Free, quality guest WiFi is now a top guest expectation, so it’s important for any hotel to invest in its WiFi provision.
NB: This is an article by Hannah Hambleton, Content Manager for Beambox
Hotel WiFi isn’t only great for guests though. For every hotel, WiFi increases revenue opportunities, as well as ways to boost CRM efforts with data-rich guest insight. WiFi creates loyalty-loops that maximise profits and increase customer engagement, and we’ll show you how in this article.
Hotel WiFi generates essential guest data
Data is a massive hospitality topic, and with good reason. Good data improves marketing effectiveness, as well as helping to encourage customer loyalty. One of the biggest benefits to offering a guest WiFi network for marketing insight is the massive amount of customer data it generates every time they log on to your network. Great data is essential for building an accurate, data-driven profile of every guest; providing your hotel with demographic information, customer interests and contact details to make marketing and retention campaigns more effective. The result is gold-standard customer insight, helping you understand every single one of your customers and what they want from your hotel. This will make it easy to respond to, as well as predict future customer behaviour, driving your hotel guests through sales and loyalty funnels by responding perfectly at each touchpoint.
How can guest WiFi increase revenue for hotels?
Collecting customer data is just the first step. Your hotel will then be able to use data profiles on every guest to increase revenue generation, easily justifying any investment in free guest WiFi. Guest WiFi will help increase your hotel’s revenue in the following ways:
- Grow an opted-in email list. When customers log into your WiFi, they’ll provide an email log-in. This is a great way to quickly grow your hotel’s email list with quality contacts, which you can then use to send out promotions and offers to be used during their stay with you.
- Send real-time promotions for upsells and promotions. Using beacon technology, you’ll be able to track how a customer is interacting with your guest services and send them relevant and personalised communications. If they’re using your restaurant, send them a real time promotion to encourage increased spend. Or if they haven’t yet visited your hotel spa, send them a voucher to encourage a visit.
- Advertise at log-in. After log-in to WiFi, redirect your customers instantly to a page promoting any upcoming events at your hotel.
- Increase in-room spend. Connecting your guests will give you the ability to view and analyse in room spend for every guest. Use contact details from WiFi to send personalised offers through email or a push SMS designed to get guests to buy more.
Hotel guest WiFi creates data-driven, lasting loyalty
Think of guest WiFi as creating a continuous, data-driven loyalty loop. Understanding exactly what guests want will allow you to increase revenue in the short term, but data from guest WiFi will also provide your hotel with the tools to generate lasting loyalty and engagement. And the result? You’ve guessed it- increased long term revenue too.
This is because loyal customers are the most profitable customers, so using data from guest WiFi to drive loyalty with longevity is essential. This data will give your hotel the tools to personalise and streamline your CRM efforts, combining all touchpoints and experiences with your hotel into revenue boosting communications. Offering guest WiFi will also create enhanced engagement to underpin loyalty with longevity. For example through social media check-ins and tags, or by sending requests via Wifi for those vital online reviews, you’ll increase brand awareness for your hotel, as well as important social proof.
Guest WiFi makes increasing revenue and customer loyalty possible
Often, increasing revenue from guests has come at the expense of generating lasting loyalty and engagement. But offering guest WiFi in your hotel changes this. Using quality data collected from customer interactions and behaviours during their stay, you’ll be able to send real-time, relevant marketing communications to every guest that boost revenue. But you’ll also be able to use this data to strengthen your CRM efforts after their stay, segmenting every customer based on their personal data points to encourage repeat bookings and foster brand engagement. Viewing your hotel guests holistically based on their behavioural data will increase your marketing ROI, as well as drive revenue increases in the long term.
