Let me start this with a question.
When was the last time you thought about the quality of your hotel guest experience?
Must be ALMOST NEVER?
Even if you had, it must be 10-20% of the time! (Isn’t it?)
Nevertheless, the hospitality industry is primarily driven by the guest and their experience!
In other words, even if you don’t want to, you must shift your focus to providing a better guest experience sooner rather than later.
This fact, however, is ignored by many hotels. They focus exclusively on one thing. Bookings. (Agreed?)
So, here’s what I’ll address in this blog about the guest experience you impart at your property.
They would explore your website to learn more about your hotel. (Having said that it is crucial for you to have a hotel website. If you don’t have one, get it today!)
Provide an easy booking process
When they land on your website, their experience with your hotel begins immediately.
Keep your visitors engaged by displaying current deals and offers on your website.
Integrate an easy-to-use booking engine into your hotel website so that customers can easily book. In case they have any questions, make it clear to them what options they have to get in touch with you.
Well, how quickly you respond to their questions is also important. (Certainly, you CAN’T afford to miss or ignore any single query.)
Initiate communication before arrival
You should send a booking confirmation or hotel reservation voucher to your guests as soon as they book their stay.
Send your guests nicely designed booking confirmation emails to turn this formality procedure into an opportunity to interact with them. In this email or voucher, you can highlight your hotel’s amenities such as pick-up service, parking facility or so.
Other than that, send them personalized emails and messages, thanking them for choosing your hotel. You can also inform them about ongoing deals, promotions, packages, events, and concerts to be organized in your locality (If there are any).
Offer early check-ins
There are many instances where you would get requests for early check-in.
I would suggest you should never deny those requests. Because by just managing their early check-in you are doing a great favor to them. Naturally, they will appreciate this and will form a great impression of your hotel.
It is not my intention to make them wait in your hotel’s lobby or corridors by managing their early check-ins.
Depending on your hotel policy, you may be able to direct them to their rooms. You can also arrange for them to sit in a relaxation area or serve them tea/coffee from your restaurant if there are no vacant rooms available.
Conclusion
Hotel guest experience will directly impact your revenue and reputation, as I mentioned at the beginning of this blog post.
Furthermore, there is no one service that fits all. There will be a variety of different guests at your hotel – demanding, fussy, rude, calm, understanding, and the list continues.
In order to make your guests’ stay memorable, you need to deal with all these ethos calmly.
It is important to provide the best hotel customer service experience in order to generate revenue as well as to market the hotel.
