It is not only a hotel chain’s location, decor, magnificence, food, and other amenities that make it a popular brand. It is all about their ability to offer “personalized guest service, ” differentiating major hotel chains from others while enhancing their brand value. But how do they ensure offering personalized services? The answer to this is – they know what their guests want. Now, pay attention to this highly critical piece of statistics – over 50% of guests across the globe would greatly appreciate it if hotels offered them personalized services based on their purchase history. This means understanding guests’ preferences and providing them with what they want is vital to gaining their loyalty. We realize that this whole exercise of keeping an eye on guests’ likes and dislikes can be relatively more manageable if you run a standalone property. But what if you take care of a hotel chain? How would you ensure that you know all your existing guests who have stayed across your properties? This is where a smart, enterprise-grade, cloud-based multi-property solution with a centralized guest history module can help you.
This blog will look at the many benefits of centralized guest history for hotel chains and groups.
What is centralized guest history?
Simply speaking, this game is all about guest history stored in and accessed from a centralized location of a hotel property management system (Hotel PMS). This is one of the essential modules/features of a Hotel PMS that helps hotel chains see their past guests’ preferences in terms of room, food, beverage, and many other parameters to anticipate and customize their services based on a guests’ purchase history.
How does it work?
Mr. Jones had stayed at your Property A in 2021. He opted for a sea-facing suite and continental breakfast. Plus, he was pretty particular about his newspaper and single-malt whisky. He always insisted on paying via credit cards. Now, if you have a smart, cloud-based multi-property solution that comes with a guest history module, all this data gets captured and stored.
Suppose in 2022, he decides to stay at your Property B. The moment he either calls up that particular property or your group’s central reservation office to book a room, the agent/front desk staff handling his queries will get to see all his past preferences by just entering his name, or email id, or phone number. Now, don’t you think that armed with all these insights about his likes and dislikes, you will be able to offer personalized services to him? Just imagine, you get his dinner to his room at 7:30 pm, the exact time he had ordered his dinner during his last 3-night stay at your other property. Or imagine his pleasure when you get him his favorite drink even before he asks for it. Most importantly, you can leverage this module to offer group-wide consistent services to your guests, elevating your brand image and retaining their loyalty.
Without this centralized guest history feature, you will not have the luxury and opportunity to understand your guests’ requirements the way you should. In this scenario, it would be challenging to know if the guest is a returning guest, when and at which property he stayed in, and what he ordered. Even if your Property A can capture all the guest details, all these remain at the property level. Staff at your other properties can’t access the same data. When there is no centralized access and information sharing of such valuable insights, you can’t do the right thing at the right time.
Business benefits
Ensuring guest satisfaction is indispensable to retaining your existing guests while attracting new ones. Here are a few benefits that you will undoubtedly witness when you do it right.
- Get repeat customers: If they are happy with your services and get value from what they spend at your property, they will definitely come back to you. It is always good to have returning guests as it lowers your new guest acquisition cost. Moreover, such guests tend to spend more.
- Increase brand image: You know, when guests rate you at 8 or 9 out of 10, they are more likely to spread the good word about your brand. They do so by writing positive reviews on booking sites and social media platforms. And they even recommend your brand to their friends and family.
- Boost your revenues: Since you get to attract more guests with your top-notch services, you will be comfortably positioned to increase your room sales and occupancy, leading to more room revenue. More than this, you can even upsell and cross-sell non-room items to earn more.
The biggest hotel chains have cracked this code of serving guests and winning over their loyalty with the right technology – a cloud-based multi-property management system with centralized guest history. What are your options?
