When looking for ways of making incremental sales in the service industry, adding an element of retail sales can be invaluable. The question is which products to use and how to introduce them effectively making a significant profit.
Primarily you are looking to make an incremental sale- this means gaining an additional purchase from your customer to increase their average spend.
When looking at the hotel industry we could look at a product such as universal travel adapters. A mains adapter used to convert a 2 pin plug to a 3 pin plug or vise versa. Often used as a laptop adapter.
The most useful kind that you can supply to your hotel guest converts any kind of mains plug into your local outlet hence being called adapter.
Adapters will be needed by most of your international guests. Some guests will bring their own, others will forget them and need to buy a new adapter. There are several ways that hotels can offer adapters to guests making various amounts of profit. These are outlined below.
1. Sell a adapter in the hotel amenity basket: The hotel purchases the travel adapter at wholesale price and sells at retail price, making $5-$10 profit per adapter.
2. Selling the travel adapters from the front desk or concierge desk. Optimise this by asking each guest on arrival whether they need a adapter.
3. Complimentary use of a universal travel adapter with a refundable deposit. The guest borrows the adapter and is charged $20 if they don’t return it.
Many leading hotel chains use a mixture of the above techniques, they bulk buy adapters and sell them for a profit. $10 is nothing added onto a hotel bill at the end of a stay, however, when you start to sell 5 a day that can add up to $18,250 retail a year!
The aim is to make a high profit, you want to bulk buy adapters as cheap as possible. Look for online stores such as Travel Adapters Online where you can buy CE certified adapters for as little as $2.25 /£1.25 making a 500% profit margin on the sale at a RRP of $5-$10. They sell Adapters for US and Adapters for UK.
You also need to work out what your optimal retail price is. This is the price you can sell the adapter for before the guest decides they will go to the local shop and buy one themselves. Remember you are selling convenience here so you can charge a premium. Buying adapters online will get you the best deal.
