JOURNEY TO LOYALTY:PERSONALIZING THE GUEST EXPERIENCE

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Hotels and their amenities are designed to provide guests with a truly unique experience, and your hospitality marketing should do the same. With the advancement of Hotel CRM and digital technology, it is now possible to create meaningful interactions throughout the entire guest journey, starting at pre-arrival and continuing post-stay through the loyalty loop. The key to success is simple: know your guest so you can anticipate their preferences and desires. Hotels who personalize their communications to plan, guide and nurture their guests’ experiences are able to turn those guests into loyal brand supporters and advocates. With value and experience at the center of their campaigns, these hotels are able to break away from discount-driven marketing.

That said, when it comes to personalizing their communications and implementing one-to-one marketing, many hoteliers are not sure where to start. At first glance the process can seem intimidating, but with the right guidance and tools, you can implement one-to-one marketing with confidence and ease.

Plan, Guide and Nurture the Guest Experience

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Personalize the Confirmation Email

Personalizing the confirmation email is a near effortless gesture that can go a long way toward making your guests feel valued before ever stepping foot on property. Sending a concise email including the guest name, stay dates and a few short lines about looking forward to their arrival lays the groundwork for personalized experiences that you will carry through every stage of the guest journey.

Send an Experience Planning Email

About three weeks prior to arrival, send your guests an experience planning email with the opportunity to pre-plan and book activities and amenities. This early exposure to your hotel’s offerings can

Pre-Arrival: Plan the Experience

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significantly increase revenue. Plus, our data show that guests who pre-book activities are less likely to cancel their reservations.

A well-crafted experience planning email lets your guests know you are committed to creating curated and personalized guest experiences. Items to include:

• A pre-arrival survey about the guest’s interests and reasons for the visit.

• Links to information about on-site activities and dining outlets with access to a straightforward and intuitive interface where guests can request reservations.

• An opportunity for guests to upgrade their room and/or submit special requests for their stay, such as rollaway beds, welcome amenities, allergy considerations and so on.

Send a Follow Up Experience Planning Email

One week before your guest arrives, send a second friendly courtesy email detailing the guest’s travel information, a preview of on-property happenings and local weather reports for their stay dates. If they have taken advantage of pre-booking services or amenities, be sure to include those details as well.

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Personalize Guest Arrivals

The best way to provide a valuable guest check-in experience is to create a personalized interaction utilizing CRM data, and ensuring that the tone and expectations you have created in your marketing communications align with the tone of your on-property operations. Brand experts agree that today’s guest, as well as their expectations, has changed. With the advance of our on-demand economy and universal expectations of individualized attention at every encounter, hoteliers must take advantage of technology that provides easy personalization and ensures on-property personnel are fully aware of the hotel-to-guest communications that have taken place before guests arrive at the reception desk.

On-Property: Guide the Experience

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Use Data to Personalize Check-In Interaction

Guest arrival is a crucial moment in the guest journey – it sets the tone for the entire hotel stay. By the time guests reach the reception desk to check in, they have likely undergone a long, tiresome and sometimes irritating travel experience. At this point, all they want to do is get to their room, freshen up, and start unwinding. So it is no surprise that check-in is when a lot of things can go wrong. The operational challenge is not how fast you can check the guest in, but how fast you can get the guest into their room without a breakdown in communication or guest experience.

The first step in creating a personalized check-in experience happens well before your guests approach the reception desk. Each morning your reception desk associates should review the day’s arrival reports, which should include notes about each reservation along with the recency, frequency, and monetary value of each guest based on previous stay data. Reviewing this information will alert your personnel of any actions they need to take at check-in, such as acquiring a first-time guest’s email address (if they booked through an OTA, per se), or upselling the guest on activities based on previous stay behavior.

Know When to “Welcome” and When to “Welcome Back”

Keeping the interaction focused so the exchange is short and sweet is critical for a successful guest arrival. The focus will depend on where the guest is on their loyalty journey with your brand. The more loyal the guest is (repeat guests, VIPs), the more important it becomes to properly acknowledge that relationship. Instruct your associates to avoid making the common mistake of welcoming a VIP with the seemingly innocent question, “Have you stayed with us before?” The impersonal nature of this well-intended question might make your guest feel like a stranger, rather than a valued repeat customer.

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Aim for Short and Focused Interactions

Your personnel should also use this first interaction to engage the guest on a personal level with other information surmised from the arrival report. For example, leverage your data to upsell at check-in. If the guest is a frequent spa visitor but has yet to make a spa appointment, offer to make a spa reservation on their behalf. Target guests who opened or clicked through a recent email offering an upgrade but didn’t convert, and let them know that the upgrade is still available. Use the data from a recent pre-arrival survey to infer your guest’s interest in specific hotel activities, such as sharing the details of an upcoming exclusive dining event or wine tasting with a self-described “foodie.”

Send Welcome Email Upon Check-in

Just as with your personalized confirmation email, the welcome email is a small gesture that makes a large impact. Triggered upon check-in, this communication should include a simple message welcoming the guest to the hotel and ensuring that anything they need is just a phone call away.

