How to Sell Gift Cards: A Year-Round Revenue Guide for Hotels, Spas, and Restaurants
Every December, gift cards take off. By February, they’ve disappeared.
The front desk stops mentioning them, your website tucks them away, and revenue slides back into the usual peaks and troughs.
Gift cards shouldn’t disappear after Christmas. Treated as a year-round channel, they can consistently drive new bookings, repeat visits, and higher guest spend.
The real problem isn’t the product, it’s the way most businesses sell them. Too seasonal, too hidden, too reactive.
The fix is practical - visibility, staff engagement, and automation.
This guide is for hospitality marketers and operators who already understand the revenue power of vouchers and now want to optimise how they’re sold, promoted, and tracked.
Sell Gift Cards Online Through Your Website
If guests can’t see it, they can’t buy it. Most hotels, spas, and restaurants bury their voucher links in the footer, where only the determined ever find them.
Your website should treat gift cards like a core product. Place them in your main menu, use a homepage banner, and add prompts in your booking journey.
When a guest books a dinner reservation, show a ‘Buy a Gift Card’ prompt before checkout. Test its placement and copy for conversion.
Make checkout seamless. Mobile-first design, digital delivery, and minimal steps. The more clicks, the fewer sales.
Avoid friction. Connect your voucher system directly to your website or booking flow (ideally with API integration) so the checkout feels seamless and mobile-first.
Quick wins:
Add “Gift Cards” to your top navigation.
Use a homepage banner during key seasons and off-season.
Integrate vouchers into booking and checkout flows.
Use A/B testing to refine CTA text, placement, and visuals.
Add urgency copy (‘Limited Edition Valentine’s Gift’) and trust badges at checkout.
Keep the process under three clicks.
Enable Staff to Sell More Gift Cards
Your team drives on-site sales, especially at front desk, spa reception, and dining touchpoints.
Train teams with short, repeatable scripts that sound natural. For example: ‘If you loved your treatment today, our spa gift cards make perfect gifts. I can help you order one right now.’
Add light incentives (5% commission or staff leaderboard).
Quick wins:
Create a short staff script for common touchpoints.
Market Gift Cards Year-Round, Not Just at Christmas
Gift cards shouldn’t disappear after December. Guests buy them for birthdays, anniversaries, and small thank-you moments throughout the year.
Set up simple automations like a post-stay email that says “share the experience” or a short birthday message with a voucher link.
Post about your gift cards from time to time so they stay visible. Add an Instagram “Gift Card” button or pin one clear post with the link. Jot your main campaigns into a simple calendar so you know what’s coming up and don’t end up rushing later.
Quick wins:
Map out a 12-month voucher campaign calendar.
Add an Instagram “Gift Card” button.
Automate post-visit emails with voucher prompts.
Track campaign KPIs: email click-through rate, average voucher value, and redemption timing. Adjust creative and timing quarterly.
Flat-value gift cards are easy to set up, but they rarely maximise revenue. The strongest programs sell experiences. Specific, bookable packages that guests can picture themselves enjoying.
Why? Because experience vouchers outperform cash-value cards in three ways:
They sell at higher price points (premium positioning).
They nearly always generate extra on-site spend at redemption.
They solve operational problems like filling off-peak slots.
Here’s what that looks like across hospitality sectors:
Spas: Champagne day package (encourages F&B upsell) | Mother’s Day pamper deal (capitalises on seasonal demand).
Restaurants: Chef’s table with wine pairing (premium spend) | Sunday roast for four (drives group bookings + bar sales).
Golf Clubs: 18 holes + clubhouse lunch (increases F&B revenue) | Twilight round with drinks (monetises quieter tee times).
Package your experiences like products: name them, price them cleanly, and photograph them well. Track sales data to identify which experiences convert best, and refine the next season’s lineup accordingly.
Proven experience vouchers that outperform cash-value gift cards
Quick wins:
Replace generic £50/£100 cards with curated packages.
Use photography that sells the experience.
Price packages to encourage upsell (guest spends more when redeeming).
Don’t limit your focus to individual buyers. Corporate orders are often the highest-margin sales and easiest to repeat.
Pitch to HR and sales teams as staff recognition gifts or client rewards. Offer downloadable order forms and volume pricing tiers (e.g., 10+ vouchers = 5% discount).
You can also partner with local businesses for co-branded experiences, widening your reach.
Quick wins:
Create a “Corporate Gifting” page on your site.
Reach out to local HR departments with offers.
Offer bulk-purchase discounts.
