Importance Of Guest Experience In Hotel: Gain Lifetime Guest

Indeed, guests' experience and satisfaction are vital in all types of hospitality industries, such as restaurants, hotels, motel travel agencies etc. Usually, the importance of guest experience in hotel industry is always the first priority for any type and size of the hotel. 

As a matter of fact, guest expectation, guest experience, and guest satisfaction all three are interconnected. Let me explain how?? 

Generally, guests impulsively build a mountain full of expectations while booking a hotel. After check-in, if that expectation matches what they've experienced in the hotel, then the guest is satisfied. The guest stays dissatisfied if the expectation level doesn't match the experience. 

Certainly, guest experience in a hotel totally depends on the hotelier's approach, treatment, and service. 

Guest experience in a hotel depends on how much you are able to satisfy your guest through your pleasant hospitality. And a guest will only get satisfied when the hotelier is able to reach the guest's expected benchmark. 

What Is Guest Experience In Hotel?-Best Chance To Achieve Lifetime Loyalty

The ultimate result of enhancing guest experience in hotel industry is gaining lifelong loyal customers. Providing the best hospitality service is one of the primary guidelines of any hospitality industry.

Every hotelier should always keep in mind the service they provide to the guests’; that is encoding as an experience and will be decoded as a satisfaction to guests. 

In short, the guest experience is a sentiment generated inside the guest’s mind after getting the service from the hoteliers. Besides, only consistent hotel service, quality, and values can influence guests to build a pleasant perception and have a hotel experience. 

A positive hotel experience assists a hotel in gaining positive reviews on different OTA platforms, huge customer retention, positive word of mouth, standout among thousands of competitors, and of course, increase in hotel revenue & booking.

Therefore, every hotel enterprise must be concerned with how to improve guest experience in hotel through front desk service, amenities, utilities, and facilities. Of course, special care for all the complaints and discomforts guests express during their stay.

Importance Of Guest Experience In Hotel (Why Do Hoteliers Need To Maintain It)

Sincerely, for every hospitality industry, serving the best & memorable experience so that guests can spend their best vacation and have great satisfaction.  

Of course, maintaining guest experience in a hotel is important because a continuous working out in upgrading the hotel service will assist to hold the loyalty, retention, and positive online reviews. 

Image source: brightlocal 

Always remember that the better the experience you can provide, the better the online reviews will be. Because most potential hotel guests hugely depend on online reviews of the previous guest experience and online ratings. And as a hotelier, it should be your first priority to shape the guest experience because it greatly impacts hotel sales and revenue.

For your convenience, provide some excellent eye-opening reasons for why a hotel's guest experience is so important. 

1. The quick spread of positive word of mouth: which is the main reason for attracting new potential clients and at the same time holding the trustworthiness of the old customer. 
2. Enriching your brand value: maintaining an ongoing pace of improving and upgrading the hotel service and quality is a huge sign of a successful hotel business. In short, the best chance to stand out among competitors.  
3. Strengthening a lifetime of loyal customers can only happen when customer expectations match what they experienced in your hotel. 

Does Guest Experience Directly Impact Guest Satisfaction? 

Yes, guest experience does hugely impact guest satisfaction; in fact, both are closely related but, at the same time, state very different concepts. 

Generally, the whole concept of guest experience entirely describes the interaction between guests and hoteliers. All types of micro or macro moments happen between guests, hotel online travel agencies (OTA) and physical experience during the stay. 

Meanwhile, guest satisfaction is considered a measurement tool of how satisfied guests were with the micro-moments experienced during their booking and their stay. 

Indeed, hotel guest experience and hotel guest satisfaction define separate concepts. However, still, it’s the bitter truth that if a hotelier fails to provide a top-notch hotel experience, they won’t be able to satisfy their guests. As a result, hoteliers will end up with very low customer retention rates, bad online reviews, and loss of revenue. 

Below I’ve Discussed Why Hotel Guest Satisfaction Is Crucial: 

Strengthen Customer Trust: 

A good guest experience can strengthen customer trust and satisfaction, spreading positive hotel reviews and recommendations to the closest. 

Give Strong Competition To The Other Hotel Competitor: 

Better guest experience will raise the guest satisfaction level, which will affect spreading positive online reviews, brand values and brand identity, making it easy to stand out among hotel competitors. 

Attract New Customers:

Most hoteliers follow common hotel marketing strategies, such as email marketing, content marketing, SEO & digital marketing. However, positive word of mouth is a powerful hotel marketing strategy to attract new customers. 

Better Guest Engagement With the Hotel 

One of the best policies for great hotel guest satisfaction is to build up a good equation with guests as soon as they enter the hotel property. So as soon as the guest enters the hotel property, the hotel front office must communicate with the guests; understand their choice, and comfort zone, which on the other hand, assists in enhancing brand perception to guests. 

Maintain A Loyal Customer Base

Creating a loyal customer base is not that easy; it needs the dedication to keep in continuous improvisation of hotel service and deeply monitor all the complaints and discomforts they face during their stay. As a hotelier, it’s very important to make the customer feel important & prioritize, try to engage with them and build lasting relationships.  

Use Guest Insights To Improve Staff Training

Hotel staff behavior and their approaches hugely affect the hotel guest experience. Bad behavior or careless approach towards guests might disturb the hotel guest experience. 

