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In this blog post, we’ll dive into the guidelines for providing great experiences for guests in hotels.
The hospitality industry has a central focus on providing amazing experiences.
You need to ensure that your hotel or service is catered around providing a great experience for several reasons.
For a great hotel experience, guests must have positive experiences. With positive experiences comes customer satisfaction and delight. For hotels providing themselves with their services, making guests happy must be high on their priorities list.
When people have positive experiences, they will want to repeat those memories. By focusing on positive experiences hotel guests will more than likely return in the future and even recommend their experience to others.
Repeated customer loyalty has many benefits.
Customer loyalty is a key driver of success in the hospitality industry. By investing in improved experiences, repeat customers pay off in terms of increased profits and long-term growth.
The better the experiences for hotel guests the better the reviews and brand reputation. When a hotel has a high reputation, its bookings and occupancy rates increase. Over time this creates
more demand for the hotel. As a result, pushes the hotel experience further up the market into a more luxury price bracket as people are willing to pay more for the experience.
With a better superior experience, a hotel is more attractive to guests. This gives a hotel a distinct competitive advantage in the market.
When all the above points are reached hotel revenue will naturally increase as a result. Often people are willing to pay more for a more satisfying hotel stay.
The traditional role of hotels was to provide shelter, refreshments, and food to travellers on a trip away from home.
However, over time, the traditional purpose of hotels has morphed into so much more.
Unless travellers are focusing on keeping costs as small as possible, the role of the hotel has needed to provide much more basic functions than a bed and food.
Furnishings, amenities, services, and luxury facilities are becoming more and more of a basic requirement for hotel guests.
People are not only looking for a play to stay away from home, but guests are searching for a luxurious treat. - Better than what a typical person would experience at home.
In customer surveys, one of the most consistent and important demands is the desire for improved customer experience.
Boasting about experiences is a common feature on social media this has created a lot of FOMO (The fear of missing out). It’s common for people to share their experiences, including their stays at hotels, on social media.
For many people, seeing the experiences of others through friends, family and influencers creates a desire for themselves to want to have those same experiences.
Social media platforms have made it easy for people to share photos and reviews of their travels with their friends, family, and followers.
This can be a powerful tool for hotels, as positive reviews and attractive photos can attract more business to the hotel, but be aware the opposite is also true!
The competitive nature social media brings among people posting about their experiences increases expectations for a better and better experience. Hotels are expected to up their customer service game to compete not just with their competition but to please the rising standards and expectations of consumers.
Online reviews are a double-edged sword! Hotels with a great customer experience reap all the benefits of referrals when their customers write positive reviews. This kind of feedback puts pressure on other hotels in the market to gain a competitive advantage to compete.
Along with great reviews, there’s the threat of negative feedback. Hotel guests will openly share if they have bad experiences that aren’t up to expectations. Negatively affecting hotels' reputation.
More and more people are putting travel up high on their desires list. But since the pandemic, we have seen a change in attitude to travelling.
Hotels are also facing increased competition from alternative accommodations, such as vacation rentals and home-sharing platforms, which have become more popular in recent years. As a result, hotels have had to work even harder to differentiate themselves and provide a unique and memorable experience for guests to stay competitive.
With the rise of data analytics and the increasing use of technology in the hospitality industry, hotels have been able to personalise the guest experience to a greater degree, which has contributed to the desire for a great hotel experience.
Knowing who your audience is and how to cater to them will be the lighthouse guiding your business decisions.
Research who your target guests are, and their likes and behaviours. This will help you cater your hotel experience to their needs and wants.
The physical amenities are an extremely important factor for hotels in ensuring a great experience for hotel guests.
These should include:
Plush carpets beneath your feet, thick and heavy curtains to block out the early sunrise, and fluffy but supportive pillows. The decor and comfort of your hotel rooms will go a long way to improving the comfort and feeling of luxury for your guests.
