ENHANCE GUEST SATISFACTION
The ultimate guide to elevating the guest experience
When it comes to the hotel experience, elevating guest satisfaction is the ultimate goal.
But in reality, this is much more complex than it sounds.
Hoteliers are faced with figuring out how to put guests first, while juggling operational challenges, budget, and labor shortages.
If you’re a hotel manager looking for ways to improve service and ensure optimal guest satisfaction, read on!
What is guest satisfaction?
Guest satisfaction refers to the experience your guests have in your establishment, represented by the fulfilment of your guest's wishes, expectations, and needs, or the pleasure derived from this.
Guest satisfaction is also measured by the service offered in your hotel in comparison to the competition.
You can gauge and optimize your performance constantly and measure it in a precise manner by collecting feedback.
Unsatisfied visitors may file complaints with the hotel, leave bad reviews online, and, ultimately, damage the hotel’s reputation.
On the other hand, happy guests are more likely to make repeat bookings and recommend your hotel to others, which positively impacts future growth
Why is guest satisfaction important?
Hotels must address rapidly changing guest behaviors, preferences, and expectations.
Properties that are able to deliver a memorable experience through unique amenities, personal touches, and stellar customer service will be rewarded with repeat business.
Peer-to-peer reviews and word-of-mouth referrals have also become so important to travelers in the hotel shopping process, that it now impacts every property’s bottom line.
What’s being said about your property is more important than ever before, and your operations team takes center stage in your brand’s reputation among your guests.
How guest satisfaction impacts hotel reviews
Online reviews are now one of the most influential demand drivers for the hotel industry.
More and more travelers are sharing information, pictures, and details about their personal experiences on sites that can make-or-break decisions for others looking to book.
With sites like TripAdvisor, Yelp, and Google, it has become the norm to share reviews publicly.
Smartphones have increased this trend, and travelers are now sharing their feedback before, during, and after their stay.
In an Amadeus study, 50% of travelers polled say they rely on advice from friends and family, while 49% use social media to learn more about their next destination. Peer-to-peer reviews are now becoming the most influential reason why customers choose one hotel over another.
To explore this further, Amadeus sat down with No Vacancy’s Glenn Haussman to talk about why peer-to-peer reviews are so powerful and motivational for the hotel industry. The conversation revealed that people value other’s opinions so much because they trust travelers that share their own personal experiences more than a hotel’s advertising.
Top factors influencing guest satisfaction
Dirty rooms, slow housekeeping response times, lack of staff friendliness, and long check-in waits are all examples of negative experiences that ultimately hurts the guest experience.
A study by Deloitte recently examined guest satisfaction on key experience factors in a hotel stay. Their survey confirmed a series of well-acknowledged industry “truths.” See left visual.
But it also revealed some areas where guest expectations have evolved that can prove to be differentiators in the hospitality guest experience.
Well-acknowledged industry “truths”
Most important factors for guest satisfaction are:
- the basics: clean room, well-maintained facilities, good value, good location, and a quiet environment
- being recognized by staff: feeling like they are known and feeling heard (having their concerns addressed)
- getting access to technology and tools without affecting personal interactions with staff negatively
Hotel guest satisfaction tips and best practices
It is highly recommended to leverage your CRS, CRM and SO platforms to understand how customers behave and experience your services based on the context of their travel.
This in turn can allow you to proactively send targeted promotions or fine-tune upselling offers.
Beyond systems, other ways to provide a unique guest experience could be to leave a small welcome gift in each room, offer free refreshments in the lobby, and empower your staff to provide superior service.
For instance, if you have a couple that is celebrating their anniversary at your hotel, consider leaving a bottle of champagne or chocolate covered strawberries for them upon arrival. It’s a small gesture that they will surely remember and appreciate.
Post-booking guest communications
Establish a connection with the guest as soon as possible with a follow-up email. This will allow you to set the tone for the guest’s stay and help you gather valuable information about them before they even step foot on your property.
