So, you’ve won the booking. What’s next? Travelers are filled with anticipation and excitement for their upcoming trip, and now your hotel brand must deliver the best experience possible. While winning the booking may seem like the end of the customer journey, guiding the guest experience through meaningful digital touchpoints, and ultimately building a meaningful relationship to retain and increase the lifetime value of guests is the ultimate goal.
Below we explore the experiencing phase of our five-part series, to understand how hotel marketers can provide useful information and digital content to build your brand relationship, create brand advocates, and increase guest loyalty. We will uncover the online behaviors that are most common in this phase, the marketing and communication channels that are most effective, and how to measure success.
How does the experiencing phase take shape?
The experiencing phase begins the moment travelers start to look forward to their planned vacation, it continues when they arrive at your hotel’s destination, and with a well-executed strategy, the experiencing phase lives on long after their stay. Google refers to the micro-moments throughout this phase as “Can’t-Wait-To-Explore” moments that occur after a traveler has booked his or her accommodations.
According to Google, in this stage 85% of leisure travelers decide on activities only after having arrived at the destination. More importantly, now that your hotel brand has provided useful information to help travelers plan and book their trip, guests also expect you to help curate their experience. In fact, according to Ipsos Connect, nearly nine out of ten travelers expect their travel provider to share relevant information while they are on their trip, and 67% of travelers feel more loyal toward a travel company that shares information during their trip that improves their travel experience.
Guiding the guest experience on mobile.
According to Google, travelers increasingly rely on mobile to start exploring when they arrive in a new destination. Smartphone searches at hotels increased about 30% year over year, and since smartphones are location aware, travelers conduct simple mobile searches like “things to do near me” or “places to eat near me.” This begs the question: If travelers are mobile connected while exploring your hotel’s destination, is a mobile app the best way to guide the experience? According to further research from Ipsos Connect, only 23% of travelers say they have downloaded the app for travel brands they use the most. This reveals that your hotel website and digital content must be fully responsive and easily accessible on the mobile web.
