Hotel gift vouchers: the night you sell seven months before you serve it

It’s 10pm on December 23rd and someone forty kilometres from your hotel still has nothing for their parents. They know your place, they had dinner there once, they type your name into Google. Two things can happen. Either your site sells them a “one night with dinner for two” in three clicks, ready to print, or they pick up a multi-brand experience box at the supermarket the next morning. In the second case the parents may still end up in your dining room — and you hand a quarter of the price to a middleman.

A market hiding in plain sight

Console SecretBox, a French vendor of online gift voucher software, publishes a yearly review of its own customers. These are supplier figures about the supplier’s users, and should be read that way. The sample is hard to dismiss, though. In 2025, 726 French hotels sold 546,377 vouchers through the platform, worth €120.7 million. Do the division: roughly €166,000 per property on average, and about €220 per voucher. The best-selling single hotel cleared €3.7 million.

Three findings matter to anyone running a hotel.

First, December carries a little over a third of the year’s sales. US data from Hospitality Solutions (formerly Sabre Hospitality) is blunter still: more than 40% of annual hotel gift card sales happen in November and December, and around 20% in the 48 hours between December 24th and 26th. The last-minute buyer is not a myth.

Second, according to SecretBox’s 2024 study, a voucher valid for twelve months is redeemed on average seven months after purchase. You bank in December a night you will serve in July. Nothing else you sell funds you that far ahead.

Third, about 13% of hotel vouchers lead to an add-on sale when the stay is booked — an extra night, a treatment, a better bottle. And that is only what is captured at booking, not what gets spent on site. For a wider benchmark, Capital One Shopping research across US retail found that 61% of gift card holders spend more than the card’s value.

What other people’s boxes cost you

The big experience-box brands bring volume, no question. The price is known too. In France, the hoteliers’ association Charme & Caractère told its members in 2019 that Smartbox’s commission had been cut from 30% to 27%, with a telling example: a box retailing at €149, roughly €109 paid back to the hotel.

Selling the same stay on your own site means keeping the full price, minus software and payment fees. It also means keeping something worth more than margin: the buyer’s name and email, then the recipient’s. The logic is the one behind cutting OTA dependency, with one difference — here you can take back control in a month, with no rate-parity battle to fight.

The October plan

Start thinking about it on December 10th and you have missed most of it. Here is what to set up now.

Five offers, not twenty. One night with breakfast, one night with dinner, a two-night escape, a no-stay option (dinner, spa, brunch) for locals, and an open-value voucher. Gift buyers want an experience with a name, not a rate to compare.

Impossible to miss. A “Gift vouchers” link in the main menu, not buried in the footer. A banner from mid-November. And a small sign at reception and in the restaurant: your best buyers are the guests already in the building.

Deliverable at midnight. The voucher has to land by email as a good-looking PDF within a minute. Offer a posted paper version until about a week before Christmas, then switch everything to PDF. That is where the December 24th peak is won.

Companies first. Hospitality Solutions attributes 23% of its gift card orders to corporate buyers. Staff gifts and client thank-yous get settled in November. Ten phone calls to the firms that already put their visitors up with you will beat any campaign.

Generous terms. Twelve months’ validity at least, extensions granted without a debate, blackout dates few and stated up front. Nudge people toward your quiet weeks — a voucher redeemed in March fills your low season — but don’t forbid the rest. A gift that can’t be used annoys two people at once.

The recipient never chose you

That is what makes this guest unusual: they arrive because someone else bet on your hotel. They compared nothing and read no reviews. They are the cheapest new guest you will win all year, provided you treat them as one. Write “gift voucher, from…” in the guest profile, greet them knowing it, and offer what the voucher doesn’t cover without pushing — ideal ground for ethical upselling.

Then close the loop. The person who gave the stay will hear nothing about it unless someone tells them. A postcard in your colours, written from the room and posted to whoever gave the gift, is the most natural thank-you there is — and it lands with someone who has already bought from you once. That is what Fidélicarte does: a QR code in the room, a real card in a real letterbox, and your hotel back on the mantelpiece just when the next present needs choosing.

The maths

A hundred and fifty vouchers at €220 is €33,000 banked, more than a third of it before December 31st, when the hotel is at its quietest. The same sales through a middleman at 27% would have cost you close to €9,000. And of those hundred and fifty stays, a good share of the recipients had never walked through your door.

The work comes down to one web page, five offers, a sign on the desk and ten phone calls. October is the month to do it: by December, your buyers won’t have time to wait for you to be ready.