You know that saying that goes something like “Keep your friends close and your guests even closer”? Probably not, but when it comes to hospitality, it would sure make sense.
NB: This is an article from TrustYou
The first rule of any successful business is “know your client!”. Especially in the hotel industry, since we are talking about a people-centric business, with such a personal touch to it, focusing on the guests and their needs is an absolute must and a great advantage, if leveraged right.
Before adopting any kind of marketing strategy, it’s important for hoteliers to thoroughly analyze past performance and experiences, especially from a guest’s point of view. After all, any change that is made in terms of hotel amenities, presentation or service, is done with the guests’ needs and expectations in mind. And there’s no better way to anticipate what the next guest will react positively (or negatively) to than to analyze the opinions of past ones.
Imagine a world without reviews; maybe just rankings and scores. Let’s say your hotel has a rather average score, of 6. But what would happen if that’s all you knew? You understand that you’re not doing great, but you don’t know exactly why. You would like to improve your hotel and its reputation, but you don’t know how and where to start. Not the most ideal scenario ever, right?
A hotel’s reputation is undoubtedly a strong factor in the decision-making process, that’s just a given. It has been proven that over the last few years, more and more travelers check reviews before making a booking and they base a big part of their decision on the hotel’s reputation. So how can hoteliers tackle at this in the best possible way? The answer is simple: through analytics.
Getting valuable insights into a guest’s journey paves the way for future improvements and adjustments, which will eventually result in a better experience. This leads to better reviews, which increase the chances of getting more further bookings. We’re basically talking about a circle in which every single factor influences the next one; and it all starts with a thorough introspection.
That can sometimes prove to be easier said than done since we live in such a busy and always changing world. Modern hoteliers already have a lot of responsibility on their shoulders, so setting time aside for the sole purpose of analyzing past guest experiences might be tricky. However, there are ways of integrating the analytics part in the overall guest feedback management. Nowadays, is it no longer a question of managing or ignoring guest feedback – dealing with it is rather a must. Not to mention the fact that the proper use of reviews and guest insights can be further marketed, in order to gain even more visibility, popularity and bookings.
The reputation management solution of the TrustYou platform revolves around analytics. Every day, guest feedback is spread around the web in the form of reviews; we are talking about hundreds and thousands of sources. It’s easy to understand why hoteliers can have a hard time keeping track of every single opinion. The reputation management solution gathers all of those reviews in one place, making them easily accessible and manageable and therefore saving time and effort. Not only that, but the review content is analyzed and broken down through a semantic technology, which delivers valuable insights in the easiest way: through a clear and immediate overview of the guest journey, their concerns, expectations, and preferences.
With the aid of the automated impact scores, hoteliers can easily identify the areas the hotel they should focus on to improve the overall rating. All of this information is based on the reviews gathered from across the web, which means that the average score is an overview of the guests’ opinions and experiences. Also, in order to provide a highly efficient way of measuring performance, the Analytics feature of the TrustYou platform enables KPI reporting. By using this, hoteliers can choose from a variety of analytical reports or set up a custom report that measures their KPIs. The reports can be easily downloaded or automatically sent to an Inbox, for quick access.
At the end of the day, what truly makes the difference between a successful business and an average one is the willingness to learn from the past, in order to improve the future. This is why analytics, especially when it comes to guest feedback, is one of the most important and influential things that hoteliers can and should focus on. There are ways of relying on an automated process, which saves valuable time and delivers insightful details about the guest journey, which, if properly managed, will lead to better experiences and a boost in reputation and revenue.
