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Guest Engagement

Everything you need to know about hotel guest engagement

Most hoteliers tend to consider guest engagement in hotels as a one-off interaction. However, guest engagement being the core aspect of your hospitality business

1/8/2024
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Guest Engagement

Everything you need to know about hotel guest engagement

Most hoteliers tend to consider guest engagement in hotels as a one-off interaction. However, guest engagement being the core aspect of your hospitality business

1/8/2024

As a hotelier, offering exceptional guest service is the ultimate key to sustaining your hotel business. But how can a hotel consistently provide exceptional guest service while simultaneously keeping up with the ever-evolving market trends, rising competition, etc? 

The most logical way is to focus on engaging with your hotel guests at every single touchpoint. As per reports, effective guest engagement will considerably impact your brand loyalty and guest retention. In fact, better engagement has the potential to increase cross-revenue by 22% and upsell revenue by 38%. 

So, If you are a hotelier who wants to know the overall significance and impact of hotel guest engagement, this article is for you!

What Is hotel guest engagement?

Most hoteliers tend to consider guest engagement in hotels as a one-off interaction. However, guest engagement being the core aspect of your hospitality business, must be a continuous process. It should highlight how you interact with your guests throughout their stay. 

For instance, sending personalised booking confirmations and reminder messages prior to the guest’s stay. Engaging with them by proposing transportation services, local attraction recommendations, etc during their stay. Promptly responding and resolving their queries are a few examples of providing exceptional guest service through effective guest engagement practices. 

In fact, guests who are fully engaged with your brand are 23% more likely to prefer booking over your regular guests. That's something you certainly wouldn't want to miss! 

Now, let us take a look at the significance of hotel guest engagement.

Why Is guest engagement important for hotels? 

why is guest engagement important

Guests want to be heard and the best way to do that is by engaging with them throughout their stay. Actively listening and promptly responding to guest’s concerns makes them feel valued and cared for, eventually influencing them to return and refer your property to others. Guest engagement also plays a major influence on your overall brand reputation. 

In addition to that, one brilliant approach that would further elevate your guest experience is being proactive. A proactive approach helps you address your guest's needs better — assuring them that they will have a memorable stay. 

Since we have understood why guest engagement is important. Let us now cover ways in which it impacts your hospitality brand. 

5 Ways hotel guest engagement impacts your hospitality brand

As a hotelier how you interact and engage with your guests has a profound impact on how they perceive your brand. As per a Salesforce report, 45% of consumers are more likely to switch brands If their preferred brand fails to actively engage and anticipate their needs. To avoid this, it becomes extremely crucial for you to retain your guests by consistently engaging with them. 

Here is a quick overview of how hotel guest engagement impacts your hospitality brand significantly. 

1. Enhances brand loyalty thereby influencing your brand revenue

Once your guests get comfortable and emotionally connected with your brand, they are more likely to opt for loyalty memberships. Engaging guests throughout their guest journey is the most effective way to earn guest loyalty and eventually drive revenue. To back this up, as per Skift's research, loyalty members are more likely to contribute between 30 - 60% of the hotel room revenue. They are also likely to pay a higher Average Daily Room rate (ADR) than non-members. Such exceptional results can only be achieved If you fully engage with your guests throughout their stay.

2. Boosts your chances of securing online reviews

Attentiveness to guest's requests, effective communication and prompt staff responsiveness are the biggest factors that elevate a guest experience. Satisfied guests are more likely to write a positive hotel review about your property.  Moreover, engaging with your guests after you resolve a query or tend to a requested service – by checking up on them on whether they were satisfied with it, is the best way to show your commitment to improve. This also considerably boosts your chances of securing positive reviews. 

3. Differentiates you from your competitors and helps you stay ahead

Delayed responses to requests or escalations might lead your guests to switch loyalties sooner. As per an Accenture report, 81% of customers feel loyal to brands that are available when they need them. Hence, actively communicating and engaging with hotel guests is how you can differentiate yourself from your competitors. If you fail to do so, your competitors will. 

4. Improves guest retention to a greater level 

The way you engage with your guests at every touchpoint defines your commitment to providing them an exceptional service. You are more likely to earn brand loyalty from a guest who is satisfied with your services and commitment to engage. In fact, attracting a potential customer is five times more expensive than retaining an existing one. Proving that, guest engagement is paramount and has an impact on your guest retention score.  

