Upselling to guests-as a business?

Question

Does anyone upsell to guests as a systemized business model? You know, travel insurance, art work, local restaurants, special cake delivery, laundry service (for their kids at college), car service, special events, etc...etc.

I know someone who is hiring a full time person to manage just this aspect (so, it will cover their salary plus make money).

Is it worth it? How much upside is there?

Paul Sandhu · Answer

Some of my tenants as me where they can find someone to "ask out on a date tonight" if you know what I mean.  I refer them to a certain convenience store where certain people congregate in hopes of being "asked out on a date".

Ken Latchers · Answer

And I have heard stories of friction when art is damaged or missing. $2000 art? Why would you want that in a STR? Chasing nickels while adding hassle.

Lynnette E. · Answer

A place I visit has paintings by local artists hung in the unit and one can purchase them at a price posted.  There is a pamphlet in the unit that tells about a few local artists and has a coupon if they visit the gallery they get in free and get champagne or wine.  They actually sell a lot of paintings.  The unit owner gets ten percent from paintings sold in the unit and 5 percent from the gallery when the guests uses his coupon.

I think it may be worth doing something like this where each sell one earns maybe $200 off a $2000 painting.  I would not want to waste my time for $20 on flowers...

Scott Wolf · Answer

@Julie Groth  I went to an NYC Airbnb meetup(probably in Sept), and they had a provider there that monetized the rental by selling items in the rental.  I can't remember their name, but if you reached out to them on meetup.com I'm sure they'd remember who it was.

John Underwood · Answer

I don't think it would be worth the effort for me. I don't see that I would even break even for the extra effort.

Julie Groth · Answer

The other way of looking at this (as my buddy does), is that you are the first point of contact in a city being visited by your guests (each will spend $1000+ while here). If I have 6 guests, that's $6000 x 4 weekends per month. They trust you, you have a relationship with them. Once you set up the business with some kind of affiliate links/coupons/however...then it is a system that you can set and forget, right?

Julie McCoy · Answer

I've never felt it was worth my trouble to deal with.  If guests ask me about flower delivery, for example, I can refer them to a local florist but it doesn't happen often enough for me to go to the hassle of figuring out how to execute it myself (much less mark it up enough to be worth my while but not so high guests say "forget it")

That said, if you have a very large portfolio of properties in a particular area where demand for certain things is high, it might be worth figuring out.

Paul Sandhu · Answer

I tell my tenants that for a small fee, the scantily clad women in the calendars of the STR will come by and clean their house, do their laundry, cook them dinner and give them a bubble bath.

Ken Latchers · Answer

it depends on the location and on your guests. I think for the most part, you will find this as a distraction have potential for causing problems.

if you're going through listing sites, you need to understand their process.

for the most part, people are not stupid and know how to do this without your help.

I think your time is better spent focusing on making your accommodation and profile and listing and pictures and guest experience the best.

Upselling to guests-as a business?

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