It is not a stretch to say that everyone wants to feel special. They don’t want to feel as if they are just a face in the crowd or—when it comes to hotels—just another guest.
Some of the most memorable stays at a hotel for guests is when they are made to feel special, whether it’s their favorite snacks waiting in the guestroom for when they arrive or a staff member having a favorite drink ready when they get to the on-site bar their second night at the property.
Hotels are recognizing that personalization makes for better stays—and keeps guests coming back—so they are putting a lot of effort into finding out what guests want.
“The marketplace for hotels has shifted a lot, whether it is pandemic-driven or not, in terms of guest experiences and how to connect and create loyalty,” said Kim Lawton, president/CEO, Enthuse Marketing Group. “There are a lot of options with things like Airbnb and varying competitive spaces that they didn’t have before.”
A personal connection can make a big difference. “Relationships are a big, big deal to people, and they want to trust someone,” she said. “They want to feel like it’s their space, not just everybody getting the same attention.”
With guests having so many options, connecting with them on a human level is very important. “That is what they can offer as a competitive advantage,” said Lawton. “If you deliver a guest experience that is memorable and personal, someone’s going to want to come back. That loyalty also gets spread to others, and they will want to go to that property.”
There are three phases to the personalization of a guest’s experience, according to Lawton. The first is before they even arrive on property.
She cited her own experience with a trip she recently went on. “I received an email asking if I was coming for a special occasion or if I needed anything,” she said. “Just that email made me feel special. I told them I was going to be there for a work trip. I would barely be in my room and working nonstop. But when I got to my room, there was a little bag with bottles of water and hydration packs. There was a note that said, ‘I know you are busy. Hope this helps!”
That note made her day and her entire experience at the hotel. “If you can make someone’s day by a handwritten note or a little thing to acknowledge a customer coming to your property, or if you know someone is coming in late, just having their room and key ready can make their stay even better.”
Reaching out to a guest before they arrive to the hotel allows for several opportunities to personalize their stay. “It is getting the information in the employees’ hands, and they can make it their own,” said Lawton. “Then they are feeling more passionate and motivated about their work.”
Empowering employees to do those types of things is vital at all points in the guest experience. An employee can overhear that a guest forgot their toothpaste and have it delivered to them, or they can see that a guest just had a successful meeting and can send them champagne.
The post-stay survey is also an opportunity for hotels to add personalization. “That is where personalization and empowering staff could really come in,” said Lawton. “If there was a detail that staff remembers about a guest’s stay that you could put in a CRM or survey, it would be incredible. Something along the lines of ‘I know you had an early flight. I hope everything went off OK.’”
Although technology can be seen as something that takes the human touch out of the guest stay, Lawton sees it as something that can help with personalization, especially when it comes to AI.
“With AI and all that it is capable of, it can put together much of the data from different sources that aren’t always easily connected to create a footprint of a guest,” she said. “It can show they booked the stay two days before they arrived, or that they generally go to dinner late or that they forgot their toothpaste the last three times they stayed. It can offer a late reservation for them or have toothpaste already waiting in the room.”
With so much competition for the guest stay, making a stay memorable brings them back. “When it goes back to why personalized experiences matter, it’s that loyalty and that customer satisfaction because the repeat customer is very valuable,” she said. “That saves you in your marketing. I always say, ‘You tell a good experience to one person, but you tell a bad experience to 50 people.’”
