The Impact of Cross-Selling in Hospitality

Hospitality, like most industries today, is constantly changing. Markets keep growing, consumers are increasingly demanding, and this requires from the hotel units a continuous work to achieve success where often the key factor is differentiation. The present study intends to observe if the cross-selling techniques are important tools for the hotel industry and if they become an effective differentiation factor on what concerns customer satisfaction and loyalty. For the accomplishment of this study, the authors applied surveys to three types of public: a) consumer; b) hotel manager; and c) hotel employee. It was found that, currently, these tools are effectively used in the hotel market and that they contribute to improve the relationship between the customer and the organisation. This means that these companies, in order to survive in today's market, must create new sales strategies and therefore distinguish themselves from the competition. Furthermore, this study also demonstrates that consumers take into consideration the opinion of others who already know these services. This word-of-mouth trend, now globalized across digital platforms, influences demand, and hotels are already aware of it, leading them to base their strategy on the increase of customer satisfaction, sometimes by implementing cross-selling techniques.