Follow up with a simple CRM workflow: send a thank-you email, track company spend, and create an annual reorder reminder.
Use Redemption as a Loyalty Engine
Every redeemed voucher is a new guest in your property. Redemption is the start of your loyalty funnel, not the end.
When a guest redeems:
Capture their data (with permission).
Offer an upsell or add-on during their visit.
Follow up with personalised offers to bring them back.
Quick wins:
Add a “welcome back” email sequence post-redemption.
Encourage staff to mention loyalty programs.
Use special offers to turn first-time redeemers into repeat guests.
In your CRM, tag redeemers separately from buyers. Send a follow-up email 7 days post-visit with a rebooking offer or review request.
Set Up the Right Tech Stack
Check that your systems actually work together. Link voucher sales to your booking system so details flow through to guest profiles.
Pull finance data into one place so you can see what’s been sold and what’s still open.
Use tools you already have, like Mailchimp or HubSpot, to send emails and check which ones bring sales.
If you’re using Enjovia, most of this connection work is already covered.
Keep track of who buys a voucher and who redeems it. It makes later marketing a lot easier.
Track, Measure, and Scale Gift Card Sales
If you can’t measure it, you can’t scale it. Yet many hospitality businesses sell vouchers without ever reviewing performance.
Monitor metrics like redemption rates, average spend above voucher value, and repeat visit conversion. Use redemption data to forecast staffing needs and cash flow, and to time future campaigns.
Automate reporting through your voucher platform or CRM. Track redemption rate, breakage, average upsell spend, and repeat-visit conversion in one dashboard.
Once you’re tracking performance, benchmark your results to see if your voucher programme is healthy.
Below are benchmark ranges you can use to assess performance:
Key Voucher KPIs to Monitor:
Redemption rate: 70–85%- shows engagement; too low means poor promotion, too high may cause over-redemption risk.
Average spend above voucher: +20–30% - indicates effective upselling during redemption.
Breakage rate: under 10% - healthy level of unused value without over-liability.
Corporate order share: 15–20% of total sales - signals balanced mix between consumer and B2B demand.
Scaled Growth - full reporting, forecasting, loyalty integration.
At the ‘Scaled Growth’ stage, integrate voucher data with your PMS and CRM to trigger upsell or loyalty campaigns automatically.
Quick wins:
Identify which stage you’re at.
Add one new tactic from the next stage.
Build a roadmap to scale steadily.
The four stages of building a profitable gift card program
Manage Compliance and Risk in Gift Card Programs
Gift cards feel simple, but they carry hidden risks.
Expiry rules vary by region, so make sure you’re compliant.
Fraud is real: use secure codes and track redemption centrally.
Breakage (unused balances) must be accounted for responsibly.
Quick wins:
Publish clear terms & conditions online.
Work with finance to handle liability.
Use a system with built-in fraud prevention.
Use voucher software with built-in expiry controls, fraud monitoring, and audit trails for liability reporting. Platforms like Enjovia include these features, keeping operations compliant and guest experience seamless.
How to Sell Gift Cards: Make Gift Cards a Year-Round Revenue Engine
Gift cards are a retail product within your hospitality business. With the right systems, they can drive bookings and repeat visits all year.
The top performers treat vouchers like a managed product line. Tracked, optimised, and integrated into marketing and finance workflows.
Platforms like Enjovia simplify this process (from setup to real-time reporting) making year-round voucher management frictionless.
See how leading hospitality brands use Enjovia to turn gift cards into predictable, year-round revenue.
FAQs
Do gift cards really increase revenue in hospitality?
Yes. Guests almost always spend more than the voucher value, and vouchers generate prepaid income and drive incremental on-site spend when redeemed.
What’s the difference between gift cards and experience vouchers?
Gift cards are cash-value. Experience vouchers sell a packaged memory and usually generate more margin.
How do I stop gift card sales being seasonal?
Visibility, staff training, and a year-round campaign calendar are key. Treat vouchers as part of your core product, not a seasonal extra.
What legal issues should I watch for?
Check regional laws on expiry dates and consumer rights, and make sure your system prevents fraud or misuse. Want to see how prepaid experiences reshape overall hotel revenue strategy? Explore our 2026 growth outlook. Link to Strategies to Increase Hotel Revenue
Ready to Grow Your Gift Voucher Sales like the Celtic Manor?
We help brands turn experiences into revenue. Whether you're a resort, spa, restaurant or venue, our platform makes it easy to sell, track and manage gift vouchers.
Let’s chat about what your existing system looks like, and how Enjovia can accelerate your sales and improve your processes.
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