Guest experience is the cumulative impact of all interactions and experiences between your property and a guest, at every touchpoint across the whole guest journey.
NB: This is an article from Staah
This includes your presence (or lack of) on distribution channels, your website through to your front desk, interactions with housekeeping, your amenities and even communications after a guest checks outs. Guest experience is not a single point of contact. It encompasses the entire customer journey, multiple processes, policies and people.
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Online reviews and guest experience
Good guest experience is the most important benchmark for business success. Online reviews are one way to measure this success.
Negative or positive, online reviews are an insight into your guests’ needs, wants and expectations. Where you excel. Where you fail. Using these reviews, along with other data points and market insights, should inform how you evolve your guest experience.
What you learn from each type of review?
Negative reviews
If reviews are negative, it’s obviously an area that needs addressing. You should analyse any negative reviews thoroughly, taking into account the guest’s profile, other reviews and anything else you know about them. Once you’ve analysed and established it as an area that needs improvement operationally, make a roadmap to implement the change. Or, you may feel your marketing messaging may need to be revised to align guest expectations to their real experience.
Also, remember that not all negative online reviews need to be translated into action for you. Always investigate before you make a change arising from a review. Also look at negative feedback as an aggregate, rather than in isolation. A minor hiccup due to human error that translates into a negative review is acceptable. Too many of these hiccups require change.
Whatever the next steps from your negative reviews, always ensure you communicate with the guest who left it. Keep them in the loop – from acknowledging the review, and letting them know you are investigating to the action you are taking, make your guests part of the journey.
