Increase sales at your hotel with 5 Disney Secrets

A hotel can increase sales with five practices drawn from the way Disney runs its business: treating every guest contact as marketing, offering a better version of what the guest is already buying, suggesting what naturally goes with it, building an offer that cannot be compared with anyone else's, and giving guests a reason to return through special events. None of them requires a theme park budget. All of them require a system.

Consider a Friday evening at a 180-room beach hotel. The restaurant is full, the lobby bar is busy, and the front desk is handling a wave of arrivals. A couple checks in for a weekend, accepts the standard room, and walks to dinner. Nobody mentions the suite upgrade that was empty, the spa package that had availability, or the wine dinner on Saturday. At the end of the weekend the guests rate their stay as pleasant and leave. The general manager, looking at Monday's numbers, sees full occupancy and a food and beverage line that is flat. The hotel did everything right except sell. It served people politely and let the revenue walk out the door.

It is no secret that Disney is one of the best-known and most loved brands in the world. Its films, characters, parks, hotels, cruises and streaming service build a fan and customer base that is larger and more loyal each year. But Disney does not sell only because it has fans. It sells because it applies deliberate strategies that make sales grow, and practically all of them can be adapted by any company that sells consumer products and services, such as a hotel.

What are the secrets of this company? What tactics does it use so that its customers find it difficult not to buy? The marketer, consultant and web TV host Andrew Lock explores these questions in a book on the marketing strategies Disney has used over the years and still uses today, Walt Disney's Way: How to Build a Better Business Using the Magical Marketing Strategies of Walt Disney, published in 2020, and much of this article draws on his ideas. You can learn more about the author at Andrew Lock's website. The five practices below are framed for hotel executives and are interpretations of that work, not Disney's official statements.

Secret one: marketing is everything, and everything is marketing

The first not-so-secret secret is that the company understands that every action taken by its employees and managers is marketing. Every product or service sold is marketing, and so is every film. Every moment of customer contact with the brand is an opportunity to build or erode perception, which is why Disney strives for a unique experience each time a person meets the brand: in its parks, its hotels, on its cruises and in front of a screen.

For a hotel the lesson is uncomfortable and useful. The moment a company understands that every activity of every person in the organization is a marketing act, which can affect the guest's perception positively or negatively, it starts to produce better experiences, a stronger image and more sales. The housekeeper who greets a guest by name, the night auditor who resolves a billing question without sending the guest to the morning shift, and the bellman who mentions the weekend event are all part of the commercial system. Marketing is not only a task for the chief marketing officer. It belongs to everyone from the board of directors to the operators, and it always begins with the customer.

That requires knowing who the customer is: what they like and dislike, how they buy and what they are looking for. A practical way to start is to build a buyer persona for each of your main guest segments, such as couples on weekend breaks, corporate travelers and families with children. Once the ideal guest is understood, the hotel can do everything possible to help that person. In many hotels it is assumed that helping the guest is the job of the front desk or the waiter. At Disney, according to Lock, helping the customer is everyone's main task regardless of position. The financial logic is simple. A guest who feels helped by every employee spends more, forgives more and returns more often.

Secret two: up-selling

To increase sales, Disney uses up-selling. Whenever it has the opportunity, it offers a larger quantity of what the customer is buying, or a premium or improved version of the product or service. The classic illustration is the drink at a food cart. As a hypothetical example, a drink might cost 4.99 dollars, while the same drink served in a special themed cup costs 9.99. The product is essentially the same; the packaging and the story are different, and the extra margin is considerable. Multiply a few dollars by millions of visitors to parks, hotels and cruises, and up-selling becomes a very large annual figure.

In a hotel the equivalent moments are everywhere. A room with an ocean view instead of a garden view, a late checkout, a breakfast package instead of a la carte, a bottle of reserve wine instead of the house label. Picture a business hotel where the reservations agent, instead of simply confirming a standard room for a two-night stay, asks whether the guest would like a room on the executive floor with lounge access for a modest difference per night. If one in five accepts, the hotel adds revenue on rooms it was going to sell anyway, at a cost far lower than acquiring a new guest.

Secret three: cross-selling

At the same time that Disney's partners offer an up-sell, they can offer products or services related to the one being bought. This is cross-selling: proposing another relevant item that complements the purchase. Anyone who has eaten fast food has heard the version, would you like fries with that? Disney applies the same logic each time a customer is about to buy something, especially food.

For a hotel, cross-selling means offering the spa treatment with the weekend package, the airport transfer with the reservation, the kids club with the family room, or the tour with the excursion desk visit. Two conditions determine whether up-selling and cross-selling work. First, a system must stand behind them. It is not enough to tell the team that from now on they will offer improved or related products. The offer must be a formal, written and thought-out process, with a prepared dialogue so that employees do not improvise at the moment of the offer. Second, timing matters. The collaborator should make the offer just before the guest finishes ordering and paying, because that is when the person is in buying mode and most receptive.

A hotel group with several properties can go further, using its guest records to decide what to offer to whom. A guest who has booked spa services on three previous stays is a better prospect for a wellness package than a first-time visitor. This is where the commercial and technology disciplines meet, and where a CRM that records preferences pays for itself. It is also the logic discussed in the ICX article on how digital transformation can help optimize the management of a hotel.

Secret four: differentiation

Disney is a very distinct brand, leveraging storytelling, characters and customer service. Being so distinct gives it the opportunity to charge a premium price. The reasoning is worth following. If a company is different in what it offers and in how it offers it, it can avoid being compared with other hotels. Without a direct comparison, it can charge a premium, because there is no obvious alternative against which the customer measures price. What other parks, hotels or cruises can be compared with Disney's? None, since the company builds its products on its own characters, films, stories and music, creating unique experiences for which it charges a high price.

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Differentiation does two things for a hotel. It lets the hotel sell more, because many people want to buy something that creates a different and unique experience. And it lets the hotel charge more for it, which protects margin when demand softens. Most hotels in a market compete on location, rooms and price, and the comparison is made by an algorithm on a booking site. A hotel that builds an identity around a story, whether it is a culinary tradition, a wellness philosophy, a local craft or a signature service ritual, moves out of that comparison. This is a pricing strategy as much as a branding one, a point the ICX article on how a hotel's margin depends on pricing strategies develops.

The difficulty is that differentiation has to be real and consistent. A coastal boutique hotel that promises a wellness identity but serves a conventional breakfast buffet and has no trained staff will not earn the premium. The test is whether a guest, asked a week later how the hotel differed from others, would give a specific and positive answer.

Secret five: special events

Special events attract new customers and give old ones a reason to keep coming back. If a hotel offers events periodically, many people want to take part, whether it is a band, a theater group, a stand-up comedy night or the celebration of a local occasion. Disney has made events a central part of its calendar, a habit that goes back to Walt Disney himself, who invited singers and bands to perform live in his park. Today its EPCOT park runs a series of festivals, and Disney's official site lists the EPCOT International Food & Wine Festival alongside the Festival of the Arts, the Festival of the Holidays and the Flower & Garden Festival (Walt Disney World, EPCOT International Food & Wine Festival). Disney's calendar changes over time. Star Wars Weekends, for example, ran at Disney's Hollywood Studios for many years and was discontinued in November 2015, when the park prepared for Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge (history of Star Wars Weekends). Other seasonal events that have appeared on its calendar include the After Hours Boo Bash and Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party, which readers should verify against the current Disney calendar.

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Events are a great opportunity to stimulate additional sales, since guests who arrive for the event are likely to consume the products and services offered throughout it. They are a hook. But the event must be good enough, attractive enough and important enough that many people want to be part of it, so it needs planning well in advance. A useful discipline is a calendar built at least four months ahead, which leaves time to organize each event properly. And an event is a reason to return: a guest who attended one will often want to attend another.

Events also contribute to loyalty, which is especially relevant in hospitality and tourism. A guest who enjoys a unique, well-organized experience has more reasons to return and to recommend the property. In a highly competitive market, events can become a differentiator that positions the hotel as a destination for memorable experiences. In tourism more broadly, well-structured events can attract visitors to a destination, extend their stay and increase their spending on lodging, gastronomy and local activities. By combining events with up-selling and cross-selling, a hotel can offer complementary packages, from gastronomic experiences to tailored tours, thus maximizing the value of each guest.

