Thought Leadership
I Meet Hotel Interview – Early Arrivals & Late Departures
ROOMDEX CEO and Co-Founder, Jos Schaap, joins I Meet Hotel to discuss the topic of Early Arrivals and Late Departures. Are guests willing to pay for these traditionally free amenities? Jos answers that question and backs it up with ROOMDEX client testimonials and evidence from other industries that customers are now more willing than ever to pay small extra fees in order to customize their experience. As opposed to feeling that the charges are unfair, guests actually enjoy having the option presented to them.
Offering the option for guests to purchase an early arrival or late departure works for the hotel as well. Like all businesses, hotels need to find high margin revenue. There is basically no cost to selling and fulfilling an early arrival or late departure as long as you have the right software to assess room availability and automatically provide the offer, transaction and fulfillment (in this case, writing the transaction to the PMS and guest folio). This kind of revenue goes straight to the top line.
Secondly, as hotels recover from the pandemic, owners will continue to push to recover the lost revenue. More than ever, it is critical that hoteliers focus on share of wallet. In previous years, ancillary guest revenue was considered a “nice-to-have.” This may have been because of the challenge of selling and fulfilling what was seen as low margin upsells. Now, with rates struggling to recover, hoteliers need to maximize the share of the guest’s wallet after the the guest commits to the reservation. Opt-in fees for early arrivals and late departures help recover the revenue lost from aggressive reservation acquisition pricing. Jos explains that you can add 20-30% to the ADR on a typical two day length of stay. And at the end of the month, that has a positive impact on your RevPAR.