Cross-selling is often discussed as a revenue opportunity for hotels. However, after my recent conversation with Pablo Torres, I kept coming back to a more fundamental question: How well do we really know our guests before trying to sell them something?
Pablo has 25 years of experience in hospitality, including hotel operations, revenue management, and consulting. During our conversation on the Shiji Insights Podcast, we explored what truly constitutes an effective hotel cross-selling strategy.
Technology is certainly part of the answer. However, technology cannot compensate for fragmented data, weak processes, or poorly synchronized interactions. The opportunity begins, instead, with understanding the guest and leveraging what the hotel already knows.
For me, that distinction matters. Cross-selling works best when the guest experiences it as enhanced hospitality, not as another sales pitch.
Key ideas
Beyond room revenue. Hotels should understand how guests spend across the entire property, not just what they pay for accommodation.
Start the conversation earlier. Relevant pre-arrival communication gives hotels more opportunities to support the guest journey.
Make existing data usable. Millions of data points are of little value if they remain fragmented or inaccessible to employees.
Use automation selectively. Self-service can handle transactional interactions, freeing up employees to focus on guests seeking human assistance.
Qualify before recommending. Effective cross-selling begins with understanding what the guest truly wants.
Look beyond the entrance to the room
One of Pablo's first questions immediately reframed our conversation: why do hotels concentrate revenue management in the space that contains the bed?
A hotel is much more than just rooms. Depending on the property, it may include restaurants, bars, spas, gardens, golf courses, event spaces, and other facilities. Each of these contributes to the guest experience. Many also represent revenue opportunities.
However, Pablo's point was that hotels typically understand room revenue much better than ancillary spending. They can track occupancy and ADR closely. However, they may struggle to answer a more basic question: what is this guest's total value across the entire property?
That distinction becomes important as the industry increasingly talks about total revenue management.
It also changes how we think about cross-selling. The goal is no longer simply to persuade someone to spend more. Instead, hotels need to create compelling reasons for guests to use more of the property.
A restaurant is a good example. Pablo recalled how city hotel restaurants were historically places many guests avoided. Today, there's no reason why a hotel restaurant can't appeal to both travelers and the local community.
That changes the revenue opportunity. And, more importantly, it changes the hotel's role during the guest's stay.
Pablo Torres and Florencia Cueto discuss how guest data, technology, and human interaction can support more effective hotel cross-selling.
A hotel cross-selling strategy should begin before arrival
Another point that I found interesting was the timing.
Sometimes hotels wait for the guest to arrive before starting a meaningful conversation. However, the guest journey begins long before that.
An OTA, booking engine, or tour operator might spend months communicating with that person. During that time, guests research destinations and decide what they want to do.
The hotel has the opportunity to be part of that conversation.
However, timing alone is not enough. Relevance matters just as much.
Hotels should use pre-arrival touchpoints to help guests plan their stay. This could include dining, experiences, transportation, or other services. But the interaction should feel helpful, not intrusive.
This is where the difference between cross-selling and simply sending offers becomes very clear.
We have the guest data. Are we really using it?
This was probably the part of our conversation that stuck with me the most.
The hospitality industry is not lacking in data. In many cases, we have the opposite problem.
Pablo used Spain to illustrate the scale. Guest identification at check-in can provide about 15 data points. If reservation information is included, he estimates that a hotel can have about 30 data points per guest.
Over the course of a year of operation, Pablo estimates that a typical hotel can collect between two million and 2.5 million data points.
Then he asked the important question:
"The question is: what happens to all that data? In many cases, nothing. It simply sits in a database collecting digital dust."
That phrase, "digital dust," captures the problem extremely well.
Gathering information has little value if employees cannot use it when it becomes relevant.
A returning guest should not be repeatedly asked if this is their first stay. Similarly, a preference recorded during a previous visit should not disappear in an isolated system.
For me, this is where data quality and organization become more important than data volume. The goal shouldn't be to collect as much as possible. It should be to make useful information available when it can improve an interaction.
Turning guest profiles into better hospitality
During our conversation, I talked about some of the work we have done around the guest profile at Shiji Daylight PMS.
The principle behind this is simple. The guest is placed at the center of the PMS.
If a returning guest has established preferences, those preferences can inform decisions before arrival. They can support room assignments, for example. They can also give staff helpful context when speaking with the guest.
