When it comes to a night stay at a hotel, a bed, TV, coffee and WiFi spring to mind. But expectations for the hotel experience have come a long way since meeting these basic room amenities.
This is where unique hotel service ideas come in. From soundproof rooms for peaceful sleep to in-room games arcades for entertainment. Creating unique and memorable hotel experiences will not only attract new customers but make your hotel stand out to unique crowds.
Unique hotel experiences are a new form of marketing. They generate buzz and create viral content that turns heads and piques interest.
Sensory marketing is a way of branding that is more direct and personal than ever before. It is a way for brands to tap into the five senses, create an emotional connection with their audience, and deliver their message in an immersive environment.
Sensory marketing incorporates various techniques including sight, touch, taste, smell and sound or music to engage customers on a deeper level.
Customer satisfaction can increase by up to 55% by introducing sent marketing!
The scent is one of the most powerful influences on our experiences, but one so often overlooked.
Many successful Real Estate Agents who take their roles seriously will bake cookies right before a house viewing. The powerful smell of home baked goods will evoke nostalgia and enable viewers to feel right at home in an instant.
The use of scent can be used to create an emotional response in a consumer. It evokes nostalgia, makes memories more powerful and generates an emotional connection.
Creating a scent can be difficult and expensive, but there are plenty of ways for marketers to get creative. One way is by making essential oils and infusing them into candles. The other option is to try out diffusers where the scent will be dispersed through the air instead of burnt on a candle.
Scent marketing can be a powerful tool in the hospitality industry, with most people able to recall their emotional and physical response to a particular smell. Hoteliers should choose smells wisely. Scents like lavender and vanilla are calming while peppermint or apple pie can make people hungry.
Think carefully about what smells should be dispersed and where.
Hotels creating room experiences around invoking specific smells can attract customers looking for an immersive experience.
Visual marketing is a new trend in hospitality that has been steadily rising in recent years. Hotel marketers should take advantage of this opportunity and make their campaigns more memorable and effective.
Visual marketing is a marketing strategy that uses images and videos to persuade or inform consumers. In hotels, visual marketing can draw in the guests, provide insights into what the hotel has to offer and make it easier for guests to book.
The use of visuals in hotels has been on the rise with social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook providing a platform for hotels to share their content with their followers. When these followers see images of hotels, they are more likely to want to visit them than if they just saw some words on a page about what the hotel advertised.
With visual marketing, you can create a more memorable and effective hotel experience. Some hotels achieve this with luxurious designs in their rooms. Some incorporate different visual mediums such as waterfalls or indoor vertical gardens. (This is with live plants covering walls).
Hotels can use visual marketing in various ways such as:
Sound design is a form of art that can be integrated into the hotel experience. One way that sound design can be used in hotels is through the use of a soundscape.
A soundscape is a record, in time, of what one hears as one walks through a particular environment. It consists of all the sounds that exist naturally: human voices, car horns, birds singing and so on. These sounds are recorded over a period of time and then played back in sequence so that it appears to be happening all at once.
The soundscape of a hotel should be carefully designed to make the guests feel welcomed. It should also be designed to change as they move through different parts of the hotel, linking them to their experiences in different rooms.
Soundscapes are intended to have an emotional effect on listeners by evoking memories or associations with the past and future. This is done by using foregrounds to create specific moods or atmospheres for different areas of the hotel: reception area, living room, bedroom.
How to incorporate soundscape throughout the hotel experience:
The background noise can be used for many things - to create a soothing environment or something more stimulating, depending on what is needed. It can also be used for storytelling and creating moods.
Hotels and resorts are often great places to enjoy a variety of leisure and entertainment options. From dining to the spa, to live music and more- they all offer a touch experience.
Touch experiences are important for hotels because it’s what sets them apart from other hotel chains in their respective markets. They can be the feature that gets people to remember your hotel or resort over your competitors.
The key is using touch experiences that have meaning. Touch experiences that are new, different, or unusual can be memorable for guests.
One of the simplest ways to improve the touch experience is to design the room with materials and designs that are pleasing to feel. Remember that stroke the furry wall scene in Get Him To The Greek? Think of what designs you can incorporate into your hotel room to give a unique feel.
Touch can also include in-room spa services or immersive in-room video games such as VR.
A hotel company's customers have a higher chance of returning if they provide them with an enjoyable stay. One way to provide this experience is to design a strategy for customer happiness with touch technology.
With the influx of technology in the hospitality industry, many hotels are beginning to use touch screens for ordering food and drinks, controlling room temperature, and booking tours.
Touch experiences are interactive digital installations that give customers an opportunity to utilize the technology at hotels. These touch experiences are becoming more and more common in hotels. Touch experiences also allow customers to be in direct control of their own experiences from the comfort of their rooms.
As the world becomes more and more digitalized, we are finding that people want to experience things in person. One way that hotels have been trying to do this is by giving customers a taste experience.
Taste experiences are an excellent way to turn a hotel stay into an experience to remember.
Hotels are finding success with creating experiences around food and drink, from cooking classes to themed dining experiences. It’s important for hotels to provide immersive experiences where the guest can disconnect from technology while still feeling connected to the outside world.
Something simple, such as coffee tasting experiences are gaining in popularity throughout the hospitality industry. It offers guests a premium experience where they can taste coffee varieties from around the world, without the premium price tag attached like wine tasting.
The options for taste experiences are boundless and always remain popular with hotel guests.
Hoteliers, thinking of unique service ideas needn’t be difficult. Start with the senses and how you can create memorable experiences around these first.
To find out more improving hotel marketing strategy with hotel experiences, read our post on What is the experience economy?
