Don’t wait until guests wheel their luggage into your lobby to start communicating with them. The weeks leading up to a guest’s stay are incredibly influential. What you say – or don’t say – can affect guests’ opinions about your hotel long before they set foot on your property.
NB: This is an article from Canary Technologies
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Whether it’s an email, text, AI chatbot or all three, creating a pre-arrival guest communication strategy is a game-changer for guest satisfaction and hotel revenue. Keep reading to learn helpful tips and tools to optimize the guest experience and streamline operations.
Why Communicate With Hotel Guests Before Their Stay?
Guests don’t need to be on property to receive exceptional customer service. Let’s look at the biggest benefits of pre-arrival communication for hotel guests:
- Improve the guest experience: Impressing guests should start long before check-in. Emails and texts that address guests by name and acknowledge preferences, like room requests or dietary restrictions, show attention to detail that differentiates your hotel.
- Share information: Communicating essential booking details and helpful tips about the local area, like attractions and restaurant recommendations, will enhance your guests’ overall experience and leave a lasting positive impression.
- Resolve potential issues: Reaching out to guests before they arrive lets you address special requests or concerns, like room location preferences or accessibility needs. This way, you get ahead of potential issues before they can turn into problems.
- Provide clarity on hotel policies: Pre-arrival communication should include important policies, like cancellation, check-in/check-out and more. Clearly state fees and terms and require a guest signature or checkbox to reduce chargeback fraud.
- Upsell: Pre-arrival communication is a prime opportunity to generate incremental revenue. Feature F&B packages, spa treatments, room upgrades, early check-in and late checkout options, snack baskets and more in emails and texts to increase guest spending.
- Build guest loyalty: Communicate with guests before their stay through personalized messaging, exclusive deals and engaging content to foster trust and repeat business.
4 Tips for Effective Pre-Arrival Guest Communication
Every message you send shapes a guest’s perception of your hotel and their upcoming stay. But the goal is not just to communicate – it’s to create positive guest experiences that translate into brand loyalty and repeat business.
Here’s how to create effective hotel guest communication -while minimizing your team’s workload with automation and artificial intelligence (AI).