Offer simple but thoughtful services such as extra pillows or dinner reservations. This is a great way to build more complete guest profiles, show your commitment to customer service, and even reinforce your brand promise and reputation.
Offer guests freebies and complimentary services
Providing guests with a little extra, by offering a few services for free, can help endear guests to you and your brand.
Offering complimentary services is an effective strategy for providing customer service that guests will go home and tell their friends about — or better yet, share on social media.
It can be as simple as offering free spa passes or a free shuttle to the airport or to local attractions.
Implement hotel in-room technology
For example, properties have the option to install “smart room keys” that allow guests to open their room doors with a simple swipe of their smartphone.
Tablets and apps are proving to be an effective communication tool for guests and staff. From their room, travelers can make a request in just a few clicks that is routed to a staff member’s mobile device and answered in a matter of minutes. The hotel can also use these devices to promote paid amenities or local attractions.
Be proactive in your hotel service
Rather than waiting for a customer complaint, it is recommended to move from a reactive to a proactive service model that improves customer satisfaction and retention.
For example, if a guest due to arrive has stayed with you before, or if you have gathered information during booking, you can use that information to personalize their experience.
This guest data is valuable to provide more personalized and memorable experiences.
Did they have an issue previously that you could make up for during this stay, perhaps by upgrading their room type? Or did they mention they were traveling with children, giving you the opportunity to leave a few toys or treats in their room prior to their arrival?
Offer multiple guest communication channels
Most travelers today show interest in using smartphones to request service and message hotel staff. Leveraging messaging technology and system integrations to deliver a better guest experience can be greatly beneficial for both the guests and hotel.
This is a win-win situation as guests get faster and more personalized service while hotels maximize operating efficiencies and workflows to conserve resources and reduce costs.
By leveraging guest information from a PMS or CRM system, hotel staff can send personalized text messages based on guest profiles and use that data to automate messages. This can help hotel staff better serve guests through more individualized communication.
Text and voice are already revolutionizing domestic technology, from mobile and kitchen devices to cars.
Create an inclusive and accessible experience for all guests
World demographic indicators show a growing, aging population, with the proportion of the world's population over 60 years nearly doubling from 12% to 22% by 2050 (World Health Organization data).
For hoteliers, it’s important to consider not just how your property is configured to accommodate disabilities, but how your processes and customer service strategies are designed as well.
Technology is key in creating a truly inclusive strategy that makes travel accessible for everyone.
The travel industry is moving forward, developing mobile apps with accessible travel search engines, boarding passes in accessible formats and collating user-generated content on accessibility (through reviews and complaints.
Some hospitality companies have started to incorporate artificial intelligence assistance for voice-operated travel bookings. Mobile apps allow guests access to their rooms and other facilities, and virtual reality technology can help demonstrate accommodations and services.
Maximizing technology to improve the guest experience
Hospitality is a human business
The world’s digitization is accelerating at a rapid rate, meaning technology that was once complementary may now be essential.
Incorporating digitalization and automation into everyday practices gives hoteliers the opportunity to amplify team capabilities and focus more on the guests.
Your housekeeping team takes a center stage in your brand’s reputation amongst your guests as they have the most interactions with them.
Hotel automation technology to augment personal interactions
In a people-first industry, finding a balance between high-tech and high-touch has the potential to have a profound effect on the guest experience.
In order for teams to efficiently balance their day, execute work, and deliver meaningful interactions to guests, they need that valuable time to be more anticipatory and engaging. In this context, technology can be used to optimize processes.
Digital transformation in hotel operations
As hotels face evolving changes in guest behaviors after COVID-19, they must address the challenge of how to best service guests and manage hotel operations.
Travelers are now expecting rapid response times when it comes to service, as well as having their needs met without touching in-room equipment or being face-to-face with staff members.
Rapid advancements in hospitality technologies like voice assistants, door locks, and Bluetooth low energy systems have also unlocked new ways for hoteliers to offer contactless experiences.
