When you’re out for the evening and run into a friend or acquaintance, you have certain expectations. You would expect them to recognize you, remember your name, and interact with you based upon information they have gathered about you during previous interactions such as your family or friends’ names and your likes and dislikes.
NB: This is an article from SkyTouch
You’d probably be upset and disappointed if you had to start from scratch by reintroducing yourself, your family and your friends. Reminding that person of your name or that your child plays soccer with theirs takes away from the authenticity and excitement of that friendship.
Hotel guests who are acquainted, or even intimately familiar, with hotel properties or brands via multiple stays may feel the same disenchantment if hoteliers do not demonstrate knowledge of that relationship on property. The same disappointment and upset that occurs when an acquaintance doesn’t remember your name or likes, happens when hotel staff does not make you feel special and remembered. With the Hotel PMS‘ guest experience program and guest interaction integrations, the guest is almost always guaranteed to be recognized and appreciated, even if there are new employees working at the hotel. Drive money to the bottom line by elevating the guest experience, increasing online and on-property marketing, managing opportunities to upsell and increasing brand loyalty.
Enhanced Guest Experience
A robust guest profile can display information from name and email address to room type preference to whether a guest would like the morning paper. Specified notes within the hotel PMS show who the guest is and what they want while they are staying on property. The ability to know and serve a guest on a finer level, such as having housekeeping adjust cleaning routines to accommodate a sensitivity to chemicals, helps lead to increased engagement, re-engagement and loyalty by enhancing the guest experience and exceeding expectations. Today’s best hotel PMS software can create a guest profile that encompasses a host of benefits for hotel marketing and operations as well as guests.
For example, through the SkyTouch Hotel PMS’ guest experience program, hoteliers can create guest profiles which allows the entire hotel staff to track each individual’s preference on things like room type, whether they like extra blankets or pillows, or even if they have a favorite wine they order every time they are staying at the hotel. By storing these notes in the system, hotel staff can surprise and delight the guests before they even arrive. By having all the guests’ preferences already waiting in their room, there is no need for the guest to go out of their way to ask.
Marketing Made Easy
With intuitive marketing integrations like the Cendyn Customer Relationship Management (CRM) suite, hoteliers can engage with guests throughout the entire travel journey. Some key features that are easy to build include confirmation emails, pre and post-stay emails as well as automated surveys to capture guest feedback. By personalizing the guest experience with transactional communications, hoteliers are able to drive guest engagement, conversion and retention both online and on-property.
Upsell Opportunity
When guest preferences are known, they can also lead to more up-selling opportunities. Data-rich guest profiles can move marketing efforts from pre-stay, to stay, to next-stay by turning the value proposition back to the hotel or brand. Upgrades can be suggested, and amenities targeted all because the hotelier has gotten up-close and personal with guests and takes steps to provide them with their preferred preferences through segmented marketing messages. By empowering guests to plan their stay pre-arrival and while on-property through mobile communication, hoteliers are guiding the guest towards upsell amenities, dining, activities, spa treatments and more. Automated and personalized marketing efforts can drive a substantial amount of incremental revenue per stay while also increasing guest loyalty.
Brand Loyalty
With multi-property profiles built into the hotel brand property management system, superior service standardization becomes possible, and so, brand reinforcement can be enhanced. Today’s advanced hotel PMS software often includes a robust guest profile feature that can capture all guest data pertaining to their stay and share it among other properties within the same brand. For instance, if Hotel A in Los Angeles, California knows what the guest requested at Hotel B in Phoenix, Arizona, they can offer the same requests before they are even asked for. When hotel brands offer this type of seamless guest experience, the guest begins to feel incredibly special and the brand, property and guest can all reap the rewards.
Personalizing the guest experience creates an unforgettable moment that will impress your guests, drive repeat visits because they feel special, and entice them to tell their family and friends about your property. People love to share their good experiences with others, whether it is through word of mouth, social media or leaving reviews on sites like TripAdvisor. This type of advertising is extremely valuable to the hotel as it can lead to not only repeat visits, but new bookings which increase the bottom line.
