Guest engagement is very important for hoteliers, as it allows the opportunity to establish a rapport with potential guests and stay connected with old ones. Many hotels have competition from other similar establishments in their area, all offering the same rates, amenities and rooms. One of the main ways that you can stand out is to engage with your guests during their stay.
So how can your hotel be better at guest engagement? There are a number of tips that you can easily implement in order to improve engagement at your hotel. By engaging with your customers and making them feel listened to, you can capture their loyalty. Here are some ways that you can improve guest engagement at your hotel:
Listen to Customer Feedback
When your guests give you feedback it is important to listen, as they are giving you valuable information that you need to engage with them in a better way. You can set up a customer comment card system or you can use a website such as Tripadvisor to gather guest feedback. If you send out a survey, make sure that it has questions related to customer engagement so that you can gauge how your hotel is performing. Have a monthly meeting with your staff in order to go over the feedback and figure out the best way to improve guest engagement.
Make Emails and Social Media Communications Personal
These days customers are much more likely to engage with your hotel via electronic means such as email and social media channels when they are buying and researching travel. When you are communicating with these customers make sure that your responses are friendly, warm and have a personal touch. By engaging with them in this way before they even make a booking you can encourage them to choose your hotel over the others.
Create a Social Wall Display For Your Hotel
This is a new and fun way that you could encourage visitors to share content about your hotel on social media. Set up a social wall on a centrally located screen where you can display tweets or Instagram photos to a certain hashtag. Guests will be eager to contribute in order to get their little taste of fame and the social media content that is generated will help to promote your hotel.
You could even turn your social wall display into a contest – the best Instagram photo wins a free night stay at the hotel or a discount at the restaurant.
Get to Know Your Hotel Guests and Their Needs
When a guest is coming to stay at your hotel, take the time to look over their profile on your eCRM and learn a little bit about them. That way, you can find out what they are looking for in their hotel stay. For example, if they gave a low score on a previous review because of noise you can make sure to check them into the quietest room in the hotel. Anticipating the needs of your guests will give a personal touch and will encourage loyalty. Who wouldn’t want to come back to a hotel that remembers who you are and what is important to you?
Train Your Hotel Staff Well
Your staff are the ones that create a first impression on your guests, so it is important that they know how to engage with those guests. In order to train your staff to do this effectively it is important to create a curriculum for training sessions and classes. You will need a detailed lesson plan that covers answering phone calls, getting to know customers, asking the right questions, etc. Employees should also know the proper steps for dealing with customers in different situations – you can even role play and have an employee act as a customer and the other pretend to be the guest. Customer service training is so important that it shouldn’t just be a one-time thing, the skills should be kept up to date with regular training.
These are just a few ways that you can improve guest engagement at your hotel, giving your guests a better and more enjoyable experience. When guest engagement is improved, your guests will be more likely to be loyal to your hotel, returning to stay again and again and giving you positive word of mouth referrals.