Over the last few years, hotel guest expectations have seen a significant change, causing hotels to try to find new solutions that will help them meet those expectations and provide a positive guest experience. Being able to provide a positive experience is of the utmost importance, as just one bad experience can turn away 25% of guests for good.

Many hospitality businesses have started relying on new technologies to improve the guest experience. Technologies like self service take a customer-centric approach and help businesses to connect with their customers more easily.

What is guest experience?

Similar to customer experience, the guest experience is basically the sum of every interaction a guest has with the hotel, whether it is before, during, or after their stay. The experience includes processes such as finding a hotel online, booking the hotel, confirming the reservation, staying at the hotel, and any follow-up communication after the guest’s stay.

Having a positive or negative guest experience can influence any future decisions about returning to your hotel for another stay. In this way, it is imperative for hospitality businesses to consider the guest experience and take measures to constantly improve the experience.

 

Contributing factors of guest experience

In order to improve your guest experience, you must first know some factors that contribute to the overall experience. Incorporating these factors into every aspect of your business, including some of the processes mentioned previously, will significantly improve your guest experience.

• Personalization – Recently, there has been more and more emphasis on personalizing the guest experience. This is due to the fact that each guest is unique and has their own individual preferences, and they want that to be acknowledged. The more personalized an experience is, the more memorable it will be, and the more likely it is for your first-time guest to become a repeat guest.
• Responsive service and communication – Before, during, and after their stay, guests expect hotel staff to be available to answer any questions, resolve any issues, or provide requested amenities. Staff should also prove to be knowledgeable about hotel operations and the local area, in order to provide a more valuable experience to guests.
• Streamlined processes – Guests are able to get the service or retrieve the information they need quickly and efficiently. Rather than long, complicated processes to fulfill a simple request or necessary task, guests should be able to do so in a simple and effective manner, otherwise there could be cause for frustration.

Use self service to improve your guest experience

One of the most effective ways to improve your guest experience is by implementing a self service solution at your business. Self service is capable of assisting you with personalizing individual experiences, communicating with guests, and streamlining processes, with little effort on your part.

Self service assists with personalization by creating customer profiles based on each guest’s preferences, desires, and frustrations, then storing it in a customer database. By going through the database, you can retrieve information about what each guest wants and when, or make suggestions based on their past stays.

Your responsiveness will also be improved with the addition of self service, as it stores each guest’s contact information with their customer profiles in your database. You can easily respond to individual inquiries or send out automated emails to communicate with guests when they perform a specific action related to your business.

Streamline various hotel processes with self service, which automates simple, administrative tasks like checking guests in and out. Guests are able to complete processes quickly and efficiently on their own time, with or without assistance from your staff.

Self service is capable of performing multiple roles and filling in the gaps in your business. But its main purpose is customer-focused, in that it is designed to help your business improve its guest experience.

 

Start seeing the results 

When you take the time and put in the effort to improve your guest experience, you’ll start seeing a higher level of satisfaction in more of your guests. Satisfaction and a positive, memorable experience increases the chances of your guests coming back to stay at your hotel again, raising your customer retention rate. Higher retention also correlates to higher customer acquisition, as your repeat guests refer your hotel to others through online reviews or word-of-mouth.

With more new guests and a loyal base of repeat guests, you will have more revenue opportunities, helping to propel you to success.

 

Key takeaways

Providing a positive guest experience is vitally important to the success of your business, as it plays a direct role in guest retention and acquisition rates. Improving your guest experience can be achieved by adding personalization, being responsive to all communication, and streamlining administrative processes. Implementing a self service solution will easily incorporate all three factors into every aspect of your business, and give guests a reason to keep coming back.