooms don't change; the pitch does.
On average, around €9 more for every direct online booking
Per 100 bookings in the same direct online channel:
Sales mix: 36 individualised feature or experience products · 64 plain categories.
22 of those 36 product bookings were above the relevant category price. At an average premium of around €26 on those bookings, the room-feature premium totalled around €580.
Additional-service upselling on individualised product bookings generated €316 more than additional-service upselling on comparable category bookings. Together with the room-feature premium: around €896 in additional premiums per 100 bookings.
Regular category upgrades and the usual sales of additional services come on top of these premiums.
Extra-large rooms: +6.8% above the nightly reference price
Extra-large rooms achieved a nightly feature premium of around 6.8% above the recorded reference rate. Guests also deliberately selected king beds and balconies.
Room features have their own seasons
Garden views were chosen by 10% of arriving guests in autumn and 50% in spring. Depending on the arrival season, main-building rooms ranged from 11% to 50% and king beds from 4% to 33%. Pet-friendly rooms reached 33% in summer.
That gives the hotel something concrete to work with: highlight the garden in spring and pet-friendly stays in summer. Booking windows add another clue: couples booked 45 days ahead on average, solo travellers 19.
Length of stay in the guest analysis: pet-friendly bookings averaged 2.8 nights and individualised product bookings 2.7 nights, against an overall average of 2.4 nights.
Repeat-guest share: 12–15% in this property's guest analysis.
47 products, 39 rooms, automatic assignment
An agent who sells room 12 as 'garden view' to one guest and 'next to the lift' to another still has one room 12. Every product draws on the same physical rooms and shares their availability. Availability and smart room assignment run automatically. Assignment is included and respects the booked features. More products add no manual inventory or assignment work. This historic hotel uses Mews.
A guest can take a recommendation or choose a detail such as the garden view. GauVendi's Direct flow presents up to six retail choices, with further personalisation available when wanted.
Price guest preferences and flexibility
Demand for garden views changes with the season at this hotel. You decide what guests pay to secure that choice. Guests who leave you more freedom in room assignment can book at a lower price. You can price both preferences and flexibility to support your revenue goals and the experience you want to offer.
Giving guests choices they cannot find in a standard category listing creates a reason to book directly. Bookable preferences also save calls to reservations and reception. This property's online direct-booking share has at least doubled compared with the period before GauVendi.
Two questions for your IBE or CRS comparison
“How much additional premium do your customers earn per online booking from room features and increased additional-service sales, beyond their usual upselling?”
“What is your average look-to-book conversion rate, and how do you calculate it?”
Ask for both figures, the booking sample and the calculation. That shows what the technology actually delivers in sales.
Source: GauVendi Business Intelligence. Premiums are averaged across all online bookings analysed and expressed per booking and per 100 bookings for comparability.
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