Building An Ancillary Revenue Strategy

Ancillary revenue is everything that is not rooms. It can range from ledger accounts to car parking, F&B, Wi-Fi and more. Ancillary is playing a more important role in driving revenue for hotels, as more hotels look to embrace a total revenue strategy.

“It’s finding profits in all sorts of experiences that you want guests to have in your hotel. That’s what the airlines are incredibly good at, actually. It’s just finding the simple things and making them sound like it’s something new and something fantastic that you really must experience,” said Nicole Rhone, Chief Commercial Officer, Great National Group.

Further She explains: “Take something like a bottle of wine in your room on arrival (…) usually it might be something like £25. Customers aren’t silly. They’re thinking, ‘Well, there’s a really nice win in Waitrose round the corner’. So, it’s about how you sell that bottle of wine.”

“There is something to be said for having a proper strategy that starts with revenue but is backed by marketing and then the actual service staff on property level at the hotels. It needs buy-in from the whole operation if ancillary is really going to work as a revenue stream,” concluded Rhone.