Moreover, the stronger the connection between technologies and flow of data, the stronger your operation can become to work smarter and not harder. Check out our ‘Power of integrated hotel technology’ infographic to learn more.
Technology can really amplify your team’s capabilities and productivity, as well as streamline many of your property’s processes for bottom line results. This can be achieved by leveraging the power of hotel digital transformation to empower teams and win over your guests.
Having technology assist your teams in all phases of the guest experience—before, during, and post-stay—by ensuring that critical touchpoints along the guest journey will result in positive outcomes. In this context,
An increasing contactless hotel experience
Properties are increasingly implementing more standard hotel contactless experiences that enhance guest satisfaction and operational efficiency.
These now include digital room keys, mobile payments, and voice command technology.
Not only do these offer conveniences for the guest, but also meet the need for heightened cleanliness standards.
In much the same way we’ve seen more contactless check-in options at the airport, digital, contactless, and chat-based hotel experiences at the property improve guest satisfaction
Higher levels of contactless experience through automation have been implemented by hotels during the pandemic: self-service options, destination experience platforms, and even ‘ghost kitchens’, where a third-party kitchen supplies a hotel that’s closed its own, have all boomed during the pandemic.
Yet with the number of contactless and staff enablement solutions on the market today, how do you decide which ones will bring the most value to your guests and your employees? Here are aspects to Consider When selecting technology to support guest interactions and staff safety.
Hoteliers that can use staff skills and technology in harmony will undoubtedly have a competitive edge in the new world of travel. From serving basic customer needs to execute highly personalized and anticipatory services, leveraging the right technology can make a world of difference in providing an exceptional stay and creating happy, returning guests.
Further embracing digital tools and considering operational actions based on a hybrid model of hotel contactless and personal guest engagement will also ease concerns and help guests once again embrace everything they love about travel
Evolving guest behaviors
We have seen before that hotels face rapidly changing guest behaviors, preferences, and expectations.
To adapt to these shifting guest behaviors, properties should look to deliver a memorable experience through unique amenities, personal touches, and stellar customer service.
Looking to the future, taking into account other changing trends, will also be strategic.
Hotels that address expectations of the new wellness-focused guest will be better positioned to attract bookings. The more they strive to adjust to these new patterns, the more they are likely to be rewarded with repeat business, word-of-mouth referrals, and positive reviews on social media.
What are guests asking for?
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What is affecting their stay?
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Faced with these challenges along with reduced staffing levels, hotels should consider tools to help orchestrate hotal tasks such as automating room assignments, managing housekeeping opt-out programs, and proactively scheduling maintenance checks to help give limited time back to already scaled-down teams.
Guest personalization throughout their journey
The new guest journey
To differentiate your property in a crowded market, you must satisfy heightened expectations from guests.
These are now seeking more unique, tailored, and tech-driven experiences on the go.
Knowing your guests allows you to meet their precise needs and provide personalized hotel experiences. Hoteliers are increasingly turning to technology to better understand travelers and what matters to them in order to deepen the consumer-brand relationship and personalize every phase of the guest journey – from inspiration and shopping, to the onsite experience, to post-departure.
Personalization should be a critical component of guest engagement from looking and booking to checkout and beyond (Read our article: Where everybody knows your name).
Benefits are multiple:
- You can deliver the right offer, upsell, or enhancement to guests on your website and booking engine based on centralized profile data.
- You can offer them additional enhancement and upsell opportunities in pre-stay communications.
- Your guests remain engaged with your property or brand after their stay.
Recognize, reward, and personalize the guest experience at every interaction, and you’ll be well on your way to showing guests that you always know their name, and you’re always glad they came.
Pre-stay: A personalized booking experience
Your hotel website and direct channel should be your best “salesperson” as it is the most profitable channel option and allows you to build a relationship with prospective guests from the first interaction.
