Did you know?: Disney World has a lot of hotel rooms—over 30,000 rooms, to be exact. There are 27 different resorts on property, not even counting all of the hotels around the parks that don’t fall under the Disney umbrella. Phew!

All of these resorts fall under one of three general categories: value resorts, moderate resorts, and deluxe resorts. Disney has cleverly created tiered hotel options to fit every guest’s budget and needs. You can take a page out of their book when creating offers for your clients.

Explaining Disney’s tiered hotel options

If you’ve never stayed at a Disney hotel, here’s how the tiered hotel options work. Most of these hotels fall under three categories. The first is the value resort, which are themed rooms that cost about $150 or less a night. They’re the budget-friendly option that make up around 40% of the hotel rooms at Disney.

In our experience, the value resorts are great if you want to spend more of your trip budget on the parks or dining. There are some challenges though: there’s really only one place to eat onsite, and these resorts are a lot farther away from park drop-off areas. And that can make a difference after walking around a theme park all day. 

Then you have the moderate resorts, larger rooms with more access to amenities and closer positioning to bus stops and lobbies. They’re not hugely different from the value resorts, but if you want more space to shower and spread out in your room, and more dining options, you may choose a moderate over a value.

The third type are the deluxe resorts, which make up about 25% of the rooms on property. The Grand Floridian, for example, averages around $800 per night. Deluxes are top of the line with immaculate theming, gorgeous rooms, and luxurious amenities, like high thread count bedsheets and nightly fireworks shows.

Meeting people where they are

What Disney is doing with these hotel options is meeting every potential guest and parkgoer where they’re at. In other words, offering an experience tailored to different budgets and tastes. Not everyone can cough up $800 to stay at the Grand Floridian (as much as we’d want to) but they still want to visit Disney. So Disney gives them an option that meets their needs.

Think of your ideal customer for your business. The clients you actually get in real life don’t always fit that persona, right? The people you end up working with may have different budgets or client needs or values. Like Disney, you can meet most potential clients where they are by offering various packages or tiered options.

Say you’re a photographer who wants to offer tiered service options like Disney. Your “value” option, for example, may be a mini photo session for budget-minded clients who want family photo cards. Your “moderate” option may be a one or two hour family session with prints thrown in. Your “deluxe” option lets you do it all for the client, from edits to prints to digital files.

When you give people multiple opportunities to work with you, you up your chances of securing a new client. And if you really impress them, you might make a loyal customer who comes back and purchases a pricier option.

It’s not all about price—experience matters, too

Just because you create a value option in your offers doesn’t mean you should skimp on customer experience! You still need to provide value to make your customer’s investment worthwhile, whatever tier they fall under. 

We encourage a lot of clients to build an ascension model, which is a ladder of different value offerings that grow with the client. It’ll help you work out your pricing, yes, but more importantly, an ascension model can outline what you offer valuewise. 

One way to think about what your customer values is to put yourself in their shoes. What problems do they have and what solutions are they looking for? What level of immersion or support do they want? What would make their experience truly magical?

A loyalty program can boost the customer experience and bring you more revenue. It can also entice customers to keep supporting you. Say you’re a web designer and your “deluxe” option is a fully customized website with yearly updates. As part of your “moderate” option, you might sell upgrades to build extra pages. Someone choosing between the two options might go for the deluxe if it looks like the less expensive option with more services thrown in (even if it’s not). 

Keep it simple and build from there

Remember that you don’t have to have your entire ascension model or tiered options built for your business at once! That’s a surefire way to get disorganized and provide a lower quality customer experience that doesn’t really meet your clients where they are.

Focus on one tier at a time and get it to a good place before you unveil the next one. You can stick with three tiers and call it quits, or maybe work your way up to four or five tiers if you want. However many you choose, start simple with fewer tiers, and build up as demand grows. And don’t forget to consider what your clients want and need.