Hotel management tips for a perfect guest experience at hotel chains
In the hospitality industry, the guest experience is all about creating memories. Memories that your guests would love to cherish and share with their friends. And for this primary reason, exceeding guest expectations at every stage, right from booking to checkout, is non-negotiable. This will set you apart from your competition, your guests will come back to you, and most importantly, they will spread the good word about your property.
To offer an exceptional experience to your guests, you need to revisit or redefine how you have been serving and engaging them. In this piece, we have curated some tips to help you up your guest service game to stay relevant and attractive in today’s highly competitive hospitality business.
Know them
If you don’t know your guests’ preferences, how will you offer them personalized services? How will a repeat guest’s reaction be when you offer them blended whisky instead of the single malt whisky they had ordered during their last stays? Don’t you think that knowing your guests will take you extra miles when it comes to serving them efficiently? That’s why it is the most crucial first step toward delivering what they want from you.
But how will you keep track of your guests’ unique preferences when you manage a hotel chain? It could be a daunting task. The answer is – a cloud-based hotel property management system that has a robust centralized guest history functionality. This module records all your guest data captured across properties and ensures a constant flow of critical information related to your guests across all your properties. Now you can leverage the same data to know your guests better and improve their experience by offering them personalized services when they stay with one of your other properties. The irrefutable fact in this context is that – as a hotelier, you need to pay utmost attention to how you and hospitality technology can weave together to deliver top-notch hospitality to your guests at every stage of their journey with you.
Hear them
This is another pillar of guest service. You need to listen to them carefully to provide them with what they want. Assure them that their special requests have been registered and you are doing everything within your capability to solve them at the earliest. You need to understand one thing here – clear and coherent communication is the key. Train your staff to listen to your guests, their feedback, and their complaints. Help them (your team) to improve their interpersonal communication skills. Do everything possible to make your guests (mostly past guests) feel that you value what they say or ask for.
It would be beneficial if you adopted a Hotelogix PMS that comes integrated with an online reputation management solution in this context. This lets you automate the process of sending feedback forms to your guests after they checkout. This integration also ensures the automatic update of guest reviews on your hotel’s TripAdvisor page as well as on the PMS front desk. This is a great way to manage guest reviews, analyze and understand their sentiment. Ultimately, this works well for your hotel brand’s online ratings and reputation.
Empower them
It is all about empowering your guests to choose when and how they want them that could make them happy. And why not? Given a chance, everyone will love to have the flexibility to shape their own experiences. It starts right from the moment a guest lands on your hotel website. List out all the information about your room rates, packages, deals, last-minute discounts, cancellation/modification policy, and others that inspire them to make informed decisions.
Now here, too, you can leverage the power of a new-age cloud Hotel PMS like Hotelogix that can integrate with a web booking engine. You can display rates in multiple currencies and allow your guests to make payments with their choice of currency. Now isn’t it something that your guests would love to experience? Promote your hotel rooms, lobby areas, and other amenities with slideshows. You gain access to tons of valuable guest data for better and targeted marketing in the future.
Adopt guest experience enhancement apps/technologies
Call it a hotel guest app or guest self-service app; you must leverage one of those intelligent technology solutions to serve your guests efficiently.
Here are a few other examples –
- Guests like it the most when they can choose how they interact with you. For example, many of them would prefer to check-in using their smartphones instead of wasting time at your front desk.
- Allow your guests to chat with you during their stay to raise room service requests. For guests, this leads to personalized attention.
- BLet them raise checkout requests on their phones in advance. It would allow your front desk staff to be ready with final bills when guests reach the lobby. It saves their time while helping you expedite the process. Plus, allow your guests to raise airport drop requests through the same app.
- Be ready to accept mobile payment. This creates a seamless experience for your guests.
- Enable them to control in-room facilities like curtains and HVAC via their smartphones.
Roll out loyalty programs
There is no doubt that patrons of hotel chains have this tendency to lean towards the brand. You must make sure that your loyalty or reward program offers value to your guests. Examples of loyalty program rewards for hotels include discounted stays, free amenity services, complimentary breakfast, free/discounted room upgrades, early check-in, late checkout, etc.
Please keep in mind that guests would not like it if your loyalty program were complicated. Don’t use a one size fits all approach while curating your program. If possible, let your repeat guests choose their rewards. You can do this better with a Cloud Hotel PMS like Hotelogix that works with a loyalty management solution. It enables you to configure and introduce best-in-class loyalty programs to your guests to enhance their experience.
Delivering a top-notch guest experience is not an easy task. You would need a combination of soft skills and hospitality technology solutions to provide value to your guests. When you serve them better and exceed their expectations, they become your loyal and repeat customers. They spend more during their stays with you, and you get to generate additional revenue.
