Guest Experience in Hotel
What is Guest Experience?
Guest experience in hotel is therefore the coordinated experience that a guest goes through when interacting with a hotel before the booking, during the stay and after they check out of the hotel. It extends beyond the kind of service being offered in addition to the experiences a guest feels during his/her stay. In other words, individual interactions that sum up the experiences guests have with your brand.
Hospitality management means that the guests do not only get a clean room to stay in, or a tastefully prepared meal. It covers different forms of experiences that make a guest feel relevant, comfortable and associated with the brand.
The Key Aspects of Hotel Guest Experience
Pre-Arrival Experience
This comprises of the time of reservations, pre-arrival correspondences, and the way the information is provided on the website or in the mobile application of your hotel.
A pre arrival information flow creates expectations and makes people looking forward to their vacations.
On-Property Experience
Concerns the guest throughout the visit at the hotel including their arrival and the accommodation, the state and the facilities of the hotel, and the contacts with the staff.
Some of the amiable staffs’ gestures like; welcome notes, or even free upgrading of guests’ rooms make a lot of difference in the satisfaction of guests.
Post-Stay Experience
Includes call backs, polls, and rewards.
Follow up with particular thank you messages, and offers makes guests want to book again and provide more positive reviews.
Characteristics of Guest Experience
Personalization: For example, the unique ability to deliver services that meet the guest’s exact requirements.
Consistency: Making sure that the guests are treated in a standard way so they are equally served whenever they are.
Responsiveness: Meeting and attending to the needs of the guests and attending to their complains.
Successful accommodation effects involve scrutiny of small aspects that can have major overtones.
Why Guest Experience is Important?
The success of a hotel depends greatly on the perception the guests have towards the hotel. Sometimes the guest can make a huge difference to the bookings made in a particular hotel or restaurant by posting negative comments online. Here’s why guest experience is important for hotels:
1. Fosters Long-Term Relationships
Every guest seeks to have an experience that will make them be comfortable to come back and do the same business again. If the guests receive such messages that they are valued and cared for then they will always use that hotel again. Repeat customers ensure they recommend the product to other people they know and even post about their experience on social media.
2. Generates Positive Reviews
Today’s generation knows the importance of online reputation via social media, and travel related websites such as TripAdvisor, Google, and the online travel agencies. Every guest wants to have a perfect stay and give positive comments and better ratings meaning that, more guests will book my property. The positive reviews received from guests can make a hotel to popularize online and people will be encouraged to make bookings.
3. Drives Revenue Growth
Hotels providing value focusing to their guests will likely attract value conscious guests through charging higher tariffs due to their better image. Consumers are willing to spend more for a quality service, quality facilities, and quality service delivery, and quality services that are personalized. Other opportunities for an additional charge, for instance, catering and spa services, can also be easily made if the guests are happy.
4. Reduces Negative Feedback
This approach also assists to avoid service failures and, in cases where they occur, guarantees their timely correction. By regularly solving issues, hotels are reduced to a situation where they cannot afford to give their clients a raw deal; this helps them maintain their brand reputation.
5. Helps the Brand to stand out from the competition
Awards are a marketing tool to ensure an edge is made in the competitive market by offering an excellent guest experience to any Hotel. Competitors can provide comparable services so the implementation of creating truly unique and friendly experience for the guests can define the success.
What are the three elements of guest experience?
A comprehensive guest experience in hotels can be divided into three core aspects: There are the three categories identified, which consists of Physical, Emotional, and Personalization. All three CpG can be executed simultaneously to generate a comprehensive and valuable experience for the hotel guests.
1. Physical Experience
The physical one implies what a guest can touch or feel in an accommodation provider. This includes tidiness, neatness, and attraction of all hotel facilities besides ensuring that all services including amenities are available.
Key Components:
- Room Quality: Smooth beddings, new furniture, and purposeful furniture.
- Cleanliness: Clean halls, clean corridors, and clean amenities.
- Ambience: The right form of lighting, music to be played and such decors as may best represent the brand name of the hotel.
- Amenities: Pools and fitness centers, spas or eateries, and housekeeping supplies such as toiletries and coffee makers.
Example: The availability of quality bedding, showers and a good looking lobby area can make a big difference to the perceived value by the guest.
2. Emotional Experience
The emotional concept comprises of the manner in which guests feel during their chosen period of stay. The source of loyalty is dependant on the feeling of companionship, both physical and psychological, that comes from receiving individual attention, being understood and proactively pampered in ways that communicate to the guest that they are appreciated and important.
Key Components:
- Friendly Staff: Arriving at hotels to meet and experience friendly and adequately attentive employees to attend to the guests’ needs without being prodded.
- Empathy and Problem-Solving: To respond to guest concerns, immediately and with consideration.
- Memorable Gestures: Practical gifts such as balloons for birthdays, welcome beverages or nice letters.
Example: For instance, the staff may offer wine to a guest who is celebrating an anniversary while a complementary letter can do magic for the hotel among other surprises.
3. Personalization
Personalization is the ability to feed the guest in a manner that caters for their wants, or the way they want to be served depending on their past actions.
Key Components:
- Tailored Services: Individual meals according to different food intolerances or if the rooms preference wants their meals to be served closer to where they are sleeping.
- Data Utilization: Target guests with rental types, services or special deals for their guests by using their guest history.
Example: A guest checks in after having been at the hotel some time back; upon checking in, they find their favorite bugs in their room.
Strategies to Improve Hotel Guest Experience
Successful strategies to improve hotel guest experience involve both the quality of services provided and the support of technologies. These are some of the areas through which the hotels could works towards enhancing the guest experience and create a positive Impact.
1. Personalize the Guest Journey
When it gets personal it turns out to be the most memorable and the best way to make an impression. Continuing a service line to clients’ preference is an indication of the value they have for the guests.
Tips for Personalization:
- This is by working with the guests’ history to ensure that one is in a position to know some of their needs as per example room types or even a meal preference.
- Bring special gifts, or room arrangements and efficiency on the first night of anniversary or birthdays.
- Exempt loyal customers to certain privileges such as free upgrade, extending checkout time or special offer discounts.
2. Simplified the Check In and Check Out
Procedures that the guest experiences when checking in and checking out play a great role in the first and the last impressions that he or she forms about the hotel.
Best Practices:
- Mobile options mixed with touchless technologies to make it easier for customers to check-in without having to wait in long lines.
- Try Mobile check-ins, Self-service Kiosks.
- Make sure that front desk employees know what to tell guests who walk in or ask questions and facilitate their service delivery.
Checkout: Paperless Check-In in Hotels
3. Maintain Cleanliness
One of the most important strategies to improve guest experience is to ensure that the areas that guests frequently visit should be clean so that they make a positive impression on the guests. It is understood by guests that hallways, lobby, carpeting, elevators, restrooms, stairwells and entranceways, corridors among other parts should be clean.
Best Practices:
- Iron and refresh towels, general cleaning of rooms and the common areas by daily room inspections.
- Offer environmentally friendly cleaning services for those guests who have decided to be environmentally friendly.
- Make sure that the things that are easy to run out of such as towels, toiletries, and linens are restocked quickly.
4. Improve Staff Training
The employees of the hotel are responsible for creating the guest experience.
Best Practices:
- Include guests in providing feedback during their stay and after checkout through prompts on surveys or reviews.
- Reply to the compliments or complants immediately in order to demonstrate that the opinion of the guests is important.
- Feedback should be applied to bring improvement to service delivery standards and manage specific complaints.
How Technology Can Enhance Hotel Guest Experience
Technological innovations has intervened in the hospitality industry so that the delivery of quality and personalized service by the hotels is less of a challenge. This paper asserts that it is possible to enhance the hotel guest experience through embedding the correct technological solutions across the spectrum.
1. Touchless Check-In/ Check-Out
Mobile key technology enables guests to check into their rooms, open doors to their rooms and even check out without any physical contact with a human being.
Benefits:
- Saves time and removes lines in front of the receptionist desk.
- Fosters comfort and promotestravelers that have adopted healthy precaution measures such as avoiding contact.
Example: A visitor can get a key on a mobile phone and go to the room without passing through the entrance lobby.
2. Guest Communication Apps
Hotel applications and mobile friendly websites are the communication channels that guests use to access the hotel directly.
Key Features:
- Real-time assistance, including ordering room services or any other product service through a message that appears on the application interface.
- Instantaneous alerts regarding some promotion of goods or bestseller products, events that are taking place in the bar, or famous attractions in the city.
Example: Through the application, the guests do not have to call the reception to order for more pillow or book for a spa among other things.
3. Smart Room Technology
Smart room elements make the accommodation more comfortable and individual, meeting the Guest’s needs.
Popular Smart Room Features:
- Smart lighting, smart climate control, and Voice Entertainment Systems.
- If the room setting is set frequently then the last setting become available in map as preferred setting list.
Example: A guest can use verbal instructions to change temperature in the room or to have their preferred playlist of musical accompaniment.
4. Data-Driven Personalization
Most hotels use data analytics gadgets to gather guest habits and translate them to preferred services.
Benefits:
- It also assist the hotels to identify the behaviour of guests and what they are likely to want.
- Allows for advertising specific services, products or a personalized promotion of services that are frequently used by guests or new experiences in the location.
What is Guest Experience Software?
Guest experience software can be described as an application meant to improve communication in between hotel and a client, take on different procedures, as well as provide individualized solutions. These help to organize most guest related activities, enabling hotels to efficiently respond, listen to and, delighted guests throughout the entire cycle, from pre-arrival through the post-stay phase.
SYNOPSIS: The primary purpose of this concept is to explain the guest experience software and to high light some of the key features of this new software.