It must showcase your best features and be easy to navigate, especially when it comes to the booking process.
So the more you present your property in a highly customized way, the more successful you become.
A personalized booking experience can bring direct bookings to new heights, but as the direct channel use grows, so does customer expectations.
In this context, what is needed is a seamless and frictionless experience across the booking flow – from web, to booking engine and confirmation.
Discover additional strategies and tactics to make your website and booking engine a high-converting powerhouse in our ultimate guide to increase direct bookings.
On-stay: Providing a personalized experience
Hoteliers that can unlock the power of guest data are ideally positioned to create lasting, meaningful guest relationships that keep them coming back through personalized offers they want to buy.
Another challenge hotels face is competition from alternative accommodations such as Airbnb.
To compete with these new players, hotels must capitalize on their strength - service. Indeed, hotels have a significant advantage because hotel staff are groomed in hospitality, placing an emphasis on excellent service.
And excellent service is expected to be more and more personalized throughout your guest’s journey. Here are 8 tips to use personalization to differentiate your property and rise above the competition.
To help hoteliers more effectively manage guests’ greatest concerns and challenges, we created the `Building Data-Based Guest Personas' eBook below that includes a toolkit with nine templates for common hotel guest personas:
Post-stay: Keeping your guests engaged
During the last stage of the guest journey, hotels can provide exceptional value to guests.
This will not only make them happy, but keeps them coming back again and again.
The resulting loyalty is a crucial metric for customer satisfaction, and one common and effective way to gauge this is to send post-stay surveys to your guests.
These also give guests an opportunity to shine light on the good and the bad of their stay while the experience is fresh in their mind.
Perhaps the front desk staff went above and beyond during check-in, but the guest was not able to get a reservation at the on-premise restaurant. Read more in our article: Leveraging the Power of Surveys to Drive Loyalty.
Emailing throughout the guest journey
Many hoteliers often underappreciate the value of a well-structured email to communicate with guests before, during and after their stay.
With over 4 billion daily email users, hotel email marketing is a channel not to be missed throughout the guest's stay and can go a long way to enhancing his/her experience and loyalty.
These emails can then be automated using your Guest Management System. Some of the best practices to follow when creating emails include:
- Relevant copy and information
- A clear call-to-action for readers to take
- Clear layout with a balance between images and text
Find out more about how to create effective emails for different needs and explore our library of downloadable hotel email templates.
How to Elevate Guest Satisfaction with Scaled-Down Operations
Celebrating the Heart of Hospitality
This International Housekeeping Week, we’re shining a light on the dedication and hard work of housekeepers who make every guest experience unforgettable. Join us in celebrating their essential work.
Ready, set, elevate guest satisfaction!
We hope that this guide was useful for you
As travel continues to rebuild globally, hoteliers are taking the time to reevaluate the fundamentals of how they’ve historically operated and strategize new ways to scale-up guest satisfaction with scaled-down operations.
Fortunately, incorporating digitalization and automation into everyday practices can give hoteliers the opportunity to amplify team capabilities, driving focus to what’s truly important – the guests. Hoteliers that can best adapt to the new forces shaping operations will be the first to experience positive revenue impact.
By considering these actions on how to elevate guest satisfaction, and amplifying team’s capabilities with new technologies, hotels can find the balance needed to succeed in this new – and evolving – world of travel.
Discover how Amadeus Service Optimization solutions, including the new HotSOS experience, enable hoteliers to manage housekeeping, cleanliness, maintenance, and other vital operational tasks with efficiency—and how you can gain access special features and pricing for a limited time in support of hospitality recovery.
You can also access our other comprehensive guides for hoteliers:
- The hospitality market insights hub
- The ultimate guide to hotel marketing
- The ultimate guide to guest loyalty
- The ultimate guide to grow hotel groups and events business
We wish you a lot of success in your guest satisfaction strategies, and please do not hesitate to contact us if you would like to discuss how to elevate your guest satisfaction strategies.
