Hotel gift vouchers have evolved far beyond a seasonal Christmas add-on. For hotels, they represent an opportunity to generate direct revenue throughout the year, showcase experiences across the property and reach customers who may not otherwise be looking to book a hotel stay.
But making vouchers available isn’t enough.
Our Hotel Gift Voucher Playbook draws on insights from more than 400,000 voucher orders across the Net Affinity / Smarthotel hotel client base in the UK and Ireland, alongside wider industry research, to understand when people buy vouchers, what they’re looking for and how hotels can turn that demand into revenue.
Here are 10 key takeaways to help hotels make more of their voucher offering.
1. Think of vouchers as a year-round revenue opportunity
Christmas remains hugely important, but a strong voucher strategy shouldn’t begin and end in December.
Birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, thank-yous, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and corporate gifting all create opportunities throughout the year.
The key is to build an always-on voucher proposition, then increase visibility and marketing activity around the occasions when demand accelerates.
2. Plan around the peaks but don’t stop marketing too soon
One of the clearest findings from our data is just how late many consumers leave their voucher purchases.
At Christmas, almost a third of December voucher orders are placed between 22 and 24 December – 27.6% in Ireland and 31.2% in the UK.
The pattern isn’t unique to Christmas. Around 30% of Valentine’s voucher orders are placed between 12 and 14 February, while Mother’s Day itself is the biggest purchase day within the analysed Mother’s Day window in both Ireland and the UK.
For hotels, this means keeping voucher campaigns active right up to the occasion, when demand can be at its strongest.
3. Make mobile a priority
Your voucher buyer could be sitting at home on their phone at 9:00 pm, looking for a present they can send immediately.
In 2026, smartphones account for 66.2% of Irish voucher orders and 69.8% of UK orders across our client base.
That means mobile isn’t simply another channel to consider. For many customers, it is the voucher buying journey.
Review the experience from a buyer’s perspective. How quickly can they find your vouchers? Are options and prices easy to understand? Is checkout straightforward? And can they receive the voucher immediately without needing any manual input from your team?
Every unnecessary step creates another opportunity for the buyer to leave.
4. Offer choice without overwhelming the buyer
More choice doesn’t automatically create a better voucher offering.
A strong approach combines the flexibility of monetary vouchers with a carefully selected range of experience-led vouchers.
Monetary vouchers suit different budgets and give recipients flexibility, while experience-led options, such as afternoon tea, dinner, a spa treatment or an overnight stay can feel like a more complete gift.
Rather than turning everything your hotel offers into a voucher, focus on experiences that are easy for customers to understand, attractive to give and straightforward for your team to fulfil.
5. Build your vouchers around the reason people are buying
Don’t start by asking, “What hotel products could we turn into vouchers?”
Instead ask, “What is this customer trying to give someone?”
Someone looking for a quick thank-you present may value the flexibility of a monetary voucher. A Mother’s Day shopper may be looking for afternoon tea or a spa experience. An anniversary could warrant a higher-value overnight stay.
Different occasions, budgets and recipients create different buying intentions. Your voucher range should reflect them.
6. Market the experience, not just the voucher
A €150 voucher isn’t necessarily an inspiring gift. What someone could do with that €150 is.
Your marketing should help buyers picture what they’re giving: dinner together, an indulgent spa treatment, afternoon tea or a weekend away.
Strong photography and experience-led copy can transform the proposition from a financial transaction into something memorable.
The same applies to monetary vouchers. Instead of communicating only the value, demonstrate the choice that value can unlock across your hotel.
7. Adapt your marketing as the occasion approaches
The message that captures someone’s attention several weeks before Christmas isn’t necessarily the message that converts them on Christmas Eve.
We recommend thinking about voucher campaigns in three phases:
Inspire → Guide → Convert
Early in the campaign, bring the experience to life through strong imagery and occasion-focused messaging.
As the date gets closer, help buyers make a decision by bringing values, packages, inclusions and options for different budgets to the forefront.
Then, in the final days, remove barriers. Emphasise instant digital delivery, a simple mobile purchase journey and the reassurance that there’s still time to send a thoughtful gift.
Rather than launching one campaign and leaving it unchanged, prepare these stages in advance.
8. Look beyond Christmas to Cyber Weekend and Travel Tuesday
Black Friday and Cyber Weekend represent 8.5% of annual voucher revenue in our analysis and form the fastest-growing gifting period in the calendar analysed.
But hotels shouldn’t necessarily think of Black Friday as a single day.
Demand continues across Cyber Weekend and into Cyber Monday, while Travel Tuesday — immediately after Cyber Monday — is creating another travel-specific promotional opportunity.
Planning across the wider period gives hotels more time to build momentum and more opportunities to put relevant voucher experiences in front of motivated buyers.
9. Make redemption as easy as purchasing
The voucher journey doesn’t end when the payment confirmation arrives.
A guest may want to use their voucher towards a stay worth more than its original value, redeem part of it at the spa or use it within your restaurant. Your technology and processes need to accommodate that journey.
Partial redemption can be particularly valuable. For example, a guest with a €150 voucher could apply it towards a €340 stay and pay the remaining balance separately. That creates flexibility for the guest while opening the door to additional spend for the hotel.
Think about the complete journey:
Purchase → Delivery → Redemption
Each stage should feel connected and straightforward, both for the guest and your hotel team.
10. Use your own data to make every campaign smarter
Industry benchmarks can show you where the opportunities are, but your hotel’s own performance data should shape your long-term voucher strategy.
After every major campaign, look at what sold, when demand accelerated, which channels generated purchases and which messages performed best.
Then use those insights when planning your next campaign.
Rather than starting from scratch every Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Black Friday or Christmas, each campaign should add to your understanding of what your voucher buyers actually want.
Turn voucher demand into direct revenue
The biggest lesson from our Hotel Gift Voucher Playbook is that a successful voucher strategy isn’t about one offer, one campaign or one period of the year.
It’s about connecting the whole journey.
At Net Affinity / Smarthotel, we connect voucher technology, direct booking and digital marketing to help hotels make more of that demand. Through our voucher solution and integration with Savvy, guests can buy, receive and redeem vouchers across the online and in-property journey, while our digital marketing expertise helps hotels build campaigns around the moments that matter.
Want to dig deeper into the data?
Download The Hotel Voucher Guide for the full insights, data and practical strategies for growing your hotel’s voucher revenue.