Which industries can borrow these ideas?

Although this article is written for hotels, the five practices travel well. A retail bank can treat every branch interaction as marketing and train advisors to suggest a relevant product at the right moment. A restaurant group can build a signature identity and run seasonal events to create repeat traffic. An insurer can up-sell a broader coverage tier at renewal and cross-sell a complementary policy, as long as the recommendation fits the customer's situation. A wellness chain can combine all five. In every case the common thread is that revenue growth comes from design, not from pressure. Customers accept, and even welcome, offers that are relevant, well-timed and consistent with the experience they came for.

The warning is equally general. An up-sell that feels like a trick, a cross-sell that ignores what the customer needs, or an event that lacks quality will damage trust faster than it creates revenue. The Disney approach works because it sits inside an experience that customers value highly. Hotels that borrow the tactics without the experience will feel the difference.

What this means for the C-level

For the owner or general director, the decision is to treat revenue per guest as a managed metric, not a by-product of occupancy. A hotel that fills its rooms but captures little additional spend is leaving margin on the table, and the gap is usually larger than the cost of the training and systems needed to close it. The commercial director should ask for a plan that covers all five practices, with an owner and a target for each.

For the chief financial officer, the useful measures are ancillary revenue per occupied room, the acceptance rate of upgrades and add-ons, the share of guests who return, and the margin contribution of events. For the director of operations and of human resources, the point is that selling is a service skill: staff need scripts, timing, incentives and the confidence to offer without pressure. And for the leader of customer experience, the five practices should be evaluated by what guests say. If the offers are perceived as helpful, they strengthen loyalty; if they are perceived as pushy, they weaken it.

How to start on Monday morning

Choose one of the five and run it for thirty days, measuring honestly. A good first candidate is the up-sell at reservation and at check-in, since it touches revenue directly and requires little investment. Write the two or three offers you want your team to make, define the exact moment, prepare a short dialogue for each and agree on a simple way to record acceptances. Review the numbers with the team every week and share the best examples.

In parallel, gather the front line for a single hour to ask what guests say they wish the hotel offered, and which of the hotel's own services are least known. The answers usually reveal cross-sell opportunities that cost nothing to launch. Then put the next four months of events on a calendar, decide which two have the strongest potential to bring guests back and give each a named owner. The ICX customer journey toolkit helps map the moments in a stay where an offer feels natural, so that the plan follows the guest's journey and not the hotel's organization chart.

How ICX helps

ICX Consulting is a commercial strategy and customer experience firm headquartered in Miami, with experience in hospitality. It helps hotel groups define the offer architecture, the pricing logic and the guest journey that make up-selling, cross-selling, differentiation and events work as a system, and then supports the technology that makes them repeatable. Relevant starting points are the hospitality industry page, the practice in revenue management and the work on loyalty strategy. For a related view of what Disney can teach about experience and its risks, readers may find the ICX article Disney is killing its customer's experience instructive.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between up-selling and cross-selling in a hotel?

Up-selling offers a better or larger version of what the guest is already buying, such as a higher room category. Cross-selling offers a complementary product, such as a spa treatment or a transfer. Both work best when offered just before the guest completes the purchase.

How do you train hotel staff to up-sell without being pushy?

Give staff a short, prepared dialogue built around the guest's needs, define the right moment to offer and let them practice. Offers framed as helpful suggestions are accepted more often and protect the relationship better than pressure.

Can a small hotel differentiate like a global brand?

Yes. Differentiation depends on a clear and consistent identity, not scale. A small hotel can build a distinctive story around its location, cuisine, culture or service ritual, and charge accordingly if the experience delivers on it.

How far in advance should a hotel plan special events?

A calendar at least four months ahead is a sound minimum, which leaves time for programming, promotion and partner coordination. Events with higher ambition, such as festivals, may need a longer lead time.

The hotels that grow fastest are rarely the ones that discount the most. They are the ones that design every guest moment to be worth more. If you would like to see where your own stay leaves revenue unclaimed, request a diagnostic with an ICX consultant.