Trigger F & B Offers

Sending food and beverage offers in a separate, triggered email is another uncomplicated way to provide value to your guests while opening the door to further guest expenditure. Whether it’s a complimentary drink at your lounge or a discount for your restaurant, promotions of all sorts often result in additional guest spending. Perhaps a guest will order an appetizer with a free drink, or order a second drink at full price when ordinarily they would not have visited the lounge at all.

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Send Activity & Event Reminders

If guests have taken advantage of your pre-arrival emails or independently arranged spa services, tee times, dining reservations and other hotel activities and services, send them quick reminders. It is a friendly and helpful way to help your guests stay organized while demonstrating your commitment to personalized service.

Invite Guests to Share on Social Media

Social media has become an integral component of the guest experience, as most guests are active on at least one or more social media platforms. And when better to post than when away from home? Encourage your guests to share their hotel experiences on social media. You will increase your web presence, especially when guests share their satisfaction with the warm, hospitable and personalized experiences you have provided.

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Send a Thank You Email Upon Check-out

Even when guests are headed home from your hotel, their personal experience continues, as does their place in the loyalty loop. Nurture guests for repeat visits and conclude stays on a positive note with a ‘Thank You for Staying with Us’ email triggered upon check-out.

Follow Up with a Satisfaction Survey

In the week or so following their stay, send your guests a short satisfaction survey. Treat guest-provided information and feedback like gold. Add it to your guest profiles and mine it to craft upsell opportunities and promotions around guest preferences down the road. And, of course, pay due attention to hotel services or areas that may need improvement.

Post-Stay: Nurture the Experience

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Invite Guests to Join Your Loyalty Program

Continue nurturing long-term relationships with your guests by inviting them to join your loyalty program. Don’t delay since opt-in rates improve when guests’ positive experiences are still fresh. Making the sign-up process as simple and seamless as possible also improves participation.

Send a 90-day Re-Engagement Email

Re-engagement emails are an easy and worthwhile way to cultivate loyalty. Around 90 days after your guests’ stay, send personalized re-engagement emails that reminds them of the fabulous experience they had at your hotel. Rather than including special offers in this email, which can be saved for other marketing campaigns, provide charming and informative content. Whether it’s a spotlight about DIY facial masks from the spa or a popular recipe from your Executive Chef, providing value without a sales pitch in tow shows you are more interested in establishing long-term relationships than just trying to fill rooms.

Send Birthday & Anniversary Emails

With the advent of social media, it seems that the acknowledgement of birthdays and anniversaries have become nearly global events with best wishes coming from every corner of the world. Don’t be left out. Show that you, too, are paying attention to these special occasions by sending triggered emails for birthdays and anniversaries. Even if the hotel stay was six months prior, a simple Happy Birthday or Happy Anniversary message demonstrates that you value your relationship. Perhaps the next time a birthday or anniversary rolls around, they’ll be inclined to plan the celebration at your hotel.

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Share Insider Info & Events

To further cultivate guest loyalty, make your guests feel like insiders. Include specialized emails within your email marketing strategy that contain “first look” access to upcoming exclusive sales, special events, and other unique offerings taking place at your hotel. Send these emails to prior guests before publicizing them or sharing with the press and social media outlets.

Send Relevant Need Period Campaigns

Once you have created guest profiles in your CRM, break down your guests into target audiences for specific need period campaigns. Sending a variety of value-driven communications without sales components pays off here: You have successfully primed your guests to now seriously consider the special deals you send in need period campaigns for their upcoming travel.

Design F & B Specials for Locals & Drive-In Markets

Don’t overlook locals and guests within your drive-in market. Engage these guests by creating targeted email campaigns around your food and beverage outlets. From exclusive chef’s dinners to Mother’s Day brunch, reaching out to local guests can bolster both room and ancillary revenue while nurturing loyalty and keeping your property top of mind locally.

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Delivering personalized guest communications improves guest engagement and satisfaction, resulting in profitable revenue growth. Planning, guiding and nurturing the experience creates an emotional connection between the guest and your brand based on value, rather than price. It also advances guests along their “Guest Journey,” which can be summed up as:

1. Guests build expectations pre-stay.

2. Guests compare those expectations against the experience delivered.

3. Guests make the next customer journey decision based on whether or not their expectations were met or exceeded in the recent past.

The Journey Continues on the Loyalty Loop

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When done right, planning, guiding and nurturing the guest experience influences that crucial next customer journey decision, leading to more repeat business as well as more direct bookings. In light of a Compete study which found that travelers visited an average of 38 travel sites before making a purchase, fostering a positive and lasting relationship with your guests continues to be the key to success. Loyal guests bypass the consideration and awareness phase of the purchase funnel and become return guests. In our experience, clients who use our Integrated Hotel CRM + Digital Marketing Platform to personalize guest communications enjoy a 32X ROI on their campaigns.

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