Your Hotel’s Tour Desk is Dead: Bring It Back to Life With eRoam

For many (most?) hotels, the tour desk is something of an afterthought. It usually sits in a corner of reception somewhere, staffed by a bored-looking receptionist who isn’t a tours & activities expert; or it’s rented out to a local tour operator who only sell their own products. Few guests use it, it costs more money than it makes, and in an age when travellers are savvier and have thousands of online local tours & activities at their fingertips, it’s something of an anachronism.

But it doesn’t have to be this way – a properly run tour desk can be both a digital and a physical asset to your property that delights guests before, during and after their stay, and boosts hotel revenues. Here’s how eRoam’s travel technology solution for hoteliers can bring your tour desk back to life and make it a revenue generator…

Offer Tours Pre-Stay

By the time most travellers check in to your hotel, they’ve already got their tours & activities booked. Sites like Viator, Airbnb Experiences, GetYourGuide etc offer thousands of local experiences and activities beyond the usual tired old city tours, and travellers love them. So waiting until guests check in to make them aware of your tour desk means seeing that additional guest spend go to someone else.

You should be using your pre-stay emails (you are sending pre-stay emails aren’t you? You aren’t? Well you need to start!) to let guests know that you have a digital tour desk that can pre-book tours, experiences, transfers and onward travel for them and make sure you get a piece of the action. eRoam offers tours, activities, experiences, tickets and transfers from thousands of global operators including Viator, G Adventures and Innstant, as well as loads of smaller local specialist providers, enabling you to offer travellers a range of activities before they travel. You can even put together multi-day experiences based on the guests’ length of stay to maximise revenue opportunities.

In-House Expertise

If you run your own tour desk in the lobby, you probably offer a fairly limited range of standard local tours, tickets & transfers. eRoam’s huge marketplace of travel products transforms your tour desk staff into local experts who can conjure up great experiences at the click of a mouse. eRoam’s slick, user-friendly interface means they can do this with the guest’s input and build an itinerary together with them – they can even let the guests do the work themselves.

And where a tour operator-run desk might only provide a limited selection of tours and require a few hours to confirm, eRoam offers thousands of products with instant booking, confirmation and payment via your own payment gateway. No more seeing tour revenue walk out of the hotel doors!

Beyond the Stay

Your guests may be with you for 2-3 nights, but chances are their whole trip is considerably longer and taking in other destinations. So make sure your pre-stay email doesn’t just offer tours & activities in your own destination, but makes it clear you can handle activities in any other destination they might be going to. eRoam can even arrange long-haul and domestic flights.

Also, if you’re part of a hotel group or chain, keep the revenue in-company and offer them deals at other hotels in the group for their stay – eRoam has over 750,000 hotels & other types of accommodation in its marketplace so your partner hotels are almost certainly in there!

Loyalty & Feedback

Going above and beyond the normal call of duty will leave an impression on your guests for sure – you’ll always be remembered as the hotel that didn’t just book them a room but also arranged some amazing activities for them, booked them an airport transfer, and even arranged an onward flight and hotel for them in their next destination! Delighting guests in this way pretty much guarantees you 5* reviews and is also a great driver of loyalty.

And talking of loyalty, if you run a loyalty/frequent stayer programme, make eRoam a key part of that by using it to offer discounted (or even free) transfers, activities or stays at partner hotels.

To find out more about how eRoam can help hoteliers generate additional revenue per stay and bring their tour desks back to life, check out our eRoam for Hoteliers page or contact us to arrange a demo.