Overview

When someone hears “upsell,” the immediate reaction is rarely positive. For this reason, many rental hosts hesitate to upsell since they are afraid to leave a negative impression on the Airbnb guests. This worry originates from the correct assumption that guest satisfaction is the end goal of property managers. It is wrong, however, to think that minimizing the bill would lead to a memorable experience. On the contrary, offering optional, additional services that may enhance the overall experience at the vacation rental is a great way to ensure customer satisfaction.

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This blog is for vacation rental hosts who wish to generate additional revenue from their short-term rentals with frictionless selling strategies. When done right, upselling is guaranteed to simultaneously enhance the guest experience while increasing additional income sources from vacation rentals to new heights.

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What is Airbnb Upselling

The practice of upselling started initially in hotels where guests paid for additional amenities such as bottled water, room service, and laundry. These services have been adopted into the vacation rental business. Here are some technical terms one may need to know to upsell successfully. 

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Difference Between Upselling and Cross-Selling

Cross-selling is often confused with upselling. Cross-selling is a sales strategy that encourages customers to make complementary purchases alongside their original purchase. For example, a common industry in which cross-selling is popular is electronics. When someone buys a laptop, the laptop company often offers discounts for mice, keyboards, and other accessories that offer to improve the experience of using the computer. The key importance is that the laptop as a standalone is a viable product, but the products offered by cross-selling, while separate from the original product, offer to improve the consumer’s experience using it. 

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Upselling, by contrast, does not attempt to sell multiple products as complements. Instead, upselling focuses on enhancing a singular product for an additional price. An industry that often utilizes upselling is the automotive industry. A car dealership always offers to add features to a vehicle for a certain price. At the same time, the upgrades are included in the singular product instead of it being a separate, yet complementary product like with cross-selling.

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Vacation rental owners usually offer their vacation homes as a collective product. After all, it would be silly for vacation homes to separately charge for different parts of the home such as the kitchen or the bathroom. As such, the upselling strategy is a better fit for the industry. While most essential services are included in the booking fee, services can be offered at an additional price to enhance guest experience. 

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Different Types of Upselling Tactics

In upselling, there are generally two sales tactics that one can pursue, self-serve or proactive sales. Further explanations of the sales tactics as an upsell strategy in the context of the vacation rental industry will be listed below. 

Self-Serve Sales

Self-serve sales, in comparison to proactive sales, is a more passive approach towards upselling. The strategy provides all the information that the guest may need to not only better understand the vacation rental’s available amenities, but also discover the additional services that they may need. 

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For example, let’s say the guests checked in at the vacation rental and are hungry and tired from the journey. As they move around the property to unpack their belongings, they encounter a pantry filled with essential groceries that they can use for an additional fee. Now the guests can rest comfortably while not having to go outside again for grocery shopping. 

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The one drawback of Self-Serve upselling is that you are asking the customer to take all the steps to make the sale for you. We see this today with many upselling solutions today—a great example being guest portal options on the market. More on that later.

Proactive Sales

While self-serve sales strategies can be more subtle, there is always a chance that the guests miss the opportunity to utilize the services offered. In this case, proactive sales strategies bring forth the services available throughout the guests’ stay in the vacation rental to their attention. 

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For example, let’s imagine a group of four guests trying to arrange transportation to the vacation rental from the airport. They can anticipate that each one of them will be bringing a carry-on and separate luggage that they have checked into the plane. With that much luggage, public transportation is often very uncomfortable, and calling a taxi big enough to fit all their luggage is bound to cost extra. As they’re contemplating finding the best solution, they receive a notification from the vacation host who is offering to provide transportation from the airport to the rental for a price. As long as the price is reasonable, the guests have not only solved their problem but can also potentially have a positive impression of the host even before their vacation begins.

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And if we take that filled pantry example from the previous section, a great host that engages in proactive upselling may even go a step further and ask in advance what type of food the guests may like and offer grocery delivery services once they start to utilize the pantry.

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Why Messaging is the Best Way to Upsell on Airbnb

Whether it is self-serve sales or proactive sales tactics that the host decides to utilize, the common factor for both strategies is the need to communicate with the guests. Your whole business rides on communication with guests—why should upselling be any different? It’s very interesting that most, if not all, guest portals ask the guest to go onto their interface and select additional services like Early Check-Ins, Luggage Storage, and more. I’m not saying that guests shouldn’t have the ability to choose add-ons in a self-serve manner. In fact, for individual products such as groceries, additional toiletries, or rental equipment, property-tech softwares such as Host Co or Noshable can help guests easily transact for these items throughout their stay. 

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However, for bigger upsells—I’m referring to stay extensions—sell them like you would sell anyone anything. In a conversation! One of the beauties of HostAI’s automated upsells is that we can meet guests where they are—the conversation—and sell them things they want but need a little nudging for. Like a waiter asking the table if they want dessert. Everyone wants it. 

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By looking at your calendar, we can identify gap nights (upsell opportunities) and surface all of the potential upsells for you to convert your guests with. And the reality is that it works very well. It’s close to magic, and it’s the fact that it’s through messaging and proactive selling AT SCALE that allows it to feel like magic. 

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3 Airbnb Upsells That Will Convert

Here are some additional examples of Airbnb Upsells that property managers and hosts can offer that the Airbnb guests will appreciate.

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Early Check-ins and Late Checkouts

Guests can sometimes struggle with adhering to the original check-in and checkout times for the vacation rental. On these occasions, offering flexible check-in and checkout times for a fee will allow guests to not have to worry about adjusting their schedules. Remember to remind the guests why the check-in and checkout times were determined for transparency so they don’t make the mistake of thinking that the times are arbitrary. 

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Post-Stay and Pre-Stay Gap Nights

Minimizing gaps in between the stay should be one of the highest priorities for the vacation hosts. Offering post-stay or pre-stay gap nights at a discounted price will help guests with their vacation planning.

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Luggage Storage

Providing storage services to the guest before and after their stay at the vacation rental relieves them of the bother of carrying around all their belongings. 

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Conclusion

The blog explored the intricacies of upselling and how prudent utilization of this strategy can lead to enhanced guest satisfaction and increased customer retention. As it is with most products, make sure that these services incorporate dynamic pricing to adapt to the economic changes.

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