How to Drive Guest Loyalty with Hotel Tech • WebRezPro

Repeat guests enable a hotel to prosper by providing a dependable income stream. According to Skift research, 30 to 60 percent of room revenue comes from guests in loyalty programs. While loyalty programs are great for hotel groups, there are other ways to earn loyal customers. Technology is key, enabling hoteliers to personalize the guest experience, communicate effectively, and deliver seamless service. Here’s how. 

Hotel technology such as property management and customer relationship management systems automatically collect data to create guest profiles and provide an easy way to manage and access that data. 

A property management system (PMS) helps you get to know your guests by keeping a record of reservation data and guest preferences, so you can provide a personalized stay experience. A customer relationship management system (CRM) collates guest data from your PMS and external sources too (such as website interactions, feedback surveys, and past communications), for targeted campaigns and messaging that resonates with guests and drives revenue. Both data sets combined give you the widest, most useful range of knowledge to work with. 

Rich profile data enables you to personalize the stay for each guest. Make note of any special details such as birthdays, anniversaries, and special requests. Next time, you can send an extra blanket up to their room before they even have to ask. For your extra special VIP guests, you can send champagne. WebRezPro PMS allows you to assign color-coded VIP status to reservations, so you know which guests to roll out the red carpet for. 

Disability accommodations and allergies are important to record as well. If those aren’t taken care of, the guest will remember your hotel for all the wrong reasons and maybe even take their woes to social media (tik, tok, time for damage control…) 

Guest profiles are key to personalizing the guest experience, and personalization is crucial to loyalty, with seventy-eight percent of customers more likely to purchase multiple times from businesses who use it. For your guests to come back again and again, you need to know them on an individual level. 

Guest data also enables you to get to know your target market better so you can provide the services, amenities, and offers they care about most. However, not every guest needs every offer; business travelers aren’t going to book the honeymoon suite with rose petals. In fact, if you send too many off base promotions, guests won’t open them at all. Even back in 2015, 94 percent of consumers had dropped communications with a business because the promotions were irrelevant.

To ensure that your promotions, packages, and campaigns are on point, you need to segment your guests into different groups depending on their demographics, interests, and past behaviors, which is where your PMS and CRM come in again. These two systems can (and should) be integrated so that guest and reservation data from your PMS is automatically sent to your CRM, which then uses that data (along with other guest data in the CRM) to create guest segments that help you target messaging more effectively and improve the relevance of your offers, amenities, and services. 

In general, you want to sell at the highest price the guest is willing to pay. If you don’t, you’re leaving money on the table and reducing your profits. The exception is when you offer a discount to build good will over the long term, for instance, with loyalty program members or repeat corporate business. 

An automated revenue management system (RMS) takes the guesswork out of determining the right price for your customers. Using sophisticated algorithms, an RMS analyzes your property’s data along with demand and competitor data from across the market to make optimal pricing recommendations. Offering the right price is not only important for maximizing your revenue, it prevents you from alienating otherwise loyal guests by setting the cost too high. What you charge needs to be commensurate with what you offer, if not, then your reputation will take a hit, and guests won’t return. 

As ever, knowing your audience matters. Well-heeled jet setters will pay more than roadtripping families (though the kids will squabble in the back seat regardless). 

A personalized, efficient means of communication is important for building guest relationships too. Guests need to be able to address any questions and concerns and have those resolved quickly, while staff need to convey information such as check-in times, available amenities, upsells, and so on. 

This is where guest messaging software comes in. Sending and receiving text messages is faster than using a landline and more convenient than making a call, and they boast a 98 percent open rate, which means your guests will read them. Guests can also conveniently send requests from anywhere on (or off) the property (a cell phone, unlike a landline, fits in their pool bag).

WebRezPro integrates with several mobile messaging providers, including Akia, Breezeway, Duve, and Revinate.

When it comes to routine communications like booking confirmations, email is still the way to go. Such transactional emails have an 80-85 percent average open rate, so you can be confident guests will look at them as well. Booking confirmations and pre-arrival/check-in emails ensure guests have all the information they need, and post-stay emails provide you with the opportunity to thank the guest and invite them back next time, strengthening the guest relationship. Use your PMS to automate these routine emails, ensuring every guest receives the right information at the right time. Messages are automatically personalized and triggered based on reservation data.

Both email and mobile messaging enable you to deliver better customer service by providing relevant information and responding promptly to any issues. Good customer service is key to bringing guests back with 88 percent of consumers who report that it makes them likelier to buy again. 

Seamless service isn’t only about communicating effectively with guests (though that is important). All functions of the hotel, i.e., Wi-Fi access, the check-in process, in-room tech, etc.,  should be efficient and easy to use. 

Speedy, secure Wi-Fi is paramount. It’s used across guest segments, by everyone from families to business travelers. In the UK, 60 percent of guests won’t come back to a property with poor or no Wi-Fi, and trying to find that one spot in the corner where the service works if you stand on tiptoe isn’t any more fun across the Atlantic. Choose a Wi-Fi provider with strong tech support and a specialization in hospitality. 

However, just because your Wi-Fi works doesn’t mean you’re done. Guests should be able to stream their own content, plug in their devices, and use any other digital features of the room with ease. Don’t make it complicated! 

Self-service options are in hot demand by consumers and boost operational efficiency too. In particular, guest self check-in saves time for both guests and staff by allowing guests to bypass the front desk and check themselves in digitally. A modern PMS like WebRezPro makes implementing self check-in easy with digital (online) guest registration, integrated payment processing, and mobile key integrations. 

Speaking of integrations, connecting your PMS to your other hotel systems improves operational efficiency, which translates to seamless service. For example, a POS integration automates the process of posting restaurant or gift shop charges to the guest’s reservation so they don’t have to get their wallet out every time, while integration with a smart room system can allow guests to control room features such as temperature and lighting via a convenient app on their phone.

And, of course, there’s loyalty programs. Just because you aren’t a Hilton or Marriott doesn’t mean you can’t offer rewards to keep guests returning. Punch above your weight class by participating in a larger program such as Preferred Patron or Stash Hotel Rewards. These programs enable guests to use points across a variety of independent hotels and other outlets so that they don’t have to worry about signing up for something that’s only relevant once. They may also come with special marketing features and tiered recognition structures. 

Seventy-seven percent of hoteliers who employ technology to shape the guest experience say that loyalty is one of their most important goals, as it should be. Having the right technology ensures that you can deliver the personalized, top-notch service that keeps guests coming back for more.