For the final part of this series on enhancing the guest experience, let’s dive into why all hotel staff should be focused on creating memorable events for guests.
NB: This is an article from GCommerce
The goal is for these experiences to be shared through social media & online reviews at the end of someone’s stay to boost your online presence.
1. Use hotel guests to tell your story
It is very important that you make online reviews important to everyone on staff at your hotel. These guest reviews can highlight unique experiences at the hotel which help to tell your hotel’s story and sell the experience to potential guests that are still within the booking journey.
When I look at my clients on TripAdvisor, I see many that have a unique hotel experience highlighted on multiple guest reviews such as the wine tasting being called out for The Benson in the above example.
Or the onsite artists being called out in the above Coast Victoria hotel guest review.
Even the s’mores are mentioned in this Tekarra Lodge guest review.
2. Keep driving more reviews for your hotel
85% of people don’t care about hotel reviews that are older than 3-months. This means that you should always keep asking your hotel guests for reviews. One of my newly rebranded hotel clients in LA went from #126 on TripAdvisor to number #21 within six weeks because they handed out review cards at checkout. This same client was also hyper-focused on the guest experience so that guests have something positive to write about. Google’s local SEO algorithm also values the quantity of reviews greatly in how it ranks hotels in the local map pack. Want to rank higher in Google? Drive more reviews. Make sure you have strategies in place to encourage your guests to write reviews. Prompt them with review cards at checkout and post-stay emails with links to post reviews to Google. Look into utilizing a platform such as Podium or Revinate to help make the process more frictionless.
3. Increase customer satisfaction by focusing on the guest experience and creating memories that they will want to share
In the Experience Economy, you need to make memories and set the stage for generating greater experiential value, don’t just deliver services. Customers now want experiences, and they’re willing to pay admission for them. There’s new work to do, and only those who perform that work so as to truly engage their guests will succeed in this new economy.
Like with the wild chickens at Waimea.
Google is KING and reviews are becoming more and more important every day in order to rank within your hotel’s market in local search. They’ve even created a new hotel review collection system for couples, families, business travelers and solo travelers. You will continue to see more and more enhancements to Google Reviews, which will drive other review platforms to continue to enhance their products as well.
