Little things make a huge difference at Hilton
Hotel Hilton

Hilton Budapest is known as one of the leading 5 star hotels in Budapest. When guests select a hotel in the heart of Central Europe, Hilton certainly has an advantage of being the member of such a well-known hotel chain.

The Business Challenge

On the other hand Hilton put a lot of effort in finding their USPs that make them stand out from the crowd. What can be these little things that make them stand out from the crowd for Hilton Budapest?
In 2009 the hotel management was planning to introduce a new system with the aim of “total sales” so that all hotel staff who had contact with guests should take active part in selling. The fact was also recognized that such a change in people’s behavior and attitude needs some professional help: without training and coaching by professional experts the staff won’t make the change happen. Hilton needed a training and consultancy provider who can deliver the expected transformation and thus contributing to business results.
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Hilton had a strict set of criteria for the business partner, and after a multi-phase selection has chosen Develor mainly due to 3 important factors:

• Develor professionals had solid experience in the hotel industry, therefore high quality training delivery and consistency was assured along with its professionalism;
• The offered training program was unique, tailored to the hotel industry, and even more significantly to the Hilton needs, which reacted appropriately to the market situation, to the actual challenges and needs formulated by the management as well;
• Develor was the only potential vendor which has guaranteed measurable business results apart from excellent course content.

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During the preparatory phase, we agreed to implement Develor Hotel Conscious Upselling Program (CUP) with 3 main objectives:

• Generate more revenue to Hilton by offering higher value services (increase in GOP);
• Increase guest satisfaction by offering services personalized to the individual accommodation preferences;
• Improve employee satisfaction and engagement by launching a bonus scheme accordingly.

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Zoltán Árvai
General Manager,
Hilton Budapest

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[one_half_last][blockquote3]“It was important to me to find a partner that speaks our, and our guests’ language, knows our challenges and provides us a practice oriented approach. I’m really pleased to work with Develor.”[/blockquote3][/one_half_last]

The result

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Increasing incremental revenue generated from year to year

The sophisticated program and the committed work of Develor trainers led to a general satisfaction level of 99%.
The program was running successfully, generating measureable increase in 3 main KPI’s:

• increased revenue / GOP to the hotel
• increased guest satisfaction (personalized service)
• increased co-worker loyalty (bonus system)

Comments about the training by participants:

• „The training was very practical and the fact that we had a professional trainer with hotel experience was essential in the success of the program.”
• „It was very well structured and full of really useful examples from our real life.”
• „I liked it very much that in addition to „what to do”, it was also demonstrated to me „how to do” upsell successfully.”
• „Both theory and practice were very colorful and interactive. Theory did not seem too much, since it was well integrated to exercises.”
• „It was an extremely good idea to involve an actor to impersonate guests in situational exercises”

Develor delivered the results promised at the start of the development program. It could happen because, as the General Manager, Zoltan Arvai said, Develor spoke the hotel language, understood the challenges and provided a practice-oriented, fully customized approach.
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Number of registered Upselling

[blockquote3]„We travelled with 2 other Canadian couples and we splurged an extra 30 Euros per night to stay on the Executive floor. This gave us to free internet, an amazing breakfast and access unlimited wine/beer and snacks when we returned back to the hotel from a day of sight seeing. Definitely worth the extra money.”[/blockquote3]
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