Case study · anonymised
42-room property: pre-arrival upsell at 8% accept rate adds ~EUR 9 ADR lift
42-room city hotel, mixed leisure-and-corporate, Central Europe, ADR ~EUR 135, occupancy ~74%
The challenge
The property had a strong booking engine and clean PMS but was leaving ancillary revenue on the table. The front desk attempted upgrade offers at check-in but the conversion was inconsistent and depended on staff confidence; on busy arrival nights the offers were skipped entirely. The team wanted a structured pre-arrival channel with measured outcomes.
The approach
The team A/B tested pre-arrival room-upgrade offers sent 48 hours before arrival via the guest-journey platform. Half the arrivals received a personalised offer (booked rate + upgrade-rate comparison with one-line rationale); the control half received the standard pre-arrival message without the offer. The offer was routed via email and SMS with the same content. Pricing logic looked at the existing room booked vs available upgrade categories, with a 15-20% discount on the published upgrade rate to make the accept-rate math work.
Measured outcomes
Offer acceptance rate
Before: n/a (no structured offer)
After: roughly 8% accepted, consistent with published Oaky benchmarks
Source: Oaky upselling statistics
Average daily rate lift across sample
Before: baseline ADR ~EUR 135
After: about EUR 9 ADR lift on accepted offers (sample-average)
Folio reconciliation overhead
Before: manual posting if attempted at check-in
After: fully automatic via PMS folio integration
The failure pattern and the fix
The first failed iteration sent the same offer to every guest regardless of room type. Guests already in the top room type received an offer to upgrade to a category that did not exist; the acceptance rate dropped and several guests complained. The fix was segment-driven offer logic: offers only show when an upgrade category is actually available and the guest is not already in the top tier. The platform supported the logic natively but the team had to map room types correctly during setup.
What we took away
The 8% acceptance rate is consistent with published Oaky benchmarks; the team did not beat the industry average but they reliably hit it, which is the operational goal. Pre-arrival is the right window: 24-hour offers convert lower because guests have already mentally completed the booking. The PMS-side folio posting was the silent operational win; without it the reconciliation cost would have wiped out the upsell lift on busy nights.
Anonymisation note
This case study uses anonymised property data: segment, room-count band, market region, and outcome metrics. The property is not named. Operator-reported figures are presented with that framing; published industry benchmarks are cited inline.