Digitally Optimizing Sales at the Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria

Find out how SuitePad helped the Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria in Italy optimize its in-house sales strategy.

For hotels to have successful sales strategies, it’s important that they understand their guests and optimize how they offer and sell in-house products and services. Two of the most important aspects of any successful sales strategy are visibility of and usage data. By making products and services more visible to guests, hotels will be able to increase their reach and therefore increase revenue while improving the guest experience.

Data is one of the hottest commodities for any business in the 21st century. Understanding your customers and being able to target their specific needs enables you to drive sales with confidence. Hotels have been particularly slow to adopt customer data usage and implement these findings to optimize their sales strategies. Surprisingly, many hotels still operate with the same sales techniques that have been used for decades.

There are, however, a few trailblazers that are changing the way the industry operates—and seeing impressive results. Using modern tools such as SuitePad tablets has enabled some hotels to capitalize on what modern digital technology can bring to the hotel industry. One such hotel is the Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria. This is the story of how they increased revenue generation and improved the hotel experience for guests by increasing product and service visibility and utilizing guest data at their establishment.

Limited room service menu options

As one of the region’s premier luxury hotels, the Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria is known for offering a range of exclusive wines as part of their room service offering. Using traditional paper-based room service menus significantly limited their ability to advertise the whole wine menu as many guests would overlook the full array of wines due to its length. Also, the wines offered by the hotel would frequently change due to availability, season, and vintage—meaning that staff members would need to print new menus and go to each room to update the menus. This process was not only costly, but also laborious, time-consuming, and invasive for guests.

Staff at the Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria needed to find a solution that not only saved them time and money but also offered their guests a better ordering experience.

Expanding the room service menu

The Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria installed SuitePads to increase the visibility, ease of use, and flexibility of control of their room service menus. They wanted guests to be able to view all the wines they had available so they could make the best choice for them—without being told the wine they desired was out of stock.

After installing SuitePad devices in all the rooms, staff at the Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria can now install a large wine menu that showcases the huge selection that the hotel has to offer. If a certain wine is out of stock, they can simply remove the wine from the menu through the SuitePad Backend or notify guests that it is currently unavailable through the digital tablet so there are no unexpected disappointments.

When the menu needs to be updated with new wines, staff can simply update the SuitePad installation in the backend and make changes across all SuitePads in the building in a matter of seconds. Now, the hotel can purchase wine without worrying that the menu will need to be changed too often. In this instance, switching to a digitized ordering format has improved the stock ordering processes for the hotel by increasing flexibility and adaptability.

Other benefits to the room service menu

In addition to the wine menu, the SuitePad installation made it easier for guests to understand the changing room service food menus. At the Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria, there are three in-room dining menus. These include the In-Room Dining Breakfast Menu, the In-Room Day Menu, and the In-Room Dining Night Menu. The problem hotel staff had before the SuitePad installation, was that guests would decide what they wanted to eat or drink from one of the menus, but then find out it was the wrong menu for the time of day when they called down to reception. This often resulted in frustrated guests and apologetic staff.

With SuitePad tablets now installed in the hotel rooms, it’s much clearer for guests to understand which menu is currently being served by the hotel kitchen. The hotel has seen a significant reduction in complaints from guests trying to order items from the wrong menu. This shows that using SuitePad’s in-room tablets has streamlined the ordering process for guests at the Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria, making life easier for hotel staff along the way.

Alfonso Somma, the restaurant manager at the Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria, said “thanks to SuitePad, we have sped up the room service ordering process, customers are able to choose what they want more easily, and at the same time, we can understand, satisfy, and serve guests more quickly.”

If you want to understand more about how data can help you optimize your room service sales strategy, check out our white paper – Boost Room Service Sales at Your Hotel.

Using data to optimize the spa sales strategy

While the Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria’s room service menu problems were relatively simple to overcome, there were also added benefits to installing SuitePads at the hotel for other departments. One of the biggest benefits was the collection of guest browsing and ordering data that the SuitePad installation enabled.

When customers make purchases on SuitePad devices, hoteliers can view how they got to the purchasing page, record the time of purchase, and also monitor all non-purchase activity. One of the most surprising discoveries for staff at the Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria was that many guests would view the spa treatment pages and book spa treatments late at night for the following day. This guest behavior was unknown to hotel staff before the SuitePad installation. Discovering that guests were exploring the spa booking pages late at night suggested to hotel staff that this was the ideal time to send push notifications to SuitePad devices to encourage more guests to book spa treatments.

Before the SuitePad installation, many guests were unable to book spa treatments outside of the spa opening hours, unnecessarily limiting the number of spa bookings the hotel received. By digitizing the booking process using the SuitePad interface, guests could make a booking at any time of the day and the system would automatically update even when the spa reception was closed. As a result, the Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria has seen an increase in spa bookings due to the visibility and flexibility that SuitePad provides 

But, SuitePad also enabled the spa to go one step further. Using the online store function on the SuitePad tablets in their hotel rooms, guests can order items from the spa shop from the comfort of their own room without even visiting the spa shop in person. The Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria has increased spa shop sales but also increased the visibility of the spa and wellness offering at the hotel. By acting as a central booking and ordering system for all things related to the spa, SuitePad devices have enabled guests to visualize everything the hotel has to offer from the comfort of their room. This has significantly raised awareness of the spa and driven bookings and sales.

Roberta Manniello, the spa manager at the Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria, said “SuitePad has given guests the possibility of making direct requests to the spa, even when the spa reception is closed. It’s also increased visibility of the products on sale by reaching guests who do not come to visit the store.”

To find out more about how SuitePad can help increase spa sales, read our case study of the Mondorf Parc Hotel in Luxembourg.

The outlook for the Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria

In their first full month of operation since reopening from the pandemic, the Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria earned an average of €35 per room from bookings and orders made directly through SuitePad devices. As more guests return to the hotel over the coming months, this number is only set to increase as the industry picks up.

The Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria has successfully remedied the problems they had with their wine list offering using SuitePad devices. Guests can now easily view the whole range of wines that they expect from a luxury hotel. But there were also added benefits that the hotel discovered once they received their SuitePad installation. The use of guest usage data and statistics helped the Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria optimize the spa booking experience and increased sales from the spa shop. As a result, the hotel has seen impressive revenue growth through its SuitePad ordering platform that is set to increase in the near future.

The SuitePad installation has made life easier for all departments at the hotel. Marco Gargano, the front office manager, said “With SuitePad we are able to notify messages in the room instantly without disturbing our guests on the phone. We send greetings messages or Memos on scheduled room changes or simply information on maintenance resolutions."

_{- Published on August 19, 2021}