How to grow resort secondary spend with digital

The Untapped Potential in Your Resort's Acreage

Resorts hold a unique advantage: a captive audience for an extended period. Yet much commercial potential remains unrealised after the initial accommodation booking. Guests arrive and check in, but are often left to discover what else is on offer. A family staying for a week represents hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds in potential secondary spend. The challenge is connecting them with your restaurants, activities and retail outlets in a way that feels helpful, not difficult.

A modern digital approach creates a single, cohesive guest experience that travels with your visitor on their phone. It joins up the dots between the spa, the golf course, the lakeside restaurant and the kids' club. It makes spending money easy, intuitive and even enjoyable. This is how you convert idle time into active spending.

Connecting the Commercial Dots Across Your Resort

Before you can increase spend, you must understand where the opportunities lie. Most resorts have several revenue streams, but they frequently operate in silos. The restaurant team worries about table bookings, while the activities team focuses on filling sessions. A unified view, enabled by technology, allows you to cross-promote and manage everything from a single place.

Food and Beverage

This is often the largest source of secondary revenue. The goal is to remove any friction. Picture a family by the pool. Instead of having to get up, find a waiter, and order, they can scan a QR code on their table. They see the full menu, place an order for drinks and snacks, and pay directly from their phone. At the same time, you can use the app to promote a dinner special for that evening, prompting them to make a reservation right there and then.

Retail and Activities

Your resort's activities are a huge draw, but availability is often a mystery to guests. A digital platform makes this information visible and bookable. You can display live schedules for everything from yoga classes to bird-watching tours. For example, a family could check their phone over breakfast and see that two last-minute spots have opened up for the popular zip-line adventure that afternoon. With a few taps, they can book and pay, securing revenue you might otherwise have lost. This applies equally to promoting spa treatments, golf tee times or special merchandise in the gift shop.

• Spa and wellness treatments.
• Golf, tennis, or other sports bookings.
• Kids' club sessions and family activities.
• Gift shop and speciality retail purchases.
• Equipment hire (bikes, watersports gear).

Prompting In-the-Moment Decisions with a Resort Visitor App

The main advantage of a resort visitor app is its ability to communicate with guests at the right time and place. Timely prompts can improve a guest's day and drive significant commercial returns by presenting a relevant offer just when they might be considering it.

Push notifications are a simple but highly effective tool. Imagine sending a message to all guests currently on-site at 4pm: 'Happy Hour starts at The Terrace Bar in 30 minutes. Enjoy two-for-one cocktails until 6pm'. This creates awareness, drives footfall to a specific location, and creates an additional sale. You can also use location-based messaging. A guest walking past the spa could receive a notification about a last-minute cancellation for a discounted treatment. It feels personal and opportunistic.

From One-Time Guest to Regular Visitor

Driving secondary spend during a visit is only half the story. The greater prize is converting a first-time guest into a loyal regular who returns year after year. A positive guest experience is fundamental to this, and digital tools can build and maintain that relationship long after check-out.

Digital Memberships and Passes

Loyalty schemes are not new, but digital memberships make them much more dynamic and easier to manage. Forget flimsy plastic cards. By hosting your membership or pass scheme within your app, you create a direct line of communication with your most valuable customers. You can offer them exclusive perks, like early booking access for school holidays or a members-only discount at the restaurant. Guest experience platforms like n-gage.io are designed to manage these digital memberships effectively, automating renewals and simplifying benefit redemption for both the guest and your team.

Encouraging the Next Visit

Your relationship with the guest should not end at the exit barrier. Use the data from their stay to personalise your follow-up marketing. A week after they leave, send them an automated email or a push notification with a tailored offer for a return visit. If your visitor intelligence shows they booked three rounds of golf, your offer could include a complimentary golf package. If they used the spa, include a spa credit. This shows you understand them and value their custom, making a return visit much more likely.

Sponsorship, Donations, and Alternative Funding

Your digital guest platform is a new piece of commercial real estate. It opens up opportunities for brand partnerships and sponsorship. For example, a local, high-end food producer could sponsor the in-app restaurant menus or a guided walking trail on your digital map. This provides a new revenue stream and offers your partners a unique way to reach an engaged audience.

For resorts with conservation areas, historic buildings or charitable trusts, a visitor app can be an effective fundraising channel. Instead of relying on physical donation boxes, you can place a simple 'Donate Now' button within the app. This can be linked to a specific, tangible project, for instance: 'Help us restore the walled garden' or 'Support our red squirrel breeding programme'. This makes the act of giving easy and connects it to a cause guests can see around them.

A Joined-Up Commercial and Guest Experience

The most successful resorts understand that commercial growth and a brilliant guest experience are two sides of the same coin. They are not competing priorities. Making it easy for a guest to plan their day, book a table, find their way around and buy a coffee improves their experience. It makes them feel more relaxed and positive.

A guest who feels looked after is far more likely to spend money and recommend you to others. Technology should remove friction and connect them to all the great things you offer. A unified guest experience platform allows you to present everything from digital maps and live schedules to in-app commerce in one place. This creates a single, reliable source of information for the guest, which builds confidence and encourages exploration and spending.

Practical First Steps to Boost Resort Secondary Spend

Implementing a new digital strategy can feel like a large undertaking, but you can start small and build momentum. Focus on making tangible improvements that deliver clear results.

• Audit Your Assets: Map out every single potential point of sale on your resort, from the coffee cart to the bike hire shed. Identify where the friction points are for guests trying to spend money.
• Talk to Your Guests and Staff: Ask guests what they wish was easier to book or buy. Ask your front-line teams where they see missed opportunities for sales every single day.
• Analyse Existing Data: Look at your current booking and sales data. Where is the demand? What is underselling? This will inform your initial digital offers and promotions.
• Plan a Pilot: You do not need to digitise everything at once. Start with one area, for example, digitising restaurant bookings and in-app food ordering. Measure the results before expanding.