However, technology is not hospitality.
Technology provides information. Employees remain the ones who determine how that information becomes an experience.
This distinction becomes especially important when discussing personalization. Knowing a preference doesn't automatically create a personal interaction. Instead, it gives the employee a better starting point.
That can make something as simple as greeting a returning guest feel different.
It can also help you avoid one of the most frustrating contradictions in hospitality: gathering extensive information about someone and still treating them like a stranger.
Why self-service can make human service more valuable
We also talked about something that might seem contradictory at first.
As hotels introduce kiosks and self-service check-in, are we eliminating opportunities for employees to interact with guests?
Pablo offered a different interpretation.
Imagine a hotel with 100 arrivals. If 80 guests prefer a quick, self-service check-in, technology can efficiently meet that need. The remaining 20 have actively chosen human interaction.
Those guests might want advice. They might need a recommendation. Or they might simply want someone to explain where the pool is.
The important thing is that they have indicated their willingness to interact.
This creates a very different interaction for the employee. Instead of trying to sell to every arriving guest, the team can focus on conversations where human assistance is desired.
I think this is an important way to view automation in hospitality. The debate shouldn't always be framed as technology versus people.
Sometimes technology eliminates unnecessary interaction. As a result, the remaining human interactions can become more meaningful.
Qualification matters more than supply
Pablo illustrated the qualification with the example of a luxury hotel concierge.
Ask a good concierge for a Japanese restaurant recommendation, and they'll rarely give you an immediate answer. Instead, they'll ask questions.
How far are you willing to travel? Do you want traditional sushi? Or would you prefer something more extensive? What kind of experience are you looking for?
These questions narrow down the possibilities until the recommendation becomes genuinely relevant.
As Paul put it:
"The foundation of all successful cross-selling is to properly qualify the guest."
I think hotels sometimes overlook this because technology makes it easier to distribute offers at scale.
But scale does not create relevance.
If anything, increased automation makes qualification even more important. Hotels need to understand what offers make sense, for which guest, and at what time.
Otherwise, a sophisticated technology may simply produce a more sophisticated noise.
The fundamentals still come before the technology
This became one of the clearest topics of our conversation.
Hotels cannot jump directly into advanced cross-selling while ignoring the underlying data and operational processes.
Guest profiles need to be usable. Preferences need to be accurate. Teams need access to relevant information. Employees also need processes that help them interpret that information and act accordingly.
Only then can technology amplify the experience.
There's also a cultural dimension. A system can tell an employee that someone is a repeat guest. However, the organization still has to decide that such recognition matters.
Pablo gave a simple personal example. He had repeatedly stayed in hotels where his birthday fell during his stay. The property already had his birthdate booked, and yet nothing happened.
I wasn't suggesting that hotels needed an elaborate gesture. A card would have sufficed.
That example stuck with me because it demonstrates the difference between possessing guest data and actually practicing hospitality.
Cross-selling should feel like recognition.
After reflecting on the conversation, I believe this is the central lesson.
The strongest cross-selling doesn't have to feel like a sale.
When a hotel understands a guest's preferences, asks good questions, and makes a suitable recommendation, the interaction feels like service. Revenue may be the result, but it shouldn't overshadow the reason for the interaction.
Technology can make this possible on a larger scale. A modern PMS can centralize information and make guest context accessible. Self-service can eliminate interactions that the guest doesn't value. Better data can help employees initiate more relevant conversations.
However, none of those capabilities change the basic nature of hospitality.
It's still about people serving people.
That's why something as simple as recognizing a returning guest can be so important. The guest knows immediately that the hotel remembers them.
For me, the future of hotel technology isn't about eliminating the human element. It's about giving employees better information so they can use it where it matters.
Building a better hotel cross-selling strategy
My conversation with Pablo reinforced something that is easily lost when we talk about data, automation, and personalization.
The fundamentals remain the most important thing.
A successful hotel cross-selling strategy depends on recognizing the guest, understanding their needs, and providing useful information at the right time. Technology can support each of these steps. However, it cannot replace the thinking and processes behind them.
Hotels already have extraordinary amounts of information. The next opportunity isn't simply to gather more.
It's about turning what we already know into better hospitality.
And sometimes, it starts with the simplest detail of all: remembering a guest's name.
See the full conversation here (in Spanish): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrruXOAmFBI
