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Is your hostel securing enough phone reservations?

Front Desk Operations

Rucksack Brian started this discussion 12 years 3 months ago

When potential guests call your hostel do your receptionists actively try to secure the reservation, or do they just answer some questions and then hang up?

Sales techniques for hotel reservation agents to increase bookings

A study was conducted on 4400 phone calls to hotel reservation agents to find out which words and tactics increased the likelihood of the caller making a reservation.

As a hotel sales trainer, what stands out the most for me is that the simple act of offering to secure the reservation made the caller 4.4 times more likely to book the reservation. Put another way, that means the hotel or call center has a 440% greater chance to get the sale if the agent just asks. Yet the study also found that hotel Guest Services Agents (GSR’s) in the study only asked for the sale 52% of the time; call centers ask even less frequently at just 42%. With a sales tactic as important as this, it makes one wonder why this is not used 100% of the time.

Here are some tips from the article to turn phone inquiries into concrete reservations:

Always ask for the caller’s name and use it conversationally throughout the call.
Determine whether the caller has stayed previously, and if they haven’t then paint a picture of the hotel experience using vivid language, rather than listing available features.
Remind your staff that closing the sale benefits everyone, including the caller as it ensures availability and locks-in the rate.
When caller’s resist an initial attempt to secure the sale, ask questions such as “Is there something special you’re looking for that I’ve not mentioned?” to find out if the caller has a “product” or price objection.
For “product” objections, offer alternatives and reiterate benefits of what you “do” have and what “is” available.
For price objections, reiterate value. If low to moderate demand, offer lower-rated room options or specials.
Create urgency and remove barriers to booking right now and ask for the sale again.

Do your receptionists already do these things? Have you conducted training on sales tactics with your team?

Comments

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sydney

12 years

Unless it's low season, phone reservations are the lowest priority. I work in very busy hostel in a major city. I don't want to make the line of people in front of me wait 15 - 20 minutes while I take a phone reservation. We often get told by management to tell them to book online and try to sell that idea to them instead. People on the phone often don't realize they're calling you when you have a thousand other things to do and ask you stupid questions like how the weather is in February or some other irrelevant thing like that. I feel like internet review era has helped us in terms of not even having to 'sell' the bed. The people can read reviews, see pictures, and get a general overview of what it is we offer. I had people tell me how excited they were to stay just because of how high we were rated. All I had to do was tell him what dates we were available and they were set to go.

On the other hand, I've also worked in a hostel that was basically in the middle of no where. I would say that 80% of reservations were by phone 10% were by email and the last 10% were the weirdos we got in winter time who some how managed to find us. We relied heavily on friendliness via telephone for that 80%. I've never received training on sales tactics. My only training was how to deal with the crazies which has helped me much more in the long run than any sales training would.

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gordo

12 years

I think only people born before the 90s actually their phones as phones - for everyone else its for SMS and facebook.

Which gets me thinking... has anyone tried SMS reservations before? Given that international roaming is expensive and people usually find other languages easier in written than spoken form, I wonder if being able to book via text message might be an idea..?

I call trademark if it is!

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sydney

12 years

SMS charges still apply though. Also, who would be the unlucky individual to receive/answer all of them? Unless, it's a business paid cell phone and whoever is working has to answer them all. I also don't see the benefits of an SMS reservation compared to an online reservation where it would be a lot easier to just click on the things you want.

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Josh Hostels

12 years

Which gets me thinking... has anyone tried SMS reservations before? Given that international roaming is expensive and people usually find other languages easier in written than spoken form, I wonder if being able to book via text message might be an idea..?

Interesting idea. I wonder if there is a way to make that work.

EDIT: if the guest has the phone number, does that mean that they would probably also have Internet access?
Twitter works over SMS too, so maybe Twitter would be the best way to contact the hostel in that situation?

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HostelOffice

12 years

I agree with Gordo that travellers most like to use technology to make a booking and are less inclined to call. But they will call if you are the last hostel in the location that does not provide an automated method to book and all your competitors are full. The fact that agents like Hostelworld have built a successful business on people's desire to book via an automated method should be a good example for us all.

The quickest way, I think, to get value from every caller is to entice them to open your website. Then you are gaining an extra click that improves your search engine ranking. When I was running a hostel a school group wanted to book and gain a discount. I agreed on the condition that they put the link to the hostel on their school website because i knew .edu domain names gave more value to clicks that originated from .edu domain names as well as the link itself adding a lot of value.

So I think combining people's desire for an automated booking method and your desire to gain more direct bookings should result in greater use of your hostel website. The tips above from Rucksack Brian are communicating that you need to find a way to be personable with the caller and that is of prime importance. Many of our users find their own words to entice the caller to check prices and availability on their hostel website and to proceed to book that way to gain a secured booking. You could encourage the caller to then call back if they have special requests as then you would have a booking from them that you can see and add notes to.

Twitter and SMS are good solutions for the increasing mobile device enabled traveller that wants to avoid teclo costs. With increasing free WIFI quite possibly the traveller needs a mobile enabled booking engine that can be accessed via your Hostel's Facebook page that we also provide. Then you can get a "Like" from them and reward them with something like a free drink.

Here is a film I just uploaded to YouTube that mentions the idea of gaining more clicks on your website from callers.

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