Running a business in the hospitality industry is hard. Guests want to feel welcomed, cherished, and nurtured while staying with you. Hotel guest engagement tactics can help you achieve this quickly.
However, hoteliers often start interacting with guests only after they’ve arrived for their stay. They fail to understand that the guest experience begins when they send you the first message. Other times, this experience starts as soon as they visit your website.
To enhance guest engagement, you must enhance this complete experience. So, let’s learn how to engage with your guests and enhance their experience.
What Is Hotel Guest Engagement?
Hotel guest engagement is all about building a strong connection with your guests. It’s about making them feel valued, understood, and cared for throughout their stay.
Hoteliers do this by meaningfully interacting with guests from booking until after checking out. The goal is to create a memorable experience that keeps guests returning and recommending your hotel to others.
However, this interaction isn’t only live. All marketing efforts you make, including emails, social media posts, texts, and room service, are part of this.
Is It Worthwhile to Enhance Hotel Guest Engagement?
Yes, it is worthwhile to enhance hotel guest engagement. As mentioned, a hospitality business relies on connections even more than other businesses. This connection won’t be possible without engaging with your guests.
Besides, a lack of interaction makes you look bad. It makes customers feel like you don’t care about their comfort or well-being while they stay at your hotel.
As a result, you might even lose customers and find it challenging to gain new ones. With that said, let’s discuss the benefits of enhanced guest engagement.
Firstly, engaging with guests from the very start makes them feel welcome. It gives them the perception that you’ll take good care of them once they arrive at your hotel. But what about the guests that are already there?
Interacting with guests during their stay enhances their experience. Regularly ask them if they need anything and help them in any way you can satisfy them. They become happy that they got their money’s worth.
Secondly, satisfied customers are the first ones to join your loyalty programs. These people will always turn to you whenever they need a room. That’s a tactic to increase revenue because 65% of a company’s revenue comes from loyal customers.
Apart from spending more, engaged customers share memorable experiences with their friends, family, and online platforms. By becoming brand ambassadors, they bring even more people to your hotel.
Moreover, engaged guests are more likely to provide feedback. This will help you identify loopholes and improve your services.
How To Engage With Hotel Guests: 4 Strategies That Build Loyalty
As mentioned, engaging with hotel guests involves building a solid connection throughout their stay. They should be able to find you if they need anything.
They must be comfortable interacting with you, which means you have to put up a friendly face. Apart from that, here are four strategies on how to engage with hotel guests.
- Use multiple communication channels: With the popularity of social media channels, it’s easy to think everyone is comfortable with it. However, not everyone has social media accounts. Even if they do, some people don’t get a personal feeling from it. Therefore, you must open multiple communication channels so people can reach you through the medium they like.
- Respond within minutes: Deciding on a hotel isn’t an easy task. You’ll find people asking hundreds of questions before making the final decision. Instead of getting annoyed, you must stay vigilant throughout this process. Respond to their queries promptly and in a friendly manner. Never make them feel like a burden. Doing so will make them comfortable while engaging with you.
- Listen with care and intent: Ross Perot says, “Spend a lot of time talking to customers face-to-face. It’s amazing how many companies don’t listen to their customers.” This is especially important for hotel businesses. Listen to your guests to solve their problems. This will make them feel cared for.
- Personalize your interactions: Whether it’s an advertisement or in-hotel experience for guests, personalization never loses its charm. When you use customer data while engaging with them, they feel you know them.
3 Creative Customer Engagement Ideas for Hoteliers
Hotel guest engagement isn’t just about live conversations. While they’re a part of it, you need creative ideas to make customers feel cared for. Your guests want you to come up with unique ways to serve them.
Doing what everyone else is doing makes customers think you’re not making an effort, no matter how good it is. However, it isn’t easy to develop such ideas because overdoing it might have the opposite effect. So, here are three balanced yet creative customer engagement ideas for you to follow.
1. Collecting Feedback
It’s a common misconception that customers become frustrated when businesses ask them for feedback. However, this is only true when you bombard them with feedback requests or force them to say good things.
On the other hand, asking for feedback can be an impressive engagement tactic if you do it right. You could leave short notes asking them to leave their thoughts. You could also start a social media poll or survey to get feedback. This will make them feel like you care about their experience.
2. Providing a Warm Welcome
Once guests enter your venue for their stay, you have multiple opportunities to engage with them. Start by welcoming them with kind words and appointing a staff member to show them around. They could ask the guests what they would like to see before starting a tour.
Moreover, you can offer them complimentary drinks and snacks to make a good first impression. Train your staff to take guests to their rooms. However, it shouldn’t feel like you’re interfering too much.
Hotel technology is your best friend when you’re running a hotel business. Instead of doing everything yourself, you can automate multiple tasks and take the burden off your shoulders. In this context, you need a hotel guest engagement platform to help you enhance the guest experience.
The software system provides tools and features to interact with guests, gather feedback, and provide personalized experiences. However, you’ll have to choose an option that fits your needs. To start researching, try Revinate, Canary Technologies, and HotelFriend.
3 of the Best Ideas to Enhance Hotel Guest Experience
Earlier, we explored ideas for engaging with hotel guests. Since engagement and experience go hand in hand, it’s also important to learn how to enhance customer experience. The above strategies can achieve the same goal.
However, here are some unique ideas to enhance the hotel guest experience and leave customers in awe.
- Provide free WiFi: Every local business, whether a hotel or restaurant, should have fast and free WiFi at its venue. In fact, many guests make a booking decision based on whether the hotel has WiFi.
- Partner with local businesses: People who set out on vacations often need inspiration for daily activities. This is your chance to partner with local businesses and provide fun activities for your guests. Increased engagement, brand awareness, and customer satisfaction are the result.
- Handle complaints like a pro: Complaints are a part of every business. You can’t keep every customer happy. However, you can promptly solve their problems to ensure they don’t leave.
Frequently Asked Questions About Guest Engagement in Hotels
By now, you must have a good idea about how to enhance guest engagement in hotels. Let’s take this knowledge further by answering frequently asked questions.
What is guest engagement in hotels?
Guest engagement in a hotel is the interaction and connection a hotel builds with its guests. This process starts the moment they book a room and continues after they leave.
The main goal of guest engagement is to make people want to come back. If they like their stay, they’ll hopefully also bring back more people through positive reviews online.
Do hotels do anything for engagement?
Yes, hotels do a lot for engagement. One of the most effective guest engagement strategies is personalization. They tailor everything from their ads to room service according to the guests’ needs.
This makes them feel welcomed and encourages them to become loyal to the hotel. Moreover, many hoteliers go out of their way to ensure guests feel comfortable and well looked after.
How can I make my hotel guests happy?
You can make your hotel guests happy by providing an exceptional experience. For example, be proactive in anticipating their needs and solve their problems quickly.
Moreover, check in with them regularly to see if they need anything. You can even offer them customizations and extras to make a good impression and increase sales.
Engage With Your Guests To Bring in More Revenue
Every business wants to increase revenue and uses various tactics for revenue management. However, hotel businesses have a fantastic way to bring in more revenue — increasing hotel guest engagement.
By making the guests feel welcomed and cared for, hoteliers can attract more customers and keep existing ones loyal.
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