How to Personalize Guest Experience in Your Hotel?

We would look at the tips to add personalization to your guest’s experience:   

1. Leverage guest data to  

Guest data is a boon for hotels. It helps hotels to personalize guest journeys and predict future trends and demand, and patterns.  

Let’s learn how guest data can help personalize guest experience:   

Build guest profiles  

Hotels use guest data stored in PMS or CRM systems to build guest profiles. These profiles have information such as contact details, stay history, special days, preferences, and inter, and interests. This information helps a hotel offer customized experiences to their guests with celebratory lunches or dinners, complimentary amenities or services, etc.  

The guest in turn feels remembered, and special and keeps coming back to you again and again, enjoying the attention and acknowledging your efforts.  

Curate packages and add-ons  

When a hotel analyses the stored guest data, it identifies the services and amenities that the guest tends to enjoy. Accordingly, the former can create packages, marketing campaigns, and add-ons for the guest to indulge in. This would improve guest experience.  

These packages and ancillary services add value to a guest’s stay and enhance their satisfaction. Guest segmentation derived from guest data would allow the hotels to offer what a guest like and appreciates.  

The hotel PMS should be able to provide flexible rate and package management tools that would further allow hotels to set up discounts and package add-ons. These offers would be then sold online, and access would be limited to targeted groups.  

2. Communication pre, during and post-stay  

Communication is indeed the key. Especially when you are running a hotel business, continuous communication is a sign of a healthy guest-hotel relationship. And staying in touch with the guest, pre-, during, and post-stay, at all these touchpoints is essential for a hotel to attract and retain guests by addressing the pain points at the right time.  

Communication could be maintained through different channels as per preference such as email, WhatsApp, AI chatbots, or text messages. This data is derived through the stored guest data.  

A hotel should communicate with the guest pre-arrival with confirmation emails/messages, travel and tour advisories, places to explore, etc. The hotel could also ask for the purpose of travel and make arrangements accordingly for the guest.  

Similarly, during the stay communication is important. This helps a hotel to serve the guests well and look after their requirements or any hiccups while they are at the property, in a timely manner. This type of interaction is required to ensure guest stay at the property is pleasant and hassle-free.  

Lastly, communication post-stay ensures that a hotel maintains and nurtures the connection built when the guest was at the property. Moreover, post-stay communication includes feedback, surveys, and asking for reviews that help a hotel work on its shortcomings and improve guest experience.  

Furthermore, communicating personalized marketing campaigns, offers and deals allows a hotel to lure guests and serve them again. This could be done through email marketing or WhatsApp marketing.  

3. Use technology to streamline processes

Streamlining operations, and other hotel tasks, using hotel automation solutions, saves up time for staff to make human connections with the guests. This leaves a long-lasting hospitality impact on the minds of guests and initiates the course for repeat business.  

Additionally, guests are able to skip long front desk queues after long hours of tiring travel through contactless check-in solutions such as BOTSHOT’s eFront Desk. Additionally, they can order meals or inquire about them as well as book services right from the comforts of their rooms with chatbot technology such as Freddie.   

Technology can benefit hoteliers as well. It facilitates data centralization with solutions like eFront Desk, better feedback collection, and management through automation solutions such as Heda, among other things. This brings sophistication to hotel operations to a great extent.  

4. Warmly greet and leave handwritten notes   

Personalize guest experience from the very moment a guest keeps his/her first steps into the property. Warmly greet the guest taking their names respectfully. This makes them feel that they are more than just business to you.  

Furthermore, leave handwritten notes whenever possible. For example, welcome a guest into his/her room with a sweet, and warm welcome handwritten message. These notes can be further personalized with some historic guest data.  

These are small gestures with huge psychological impacts.  

5. Offer local guidance to the guest  

With a new generation of travelers inclined towards exploring the less explored or venturing into the unknown, hotels can offer insider tips or local guidance that the internet fails to provide. In fact, research suggests that 70% of travelers would like hotels to offer more advice about unique things to do during their stay.  

Offering guests personal recommendations about the local culture, food, and attractions, allows staff to connect with the guests on deeper levels. This helps a hotel to earn loyal guests and keep the revenue going strong over the years.  

Conclusion

Hotel guest experience personalization is crucial in the hospitality industry, where services are meant to cater to the guest’s needs and offer satisfaction to the tee.  

In the case of leisure travelers, services are supposed to offer comfort and increase serotonin and dopamine levels in a human being. Personalization ensures both parameters are achieved.  

Additionally, for work travelers, personalization allows hotels to offer curated packages and subscription models that are cost-effective and relevant, serving their purpose.  

Personalization in the hospitality industry thus improves guest experience like no other strategy and brings in a lot of business and revenue.  

Thus, we advise all our hotelier friends to invest time, money, and effort into personalizing guest experiences to achieve growth and earn wealth and goodwill.