Hotel guests: Pay what you want!

One of our clients in Rome (Hotel Abruzzi) was facing low season and instead of doing the usual thing of seeing his occupancy levels crash or lower his ADR to about a third of the usual rates he did something new and risky.

We had the idea of trying out a Pay-what-you-want rate in a hotel. None of our clients (independent hotels) had tried anything like this before and not many of them had the courage to risk it.

Faced with monthly bills and banks knocking on their doors your average independent hotel owner is pretty ADR dependent (or RevPAR for those that have realized it’s value).

Hotel Abruzzi decided he could face the challenge and so we went to their Facebook page and announced a new idea: See the article on Facebook here.

The idea isn’t just a pay-what-you-want but rather a “monetized review” of the hotel.  As the guest leaves the hotel, he/she fills out a review form of the hotel and puts a value to each point he wants to pay most for.

See the form by clicking on the image to the right.

And unlike what we would initially think, this worked out great. Most people being honest people they did an honest review and paid a price comparable to what the hotel was selling on their site.

Of course there’s no safety net here. You could have those guests that just pay almost nothing and leave, well it’s a risk. But just like on review sites, if you do a good job, you’ll get a great reward!