Here’s Why Your Hotel Needs Guest Engagement Technologies
Here’s Why Your Hotel Needs
Guest Engagement Technologies
It’s quickly becoming clear that today’s hotel guests are increasingly looking for unique experiences whether they’re traveling abroad or staying at a local hotel. However most Hotels today still offer roughly the same style rooms, the same amenities, the same rates and more or less the same meals. Sure, there are unique hotel experiences and boutique hotels to choose from, but far too many still need of a serious differentiation if they’re going to stand out among endless hotel choices and in the minds of travelers. One of the best ways to stand out, while leaving a lasting impression is by engaging ‘smarter’ with guests during their stay.
One of the best ways to stand out, while leaving a lasting impression is by engaging ‘smarter’ with guests during their stay. Sounds easy enough, right? But what does that really mean, and how can hotels engage in ways that aren’t intrusive to their guest’s privacy? We’re going to dive into that in this post.
It used to be that engagement implied face-to-face interactions which usually occurred at the front desk or in front of a guest’s room door. But our culture has changed. Face-to-face is great, but it is really limited in terms of how much time your hotel staff has with your guest. By engaging with the guest through mobile devices, hoteliers are now able to communicate with more guests, in less time and doing on their own terms.
Sure, you can never go wrong with a polite ‘Hello’ and ‘Good Morning’, but we’re living in a digital age, and today’s technology can help your hotel staff engage with your guests on a much smarter level.
The preponderance of mobile devices means that we are all used to managing our world through our interactive screen. So it should be no surprise that hotel management should utilize interactive screens as a key driving force behind smart hotel guest engagement.
But wait, let’s back up for a second…
WHAT EXACTLY IS DURING STAY GUEST ENGAGEMENT?
At its core, Guest Engagement is about increasing the frequency and quality of interactions with the customers and guests during their stay in your hotel, with the end goal of driving higher customer satisfaction as well as ancillary revenue, brand affinity and repeat business.
When you really think about it, checking into a hotel hasn’t really changed over the past 15 years. The process is still very similar. Guests arrive at the front desk, wait in line, the clerk checks them in and hands them a room key/card and points them towards their hotel room.
In a sense, nothing has really changed in the past few years, except, well everything has changed. Guests today prefer mobile over face-to-face communication, they demand Wi-Fi that’s better than “at home”, they even bring their own content with them, and share their experiences (good or bad) instantly.
WHY HOTELS NEED GUEST ENGAGEMENT TECHNOLOGY
Engagement is all about building relationships and understanding your guest’s behaviors. Relationships are about finding extraordinary ways to deliver value that makes their lives better and easier.
Some of the world’s best hotels are already utilizing guest engagement technologies as part of their marketing strategies, by offering add-ons during the check-in process, such as room service, unique TV content, parking etc. Guests have been shown to be more responsive to upsells when shopping on their own phone at their own pace than when standing at a front-desk impatiently waiting for their key.
That being said, before hoteliers embark on a quest to become fully digitized, it’s crucial to ask yours what kind of kind of guest experience you are trying to provide. A hospitality business exists for and because of its guests, and therefore all operational decisions, including choosing what technology to implement, should be informed by a careful consideration of what will improve and enhance the guest experience, what will help you to win bookings during the path to purchase, and ultimately inspire trust in your brand over your competitors.
Viggo’s Smart Stay application provides hoteliers with the ability to engage with their guests the way they have come to expect, to prevent bad reviews, to increase your revenues and to raise your hotel rating.
In short, when you consider your guest engagement strategies for 2018 and evaluate your choices for additions of technologies, make sure you have a strong foundation on which to build. Guest feedback and online reviews have the power to not only inspire trust in your brand and to foster increased loyalty but can also inform your future technological and operational decisions.
WHAT'S NEXT?
Want to find out more about how your hotel can take advantage of the latest hotel guest engagement technologies, and implementation? Contact us today. We’d love to talk.
DIGITAL CHALLENGES FOR HOTELIERS IN 2017
In order to better assess the daily digital challenges hoteliers are faced with, we’ve prepared a short 8-minute survey which we would appreciate your participation in.
https://goo.gl/forms/
As a token of our appreciation, we’re giving away a Montblanc pen to one of the first 50 participating hoteliers. The winner will be chosen at random following the completed survey results.
