How Oaky helps create awareness about hotel offers and facilities before arrival

The Opportunity

There’s no doubt—your hotel is more than just a place to sleep. It can offer so much more beyond rooms—a wealth of services, amenities, and experiences—from F&B offers to relaxing spa treatments to local excursions and activities.

Each option represents a chance to elevate the guest experience and generate ancillary revenue from existing bookings without extra acquisition or marketing costs.

Yet many of these options never reach your guests. Why? Because many hotels struggle with the same problem: guests often don’t know what the property has to offer beyond the room. And here’s the problem: if guests don’t know about these options, they don’t book them.

The Challenge

There are three main reasons why these opportunities often remain overlooked and underutilized.

1. Most bookings happen on OTAs

While you may list offers and facilities on your direct booking website, a large portion of bookings don’t go through this channel.

In fact, 70% of hotel reservations happen via OTAs, where such offers aren’t prominently featured (if at all). This means a significant percentage of guests never see the range of experiences you can provide until they arrive—and by then, it might be too late to spark their interest, or staff may not have enough time at check-in to explain everything.

2. Guests are not ready to buy extras when booking a stay

Timing is another crucial factor. When guests are booking a trip, they’re typically in “saving mode”, comparing rates, securing the best deals, and finding affordable accommodation. In that mindset, they’re less inclined to spend extra on amenities and experiences. Even if they see offers during booking, they may scroll past them, thinking they’ll decide later (which often means never if you don’t reach out proactively).

3. Front desk limitations

At check-in, front desk staff can’t always present every offer, especially in peak periods. Time constraints and high booking volumes leave many opportunities uncommunicated. Sometimes, the front desk agents lack the confidence or tools to offer upsells to guests effectively.

As a result:

• Your guests remain unaware

• You lose potential ancillary revenue

• Your staff might feel less motivated and might be experiencing the pressure to reach sales targets they can’t realistically achieve.

If you recognize this problem, you’re not alone. We’ve heard from many hoteliers that building awareness about available offers is a big challenge, since doing it manually takes time and promoting them at check-in isn’t always feasible, especially in peak seasons. Pere Estela Pujals and Juan Serna from Iberostar Hotels and Resorts explain:

"We couldn’t communicate everything our hotels had to offer at check-in. Plus, not everything could be upsold at the front desk due to time constraints and the variety of offers we wanted to cover."

Like many large hotels with a variety of amenities, facilities, and offers, Iberostar Hotels and Resorts turned to Oaky to solve this awareness gap and drive ancillary sales.

The Solution

That’s why many large hotels with a variety of amenities, facilities, and offers, such as Iberostar Hotels and Resorts, turn to Oaky to solve this awareness gap and drive ancillary sales.

With Oaky, hotel chains like Iberostar, Radisson Hotels, Accor, Minor, and more don’t wait until check-in to showcase their offers or hope guests will do their research. Instead, they proactively create awareness in a way that feels natural, timely, and effortless for both guests and staff.

Oaky helps hotels present offers before arrival, tapping into the perfect moment when travelers are relaxed, excited, and open to planning more after securing their accommodation and flights.

Why this works

Oaky acts as a one-stop shop for guests to explore and book room upgrades, additional hotel services, and facilities well before arrival. It sends personalized upselling offers at the right moment, to the right guest, at the right price. This builds awareness of your hotel’s full range of options while allowing guests to purchase directly, without needing to look elsewhere.

How guests benefit

For guests, booking offers pre-arrival is easy, smooth, and exciting. They don’t need to search through the hotel website, call the property, or wait until arrival. Extras can be secured instantly, making their stay more convenient and enjoyable while building anticipation.

Oliver Niskanen, Welcome Office Manager at Clarion Hotel Karlatornet, shares:

How your hotel can benefit

For hotels, Oaky creates a new revenue stream with minimal manual work. Offers are sent automatically at the moments guests are most likely to convert. Segmentation ensures guests receive a curated selection of deals, preventing “analysis paralysis” (getting stuck overthinking instead of deciding). By presenting just the right number of offers, guests aren’t overwhelmed by choice, which positively impacts decision-making.

Once booked, all upsells are processed and synced with your PMS automatically. Staff don’t need to manually log requests or call guests. This helps free up time and focus on delivering great in-person service.

How can you build awareness of your premium rooms, experiences and extras using Oaky?

1. Reach guests before they arrive

Guests are most receptive to extras once they’ve booked everything but haven’t reached the destination yet. They’re in planning mode, excited about their trip, and more willing to spend.

Oaky uses this moment by automatically sending personalized pre-arrival emails. This way, guests receive a curated list of offers—not an overwhelming menu—tailored to their booking details.

2. Show the right offer to the right guest

Not every offer fits every traveler. A family traveling for leisure has different needs than a solo business traveler. To ensure relevance, Oaky uses segmentation.

Leisure guests might see spa packages, excursions, or dining offers.

Business travelers, on the other hand, may see meeting room access, laundry services, or express check-out. Loyalty members receive exclusive offers available only to them.

This prevents “choice overload” from too many options and maximizes conversions.

3. Make it easy for guests to book the offers

Even if guests see your offers, awareness won’t convert if the process is clunky.

Oaky ensures the process is smooth and seamless for guests and hotel teams. This is how it works:

• Guests book extras in just a few clicks, directly from their email or upsell page.

• Request approvals are instant or before arrival

• Everything is synced with your PMS, so staff don’t need to manually log requests.

4. Automate and scale without adding workload

When it comes to upselling, consistency is often the hardest part, as you have to do this for every guest, every time, across peak and low seasons. That’s why automation matters.

Once offers are set up, Oaky runs in the background.

Your team doesn’t have to worry about timing emails or tracking manually.

Final thoughts

You don’t have to let your hotel offers remain in the dark. Presenting them to guests might be easier than you think. And usually, guests respond positively when offers are relevant, well-timed, and promise convenience or excitement.

As Sarah Quindoza from the Queen Elizabeth 2 hotel notes: