We chatted with Clinton Campbell, Commercial Director at Apex Hotels about life, work and all the good stuff in between, including how Oaky has made his life easier.
- Finding right offer for the right guest
“We know we’ve done a good job when we can identify and attract individual segments and audiences to the hotel. It’s about interpreting the types of guests who are staying with us and being able to offer relevant and appropriate prices, packages and promotions which are suitable to those audiences individually.”
Identifying and attracting different segments can be easier said than done. As you probably know, access to relevant data is one of the biggest challenges when creating irresistible and personalised offers for your guests, be it for a room, a package or an upsell.
“Not knowing which product guests like and going out with a broad-brush approach to offer everyone the same thing definitely isn’t the right way to upsell at a hotel,” Clinton explains. But without reliable data, he didn’t have much of a choice.
- An outdated approach to upselling
“We used to make quite a lot of assumptions about what we thought people would like based on our gut feeling which generally is driven by experience. So, it wasn’t entirely wrong, but it always could have been better,” Clinton says, describing how they used to go about upselling.
While another upselling technology proved helpful in some ways, Oaky helped him overcome the challenge of understanding what clients want in an upsell. “It was quite a revelation when we moved to Oaky and found that with this new start-up company we were able to shape not only what they were doing but influence quite heavily the way we were able to communicate with our guests and almost immediately we saw our conversions increase,” Clinton recalls.
Looking at the ROI, Clinton is happy with his decision: “We increased our upselling revenue by 25% in the first 12 months, which is much more than we originally planned. We are very happy with the numbers that came through in the first year.”
According to Clinton, Oaky is the easiest tool for hotel upselling on the market. If you want to see that for yourself, or if you think you can beat his results, just book a demo!
Read more: Apex Hotels roll out Oaky