5. Increases the chance of securing referral bookings 

55% of consumers are more likely to express brand loyalty by recommending your services to friends and family. Additionally, 44% of consumers are more likely to opt for a brand based on their friend's and families recommendations. Exceptional guest engagement influences your loyal guests to be your brand advocates and speak well about your property. Hence, the best way to garner repeat bookings is through effective guest engagement. 

How Is technology playing an important role in improving hotel guest engagement?

Tending to guest expectations while managing several aspects of your hotel operations seems like a huge task. Incorporating the best guest engagement software can increase guest satisfaction, optimise operational efficiency, automate routine tasks, streamline communications, etc.

In addition to that, it will not just help you to meet your guest expectations, but also enhance hotel guest engagement.

Listed here are a few ways technology plays an important role in improving guest engagement.

  • Personalised and targeted communication to increase guest satisfaction 

Unlike traditional methods of guest communication, targeting personalised communication is critical for modern travellers. Hotels that continue to leverage data analytics to personalise guest experience have found incredible results. Hence, data proves extremely crucial for enhancing guest engagement in hotels.For instance, Hyatt introduced the ‘World of Hyatt’ loyalty program to offer personalised experiences to their guests with the help of data analytics. This approach led to a significant boost in guest satisfaction and loyalty scores.  

  • Multilingual support helps hotels communicate with culturally diverse guests  

Catering to a diverse cultural range of guests is paramount in today’s modern world. But how do you equip yourself with the right strategy? Thanks to Large Language Models (LLMs) that are trained on multi-lingual data, they can seamlessly translate and generate relevant responses in the guest’s preferred language. Such interactions further enhance your brand reputation among first-time visitors. 

  • Unified communication helps the staff to optimise operational efficiency

As per a Salesforce report, 79% of customers expect a direct and consistent interaction, although 55% have experienced communicating with separate departments at some point. On top of that, staff shortages continue to remain a major issue. So what’s the solution? Well, a unified hotel guest engagement platform that consolidates all the messages in one place is the best choice. It allows you to seamlessly track, prioritise and promptly respond to multiple guest’s queries based on their urgency. 

  • AI-powered chat support to manage routine tasks effectively 

Bad experiences oftentimes stem from delayed or unanswered queries. Guests even despise repeating the issues multiple times to different staff members. In addition to that, staff shortages coupled with the influx of guests further delay urgent responses. Incorporating a 24/7 AI-powered chatbot specifically designed for hospitality is the ultimate solution. It retrieves pre-programmed scripts and forms a relevant response based on the query raised. Considerably increasing the response rate of your hotel and reducing the turnaround time. 

How can Guestara help you make the hotel guest engagement smooth?

Managing a hospitality business comprises several issues such as staff shortages, evolving market trends, outdated processes, etc. Amidst all of this, although being the most important aspect, it oftentimes becomes difficult for the staff to engage with guests at every stage. But what’s the solution you may ask?

Well, it’s Guestara! An inclusive hotel guest management platform to drive exceptional growth and revenue. By offering industry proven guest engagement solutions with a focus on enhancing your guest’s satisfaction. Guestara is what your hotel needs to make your guest engagement process seamless. 

1. Send personalised messages at the exact stage of the guest journey

hotel guest engagement

You must not go wrong or worse, miss out on sending personalised messages to your guests during their stay. To make the process easier, Guestara helps you to send personalised messages based on the specified guest’s journey stage, i.e. pre-stay, in-stay and post-stay. Listed here are a few hotel guest engagement ideas for your quick reference: 

  • Send booking confirmation messages, reminders and check-in process at the pre-stay stage; 
  • Check-in or upsell messages during the in-stay stage;
  • Check out and feedback request messages during the post-stay stage.

2. Engage with your guest via their preferred communication channel 

communication platforms

Every guest has their preferred way of communicating or requesting a service. Unlike traditional methods of calling the front desk or requesting services in person — Guestara, which is integrated with WhatsApp, SMS, email, etc allows your guests to seamlessly interact with your staff via their preferred digital channel.

Moreover, on the back end, the hotel guest engagement platform enables your staff to track and manage all your guest messages in one unified hub. Clubbed with Guestara’s 24/7 AI chat support, your guests can receive accurate and prompt responses to general queries.

3. Manage and access your customisable templates in a unified platform 

Hotel unified inbox

Easy-to-use and customisable templates are the most convenient methods for prompt communication. Guestara helps you save considerable time and effort by allowing you to manage and access all the templates on one platform. 

You can customise these guest engagement templates based on your hotel’s brand voice, guest preferences, etc. Following this, you must set a trigger to send it during the specific stage of the guest journey to optimise efficiency. 

4. Track and analyse best-performing guest engagement templates and channel

An overview of the best-performing guest engagement templates and communication channels will be displayed on your dashboard. Track and analyse metrics of the templates and the medium that garnered more click-through rates or conversions. 

This profound analytical data will help you focus more on campaigns that work and re-evaluate strategies that didn’t. 

Conclusion 

Guest engagement has always played a pivotal role in enhancing the overall experience of a guest’s stay. Investing in the best hotel guest engagement platform must be your only viable choice. 

With Guestara’s all-inclusive hotel guest engagement software - save your time by streamlining communications, optimising revenue and increasing guest satisfaction. Book a demo to speak with our experts today!

FAQs

1. What are guest engagement solutions?

Guest engagement solutions include a varied range of strategies that can be incorporated as per the hotel’s preference. Personalising experiences using data analytics, automating processes, offering multilingual support, etc could be a few of the strategies that a hotel can implement to improve guest satisfaction and brand reputation. 

2. How can hotel guest engagement software improve communication?

Hotel guest engagement software simplifies complex and routine hotel processes. A fully optimised guest engagement software will enable your hotel to effectively communicate with the guests by assessing the stage of their journey. It will also enable you to offer prompt responses, thereby improving guest communication to a higher level.

3. How to engage with hotel guests?

Actively listening to your guest’s concerns right from the time they book a stay until they checkout is the most effective way to engage with your hotel guests. It’s also important to effectively communicate and provide a reason for not being able to meet certain guest’s requests. This further enhances their trust in you, thereby increasing their chances of guest retention and referrals. 

Yashika Karkera
Senior Content Writer
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Guest Engagement

Everything you need to know about hotel guest engagement

Most hoteliers tend to consider guest engagement in hotels as a one-off interaction. However, guest engagement being the core aspect of your hospitality business

1/8/2024

As a hotelier, offering exceptional guest service is the ultimate key to sustaining your hotel business. But how can a hotel consistently provide exceptional guest service while simultaneously keeping up with the ever-evolving market trends, rising competition, etc? 

The most logical way is to focus on engaging with your hotel guests at every single touchpoint. As per reports, effective guest engagement will considerably impact your brand loyalty and guest retention. In fact, better engagement has the potential to increase cross-revenue by 22% and upsell revenue by 38%. 

So, If you are a hotelier who wants to know the overall significance and impact of hotel guest engagement, this article is for you!

What Is hotel guest engagement?

Most hoteliers tend to consider guest engagement in hotels as a one-off interaction. However, guest engagement being the core aspect of your hospitality business, must be a continuous process. It should highlight how you interact with your guests throughout their stay. 

For instance, sending personalised booking confirmations and reminder messages prior to the guest’s stay. Engaging with them by proposing transportation services, local attraction recommendations, etc during their stay. Promptly responding and resolving their queries are a few examples of providing exceptional guest service through effective guest engagement practices. 

In fact, guests who are fully engaged with your brand are 23% more likely to prefer booking over your regular guests. That's something you certainly wouldn't want to miss! 

Now, let us take a look at the significance of hotel guest engagement.

Why Is guest engagement important for hotels? 

why is guest engagement important

Guests want to be heard and the best way to do that is by engaging with them throughout their stay. Actively listening and promptly responding to guest’s concerns makes them feel valued and cared for, eventually influencing them to return and refer your property to others. Guest engagement also plays a major influence on your overall brand reputation. 

In addition to that, one brilliant approach that would further elevate your guest experience is being proactive. A proactive approach helps you address your guest's needs better — assuring them that they will have a memorable stay. 

Since we have understood why guest engagement is important. Let us now cover ways in which it impacts your hospitality brand. 

5 Ways hotel guest engagement impacts your hospitality brand

As a hotelier how you interact and engage with your guests has a profound impact on how they perceive your brand. As per a Salesforce report, 45% of consumers are more likely to switch brands If their preferred brand fails to actively engage and anticipate their needs. To avoid this, it becomes extremely crucial for you to retain your guests by consistently engaging with them. 

Here is a quick overview of how hotel guest engagement impacts your hospitality brand significantly. 

1. Enhances brand loyalty thereby influencing your brand revenue

Once your guests get comfortable and emotionally connected with your brand, they are more likely to opt for loyalty memberships. Engaging guests throughout their guest journey is the most effective way to earn guest loyalty and eventually drive revenue. To back this up, as per Skift's research, loyalty members are more likely to contribute between 30 - 60% of the hotel room revenue. They are also likely to pay a higher Average Daily Room rate (ADR) than non-members. Such exceptional results can only be achieved If you fully engage with your guests throughout their stay.

2. Boosts your chances of securing online reviews

Attentiveness to guest's requests, effective communication and prompt staff responsiveness are the biggest factors that elevate a guest experience. Satisfied guests are more likely to write a positive hotel review about your property.  Moreover, engaging with your guests after you resolve a query or tend to a requested service – by checking up on them on whether they were satisfied with it, is the best way to show your commitment to improve. This also considerably boosts your chances of securing positive reviews. 

3. Differentiates you from your competitors and helps you stay ahead

Delayed responses to requests or escalations might lead your guests to switch loyalties sooner. As per an Accenture report, 81% of customers feel loyal to brands that are available when they need them. Hence, actively communicating and engaging with hotel guests is how you can differentiate yourself from your competitors. If you fail to do so, your competitors will. 

4. Improves guest retention to a greater level 

The way you engage with your guests at every touchpoint defines your commitment to providing them an exceptional service. You are more likely to earn brand loyalty from a guest who is satisfied with your services and commitment to engage. In fact, attracting a potential customer is five times more expensive than retaining an existing one. Proving that, guest engagement is paramount and has an impact on your guest retention score.  

5. Increases the chance of securing referral bookings 

55% of consumers are more likely to express brand loyalty by recommending your services to friends and family. Additionally, 44% of consumers are more likely to opt for a brand based on their friend's and families recommendations. Exceptional guest engagement influences your loyal guests to be your brand advocates and speak well about your property. Hence, the best way to garner repeat bookings is through effective guest engagement. 

How Is technology playing an important role in improving hotel guest engagement?

Tending to guest expectations while managing several aspects of your hotel operations seems like a huge task. Incorporating the best guest engagement software can increase guest satisfaction, optimise operational efficiency, automate routine tasks, streamline communications, etc.

In addition to that, it will not just help you to meet your guest expectations, but also enhance hotel guest engagement.

Listed here are a few ways technology plays an important role in improving guest engagement.

  • Personalised and targeted communication to increase guest satisfaction 

Unlike traditional methods of guest communication, targeting personalised communication is critical for modern travellers. Hotels that continue to leverage data analytics to personalise guest experience have found incredible results. Hence, data proves extremely crucial for enhancing guest engagement in hotels.For instance, Hyatt introduced the ‘World of Hyatt’ loyalty program to offer personalised experiences to their guests with the help of data analytics. This approach led to a significant boost in guest satisfaction and loyalty scores.  

  • Multilingual support helps hotels communicate with culturally diverse guests  

Catering to a diverse cultural range of guests is paramount in today’s modern world. But how do you equip yourself with the right strategy? Thanks to Large Language Models (LLMs) that are trained on multi-lingual data, they can seamlessly translate and generate relevant responses in the guest’s preferred language. Such interactions further enhance your brand reputation among first-time visitors. 

  • Unified communication helps the staff to optimise operational efficiency

As per a Salesforce report, 79% of customers expect a direct and consistent interaction, although 55% have experienced communicating with separate departments at some point. On top of that, staff shortages continue to remain a major issue. So what’s the solution? Well, a unified hotel guest engagement platform that consolidates all the messages in one place is the best choice. It allows you to seamlessly track, prioritise and promptly respond to multiple guest’s queries based on their urgency. 

  • AI-powered chat support to manage routine tasks effectively 

Bad experiences oftentimes stem from delayed or unanswered queries. Guests even despise repeating the issues multiple times to different staff members. In addition to that, staff shortages coupled with the influx of guests further delay urgent responses. Incorporating a 24/7 AI-powered chatbot specifically designed for hospitality is the ultimate solution. It retrieves pre-programmed scripts and forms a relevant response based on the query raised. Considerably increasing the response rate of your hotel and reducing the turnaround time. 

How can Guestara help you make the hotel guest engagement smooth?

Managing a hospitality business comprises several issues such as staff shortages, evolving market trends, outdated processes, etc. Amidst all of this, although being the most important aspect, it oftentimes becomes difficult for the staff to engage with guests at every stage. But what’s the solution you may ask?

Well, it’s Guestara! An inclusive hotel guest management platform to drive exceptional growth and revenue. By offering industry proven guest engagement solutions with a focus on enhancing your guest’s satisfaction. Guestara is what your hotel needs to make your guest engagement process seamless. 

1. Send personalised messages at the exact stage of the guest journey

hotel guest engagement

You must not go wrong or worse, miss out on sending personalised messages to your guests during their stay. To make the process easier, Guestara helps you to send personalised messages based on the specified guest’s journey stage, i.e. pre-stay, in-stay and post-stay. Listed here are a few hotel guest engagement ideas for your quick reference: 

  • Send booking confirmation messages, reminders and check-in process at the pre-stay stage; 
  • Check-in or upsell messages during the in-stay stage;
  • Check out and feedback request messages during the post-stay stage.

2. Engage with your guest via their preferred communication channel 

communication platforms

Every guest has their preferred way of communicating or requesting a service. Unlike traditional methods of calling the front desk or requesting services in person — Guestara, which is integrated with WhatsApp, SMS, email, etc allows your guests to seamlessly interact with your staff via their preferred digital channel.

Moreover, on the back end, the hotel guest engagement platform enables your staff to track and manage all your guest messages in one unified hub. Clubbed with Guestara’s 24/7 AI chat support, your guests can receive accurate and prompt responses to general queries.

3. Manage and access your customisable templates in a unified platform 

Hotel unified inbox

Easy-to-use and customisable templates are the most convenient methods for prompt communication. Guestara helps you save considerable time and effort by allowing you to manage and access all the templates on one platform. 

You can customise these guest engagement templates based on your hotel’s brand voice, guest preferences, etc. Following this, you must set a trigger to send it during the specific stage of the guest journey to optimise efficiency. 

4. Track and analyse best-performing guest engagement templates and channel

An overview of the best-performing guest engagement templates and communication channels will be displayed on your dashboard. Track and analyse metrics of the templates and the medium that garnered more click-through rates or conversions. 

This profound analytical data will help you focus more on campaigns that work and re-evaluate strategies that didn’t. 

Conclusion 

Guest engagement has always played a pivotal role in enhancing the overall experience of a guest’s stay. Investing in the best hotel guest engagement platform must be your only viable choice. 

With Guestara’s all-inclusive hotel guest engagement software - save your time by streamlining communications, optimising revenue and increasing guest satisfaction. Book a demo to speak with our experts today!

FAQs

1. What are guest engagement solutions?

Guest engagement solutions include a varied range of strategies that can be incorporated as per the hotel’s preference. Personalising experiences using data analytics, automating processes, offering multilingual support, etc could be a few of the strategies that a hotel can implement to improve guest satisfaction and brand reputation. 

2. How can hotel guest engagement software improve communication?

Hotel guest engagement software simplifies complex and routine hotel processes. A fully optimised guest engagement software will enable your hotel to effectively communicate with the guests by assessing the stage of their journey. It will also enable you to offer prompt responses, thereby improving guest communication to a higher level.

3. How to engage with hotel guests?

Actively listening to your guest’s concerns right from the time they book a stay until they checkout is the most effective way to engage with your hotel guests. It’s also important to effectively communicate and provide a reason for not being able to meet certain guest’s requests. This further enhances their trust in you, thereby increasing their chances of guest retention and referrals. 

Yashika Karkera
Senior Content Writer
Subscribe to our newsletter
Read about our privacy policy.
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.

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