Centralized Communication
Enables hotels to handle visitor communications within different media such as SMS, e-mails, applications, and bots.
Furnishes means to access messages, requests, and feedback that can be served by the staff.
Task Automation
Sends welcome messages, booking confirmations, check-in instructions and other such mundane messages.
Guest experience software saves time, and as a consequence frees the staff members and delegates tasks more suitable for their work with guests.
Real-Time Request Management
Guest experience software allows the guest to send a request such as for housekeeping, maintenance, or order meals through applications or instant messengers.
Prevents slippage of activities and responsibilities so that response rates are optimized. It covers feedback collection and analysis.
Asks guest surveys at the time of checkout or through a follow-up call after the guest’s stay.
Conducts survey to determine patterns and suggest places that require attention.
Personalization Capabilities
Keeps records of all the guests to facilitate customized services including room accommodation, diet, and promotional privileges.
Allows for addressing messages based on each client’s tenancy for their birthday or reward programs.
Advantages of Guest Experience Software
Improved Efficiency: One of the advantages of guest experience software is that it reduces relativity time consuming procedures in order to allow the staff to attend more valuable guests.
Enhanced Guest Satisfaction: Guest satisfaction and loyalty is enhanced since fast response to guest needs and requests provide a unique service.
Consistent Service Delivery: It means that guests will be served in a standard way regardless of where they booked their room or through which platform.
Data-Driven Insights: Gives the hotels useful information that assists in enhancing the provision of services and managing the guests’ expectations of the subsequent meetings.
A Case of iNPLASS in Improving Guest Experience in Hotels
iNPLASS is a new concept hotel’s operation system, which was developed to improve the management of interactions between guests and staff. iNPLASS is a comprehensive range of state-of-the-art tools essentially aimed at enhancing effective communication and automating administrative tasks extremely necessary for customised hospitality services delivery as well as improvement of overall operation efficiency of hotel.
Other Unique Ways In Which iNPLASS Acts Towards Improving Hotel Guest Experience
Seamless Guest Communication
Aside from the localisation feature, iNPLASS provides features of actual time communication for communications with guests through Guest Communication Platform, SMS, and email.
Many guests would like to make some demands or ask for some help, and then, many staff members can answer them quickly, and otherwise, the guests will feel connected to others.
Example: Through the use of a guest’s mobile application, he/ She can make a request for additional towels, a room’s cleaning or any kind of request s that may be needed and get an instant confirmation and feedback.
Personalized Service Delivery
Guests’ profiling covers things like room temperatures, preferred dining options, and service delivery making every guest feel unique at iNPLASS .
It was also clear that greetings for special occasions like birthdays or new registrations can also be handled under the system, making impressions.
Example: Every time an identified guest comes in, temperature found in the room, the kind of pillow, and preferred diet are adjusted to the patron’s previous preferences.
Other Benefits of iNPLASS
Real-Time Feedback Collection: Enables hotels to get feedback from a client while he or she is still in the facility or seek to solve a problem that a guest has identified to improve on service delivery.
Data-Driven Insights: iNPLASS also has an ability of analyzing the interaction between guests and various services offered and can therefore indicate the strengths and weaknesses.
Mobile Accessibility: With this app, staff can easily handle tasks efficiently and guest interactions to forward the course of operation.
iNPLASS has great potential in providing added value to hotel services in terms of guest satisfaction in hotel and staff efficiency, as well as the creation of closer relationships between the staff and the guests.
Conclusion: Increasing Guests’ Perception to Achieve Sustainability
Originally in this competitive domain of the hospitality industry the quality of the guest experience defines the specific hotel company success. Every touch point that a guest goes through pre, during and post their stay help them formulate an opinion about the brand. A positive guest experience in hotel puts the guests in the right stead; they turn loyal customers, book repeatedly, and give positive ratings/demeanor/vibes which are paramount in establishing a firm foundation.
Hotels have realized three facets of operation that form the foundation of guest satisfaction in hotel; comfort, emotive touch and identity to deliver positive impressions about the stay. Use of technology like guest experience solutions, and tools like iNPLASS are ways through which specific Hotels are capable of enhancing the workflow, enhancing guest satisfaction in hotel and even delivering quick solutions to the problems faced by the guests.
Furthermore, the ability to gather and respond to online guest comments in real time reveals further inefficiencies and enhances customer satisfaction. This helps in eliminating any negative feedback from the guests and at the same time, helps in building up the trust and the loyalty of the guests to the hotel.
Finally, the hotel companies that focus on guests’ needs generate higher revenues by upselling and charging premiums while they also set themselves apart from rivals. Providing the best guest experience in terms of added details or unexpected communication and fast and friendly service pays off in the future and cements a given business for the long-term as consumers demand more and more out of a constantly changing market.
Are you interested in updating your guest experience concepts? Learn how iNPLASS’s solutions allow you and your hospitality business to become genuinely effective.