Relationships with guests must be your hotel’s priority. It’s a good idea to take another look at how the guest relation to your hotel manifests itself to optimise the guest journey. Customer Alliance can help you to achieve this. Strengthen relationships with guests before, during, and after their stay in your hotel. How? Focus on guest communication at each touchpoint during the stay.
Welcome the guest prior to check-in
There’s no doubt that the welcome given to guests by your team at reception is important. But one of the keys to building a good relationship with a guest is the communication that goes on prior to their arrival. It’s vital to make a good start so that they’ll receive the best possible welcome when they arrive. Customer Alliance can help you out here, thanks to the pre-stay invitation. The guest receives an email summarising their booking details. This email includes information as well as the facilities and services available in your establishment (restaurant, spa, etc.). Include tips on places to visit in the surrounding area or information on how to get to your hotel. Available in 20 different languages, this email, sent automatically, lays the foundations for a good guest relation.
Another reason why pre-stay guest communication is necessary is linked to OTAs. More specifically, it’s linked to the role played by OTAs in communicating with your guests. OTAs take over relationships with customers at your expense, so it’s important to take back control. Communicate directly with guests who have made a booking via Booking.com to give yourself the best possible chance.
Keep up guest communication during the stay
The guest collects their key and heads to their room. So, is that it until checkout? Absolutely not! If you keep the conversation going with your guest during their stay, without being overly intrusive of course, you’ll be able to anticipate any potential problems they might have.
Customer Alliance’s Instant Survey has been around for a few years now. The aim behind it is to get a sense of the guest’s first impressions and assess the quality of your services offered during the stay. The Instant Survey, therefore, gives you some room for manoeuvre when it comes to reacting to any claims that may emerge.
By implementing this form of guest communication, you’ll avoid any unpleasant surprises when it’s time for your guest to check out and will also have successfully formed a concrete and lasting connection with your guest. This can only have a positive impact on your guests’ overall satisfaction level.
Staying in contact: the key to guest loyalty
So, the final stage of your guest’s stay has arrived, and your receptionist is ready to ask the traditional question about their experience in your hotel. You need to continue the efforts made prior to and during the stay, but how exactly? By keeping the dialogue going with the guest after their stay. Customer Alliance offers you the possibility to manage your after-stay guest communication. Invite guests to leave reviews either via a personalised questionnaire or on the major platforms such as TripAdvisor or Google. The main aim of this is, of course, to increase your online presence.
But beyond this increased visibility, you also benefit from an opportunity that can prove crucial when faced with competition from other hotels and from OTAs. You’ve kept up the communication with your guest and will be able to build a connection and establish a relationship of loyalty. As well as asking guests to leave reviews, why not personalise your message by offering to send special promotions, for example? By doing so, you’ll considerably increase your chances of welcoming this guest back to your hotel and of gaining a direct booking (if you didn’t last time). Alongside the long-term commercial interest, this offers, you’ll also develop a better sense of your guests’ requirements and expectations which will enable you to always meet these.
To sum up improving guest relation
The relationship you have with your guest is important at every stage of the guest’s journey; it shapes the experience the guest will have in your establishment. Customer Alliance can help you meet the challenge of customer communication before, during, and after the stay. Managing guest relationships successfully will have a real impact on your business in terms of revenue, guest satisfaction, and loyalty.
Find out how we can help you to build lasting, quality relationships with your clients: ask for a free presentation with one of our experts, who will be very happy to answer your questions.
