If you had to guess the most important thing needed to grow your hotel and keep customers coming back is, what would you guess? Social media presence? Exclusivity? Assorted Food? Atmosphere? Well if you guessed any of those things, you’re partly correct-
The most important thing is the hotel guest experience which is a combination of all the things listed above and more. The term hotel guest experience gets thrown around a lot and it might present itself as an ambiguous ideal that can’t be measured.
We’re going to demystify the ‘hotel guest experience’ and highlight some of the practical ways to improve your hotel guest experience. If you’re ready to make a change and leave your guests gushing to all their friends when they encounter your hotel, then this article is for you.
Ways to Improve hotel guest experience
Provide an easy booking process
You start making a first impression on your guests from the process of booking a room. Leveraging technology to deliver an easy platform for your guests to book rooms on can be beneficial to both hotel guests and hotel management. An easy booking process should be able to provide potential guests with information about the room, provide photos of what the particular room generally looks like and, also provide the price.
Once a potential guest is pleased with what they see and are ready to book a room, they should be able to do so with the simple click of a button whether on their mobile phones, laptop or other devices.
To provide an easy booking process to your guests, you’re going to need a booking engine.
Initiate communication before arrival
After a potential client has successfully booked a room in your hotel, you don’t go AWOL and wait till they show up at your hotel doors. What you do is to initiate communication before their arrival.
This should include a confirmation message that their booking was successful and should also include any other further information that you would like to pass out before their arrival. The goal is to begin growing a communication with them and starting off with an energy that shows them that they’re valued. This energy is to remain consistent all through their stay at your facility.
Offer early check-ins
An early check-in is a service which offers guests the possibility to check in to the hotel and their room before the standard check in time. The standard check-in time could vary based on location but is usually between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. in the afternoon.
The keyword is to offer it. It’s one thing if a guest has to call on the phone and then request an early check-in, it’s another whole entire thing if you explicitly put it out there that you offer early check-ins and guests who’ve made a booking just have to notify that they’d like to be recipients of this service. The difference is you’re being proactive and showing your guests once more that your establishment is truly hospitable.
Ofcourse, early check-ins come with some special care which would include changing the arranged cleaning routine to be earlier to ensure that the rooms are in perfect condition when the guest shows up.
Personalize guest interaction
Personalized interaction is in high demand now as it has been for years. The easiest way to streamline what each guest might want is to utilize the use of CRM(Customer Relationship Management) tools. This way you can have your customers properly organized and get some key information that would help you create an experience tailored for them.
For example, you could be able to suggest activities that might interest them based on their interests or something even as simple as leaving handwritten notes welcoming them in their rooms could go a long way.
Ensure cleanliness and maintenance
This can’t be stressed enough. Especially in times like these, cleanliness must be practised and your maintenance crew mustwork in line with this vision. All appliances in the rooms and entire hotel should be working as they should. Getting the cleaning team and maintenance crew to do all their duties right could be a challenge sometimes and that’s why managers can implement the use of checklists. These checklists include Room Inspection checklist, Bathroom cleaning checklist, security and inspection checklists and more!
Level up your in-room amenities
Definitely the basic amenities such as TV with cable, fridge, microwave and the likes are to be expected. But to give your guests the best out of customer experience, you might need to step up your amenities game. Simple things like in-room games for families or room plants can go a long way to impress your guests. Find more ideas for hotel amenities that will wow your guests.
Train your staff to be attentive and responsive
At the end of the day, human to human interaction is one of the most important things when it comes to excellent customer service. While some people are charmers and really good at making guests feel welcome and attended to, this communication skill might have to be taught to some others.
The implication of this is that your staff should undergo training to help them build this skill. To be attentive, responsive and warm towards guests. Guests always remember how staff respond to their requests, were they sloppy? Slow to action? Uninterested? Or were they attentive, energized and professionally positive.
Give complimentary services and gifts
We all love to receive gifts no matter how little. Giving complimentary gifts could go hand in hand with personalization as you could give your guests gifts that are personal to them.
For instance, you could leave a bucket of wine as a gift in the room of a couple celebrating an anniversary/honeymoon or a simple handwritten note with each guest’s name on it. Snack baskets, toys or books are good affordable gift ideas for families with kids. A cool trend is also offering services like in-room yoga, cooking lessons and similar services that would truly give your guests an experience that they won't soon forget.