Cleanliness goes a very long way to making hotel guests feel comfortable and relaxed. If a hotel is dirty and not cleaned properly people will be left feeling very uncomfortable and extremely dissatisfied with the most basic of expectations. Strolling past overflowing bins, drinking from dirty glasses, or seeing dirt on the floor will not only prevent a hotel guest from ever coming back, but you can be sure they will leave an extremely negative review on their experience.
Bedrooms should be clean and comfortable, with fresh linens, comfortable beds, and sufficient lighting.
In addition to rooms the facilities of the rest of your hotel also make an incredible impact. Areas such as the health and leisure suites, spas and restaurants.
Even if guests are visiting just for the day, you should ensure cleanliness and comfort are high in your guest experience.
For example, swimming pools should be clean, have the facilities in working order and provide sufficient fresh towels and shower facilities.
Guests expect to have access to amenities such as a fitness centre, pool, or business centre, depending on their needs and preferences.
Free Wifi
In today's connected world, guests expect reliable WiFi throughout the hotel. This includes strong signal strength and fast speeds, as well as enough bandwidth to support multiple devices.
A reliable internet source is a very important necessity for hotel guests. Guests staying in their rooms will often rely on looking online for things to do in the local area, room entertainment and even contacting hotel services. (If suitable tools are available).
There’s nothing more frustrating than having a bad experience before you’ve even reached your destination.
For guests who are driving, having adequate parking at the hotel can be important. This includes both sufficient spaces and easy access to the hotel.
If you want to improve the guest experience, your first point of contact is important.
Make the booking process simple and smooth to avoid any hiccups or frustrations. There’s nothing worst than waiting on a phone line for 20 minutes to be passed around a diverted line system before you finally speak to a reservations agent.
An effective way to do this is to get an online booking system. But endure it's straightforward to use.
Include options for your guests to personalise their stay and include many different add-ons.
Include high-quality images and videos to help guest make their booking decisions.
With any customer service options, you should include a chatbot messenger. Chatbots can improve customer service by cutting down on operational costs by 30%. As well as freeing up call lines from your customer service teams.
Hotels that create clear and accurate information for guests, both before and during their stay, can help meet guest expectations. This is an important part of delivering a high customer experience. If a guest has different expectations from what they are met with (and feels disappointed) it will lead to negative reviews and overall, a poor customer experience instead of a positive one.
For example, if your hotel spa or restaurant gets booked up fast, informing your guests of this is a great way to manage expectations. Otherwise, you may get guests getting upset at the lack of availability when they arrive. Either send your guests a booking reminder before their stay, or for your reservations agents to inform them on the phone at the time of booking.
Get your hotel an app, so your customers can make easy reservations from the convenience of their phones. This can help curb frustrations and upset by making communication easier.
Hotels should aim to provide a variety of unique experiences.
In a crowded and competitive market, hotels that can offer something different or special may have an advantage over their competitors.
Some examples of unique experiences that hotels could offer include:
We have a great post on how to improve the guest experience for hotels here.
Exceptional customer service
Hotels should aim to train all their staff to the same level. At any point, a hotel guest could approach a front desk server or even a cleaner for information.
A truly exceptional hotel will understand this and ensure that all levels of staff who may come in contact with guests should aim to be as helpful and informative to the guest as possible.
Improving the booking process and communication with the guests is a great start. You can find more about improving communication for the guest experience here.
One of the best ways for a hotel to improve its customer experience is to get feedback from its customers.
A hotel manager may think a new spa experience may be incredible, but the guests experiencing it on the ground may have their own opinions and perceptions from experiencing it first-hand.
That’s why feedback on new services and hotel experiences is vital to understanding what it is they do very well, and what it must change.
A great way to entice guests to leave feedback is to put their contact details into a prize.
We’ve highlighted throughout this post, that hotels that focus on a great experience for their guests go far in their success.
A blueprint for great hotel experiences starts with:
By following these guidelines, hotels can provide a great experience for guests and improve their satisfaction and likelihood to return or recommend the hotel to others.
We hope you enjoyed this blog post on what are the guidelines in providing great experience for guests.
To add exciting experiences to your hotel experiences a great place to start is by offering gift vouchers. To learn more about experiences and gift vouchers read about them here:
