When it comes to making your hospitality business a success, the guest experience is king. With the range of new tech solutions on the market, choosing the best option to boost this experience is tricky; getting it right can mean you’ll not just reap the rewards of happy guests (and repeat bookings) but could save money, too.
Sounds too good to be true? Here are the tech tools to consider bringing on board your hospitality business for happier guests and an equally delighted bank balance!
Upselling Platforms
An upselling platform does exactly what it says on the tin: and more! The right hotel upsell platform can increase your revenue by providing tailored upselling opportunities such as personalized experiences, services, and upgrades.
The magic behind a great upselling platform is that it can allow you to anticipate your guests’ needs for the real wow factor. It does so by analyzing data from past visits and information provided during the check-in process, meaning you can provide discounts, offers, and upgrades based on each guest’s preferences.
A great example is tailored check-ins and check-outs: as an upsell, this facility adds convenience and a personal touch for your guests and increases revenue for your business: win-win! Let’s explore this further…
Online Check-Ins
Offering online check-ins is one of the easiest ways to ensure your guests enjoy a great start to their stay while saving you staff time – and, therefore, money! Online check-ins mean that arriving visitors can skip the queue at the front desk and head straight to their room after their journey: a significant bonus.
The check-in process takes, on average, around eight minutes: the saving in staff time you’ll make by moving things online is likely to be significant. And this is time your staff can spend, instead, doing the most important job: ensuring every single guest has the best time possible!
Smart Keys
As part of deploying online check-ins, why not go the whole hog and offer your guests smart keys, too – making for an even smoother stay? A smart key system dispenses with regular physical keys, instead turning your guests’ mobile devices into their room keys!
As with online check-ins, smart keys remove friction from your guest experience – plus, your staff are spared the time spent dealing with, and replacing, lost keys.
Chat Bots
While large establishments can staff the front desk 24/7, this is often impossible for smaller or new hotels operating on a tight budget. But tech can come to the rescue here, too! Clever use of a chatbot means that most guest queries can still be dealt with, whatever time of the day or night they happen to be made.
Chatbots have come a long way since their original clunky incarnations, where you had to ask an exceptionally specifically worded question to get a sensible answer. Now, they’re intuitive, smart, and user-friendly and can be programmed to respond to a vast array of queries in a relevant, friendly fashion.
This means that whether a guest has a question about what time breakfast is served in the morning or where the nearest bank is located, they’ll be able to quickly and easily get the information they need. As a bonus, many guests may use a chatbot even when your front desk is staffed, especially if they have a non-complex query – so you’ll save on staff time, too.
Data Gathering
Although this may sound clinical, it’s one of the most effective ways to promote a better guest experience and ensure your operation runs as efficiently (and cost-effectively) as possible.
Your hotel’s mobile app, website, and social media platforms are all great places to capture relevant data to get the big picture on guest experience and find out what’s working and areas for improvement. Use the in-built analytical tools of each to mine the data you need to discover valuable insights.
Think about key stages in the guest journey at which to ask for feedback or the best points to send a personalized message to check in and ensure that your guest’s stay is running smoothly. A good time to send an initial communication is the morning after arrival to determine whether everything is meeting the guest’s expectations. After this, you could consider sending another check at the midpoint of the stay and perhaps a survey (with an invitation to join your loyalty club) post-check-out.
Using Tech to Personalize the Guest Experience
You may be concerned that incorporating tech solutions into your establishment’s processes could downgrade the personal nature of the guest experience; however, when used wisely, tech can enhance this aspect of a stay.
The tech tools and platforms listed above are all designed to make each guest’s stay more tailored to their preferences, whether by anticipating their needs before they phone down to your front desk or figuring out how to uplevel their next visit.
As well as benefiting your guests, these solutions also help your bottom line by bringing in extra revenue, saving you significantly on staff time, and cutting back on waste, meaning that your operation will run more efficiently.
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