Sell Additional Services

Indeed, inside the hotel property, many things can enhance the guest experience and make the guest’s stay more fulfilling and satisfying. Hotel additional services include swimming pool facilities, breakfast buffets, a spa, a candlelight dinner, and a restaurant.

How To Enhance Guest Experience In Hotels (Tools To Measure Guest Experience)

Of course, you can measure the guest service experience, mainly how guests feel after experiencing all the hotel services, from hotel booking to check out. 

Usually, the hotel guest experience best practices can happen anywhere, for instance, in the lobby, hotel front desk, guestroom, restaurant, communication approach from hotel staff etc. 

Using The Following Metrics, You Can Measure How Much Your Guest Is Satisfied With Your Hotel Service:

• Net Promoter Score (NPS): How likely they will recommend to friends or coworkers.
• Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT): How many guests were satisfied with the hotel product & service. 
• Online Reviews and Ratings: Measure & analyze the reviews of online hotel review sites like Booking.com, Expedia, Trip Advisor, and Google. 
• Repeat Guest Rate (RGR): identify the repeat guest rate and how much they will likely return. 
• Average Length of Stay (ALOS): Track the guest's duration of stay in your hotel. 

Data Collection Of Guest Service Experience Survey 

One of the major ways of data collection is to forcefully ask for it from the guests either after the checkout process, while checking or during the stay. This guest service experience survey is a great opportunity to address the guest's discomfort and improve those lackings. 

There are many ways to reach your survey to your guest, for instance, emailing after checkout or at a room table, etc. After collecting the data, the hotelier will send all the data into one central database to analyze it. 

Moreover, you can collect guest experience data from third-party hospitality review websites like Expedia, Booking.com, Tripadvisor, and Google. Since most guests follow & believe the online reviews, hoteliers must deeply monitor different social media marketing(Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), their comments, tags, message, shares, posts etc. 

Don't Just Sit With The Data Implement Them!!!!

Always remember, improvisation & change is always a good thing in every type of hospitality business after the hotelier collects data and finds a common pattern & trend, which a maximum number of guests is expecting. 

Hence, to improvise that lackings, it surely can boost up your guest satisfaction as well as raise up the revenue graph.  

Major Tricks: 

• Try to solve the biggest issues first because it will be broadly noticeable to the guests by solving bigger issues.
• Give your highest priority to the common issues that the maximum percentage of the guests complained about. 
• Train your hotel staff and hotel front desk officer about the approaches, problem-solving, calmness etc. 
• If you have any complaints about slow service in your hotel restaurant, adopt effective restaurant management software to streamline the restaurant's operation. 

Million Dollar Concern!!!

Ways To Improve Guest Experience In Hotel

The major reason for highlighting the importance of guest experience in hotel is to improve and upgrade the hotel service; so that hoteliers can gain the guest's confidence. 

One of the easiest ways to win a pleasant experience, reviews and satisfaction from the guest is to prioritize their complaints, concerns and dissatisfaction instantly and try to improve those as soon as possible. 

Here are some vital points to look after, which can greatly impact improving guest experience in a hotel.

1. Send A Pre-Arrival Email  

This type of email is usually sent to pre-arrival guests; who have already confirmed their online booking. 

The main purpose of sending this email is to notify the booking and also share information about all the facilities, for instance, buffet facilities, 24/7 restaurant facilities, swimming pool, 360-degree room view, transport facilities, selected card offers, etc.

Besides, ask about any customization guests want to prepare before arrival, etc.   

2. Stun With Early Check In

One of the best and easiest ways to impress guests is offering early check-ins because most customers think it is an extra value for money. 

Guests arrive at the hotel, usually after traveling a long way and expecting to take a rest soon after arriving in the hotel. Offering this type of flexibility soon after arrival will surely boost their satisfaction. 

3. Keep The Check-In Process Short & Simple 

It's obvious that after a long plane ride and with a body full of tiredness, guests feel exhausted from filling out all the entry forms, cross-checking their passports information or waiting in the long query line. 

Therefore, it's better to keep all the information gathered and ready before the guest's arrival and soon after they enter the hotel property, provide them chilled refreshments and approach to complete all the check-in procedures. 

4. Handle Any Pressure With A Smile 

While serving the guests, from entering the hotel property to check-outs, all the hotel staff should maintain strict calmness to handle every critical situation. 

The main purpose of hoteliers is to make it comfortable and pleasant so that guests can have the best stay experience in your hotel. 

As soon as the guest arrives at your office property, receive them with utmost gratitude and cheeriness, and make them feel that you're happy about their arrival. 

5. Integrate A Efficient Chatbot To Make Communication Easy For The Guests

Another best strategy to enhance your guest experience is to streamline the guest communication process with an efficient chatbot. Therefore, every hotelier should adopt an efficient hotel booking software, which not only handles all your hotel operations but also answers all the guest queries about the hotel. 

Xain-the most dynamic hotel management software, integrated with hotel websites and AI chatbot. 

Ensure your hotel website has all the contact information, such as contact number, email address, reservation details, an option to set your currency etc. 

6. Hire Some Locales As Hotel Staff

Absolutely intelligent strategy to shape up your guest experience and gain the chance to be a loyal hotel choice. Only the locals know about the fares, where to hire a taxi, the best shop place to shop, tourist spots, the best spot to eat etc. 

And hiring locals as hotel staff could help the hoteliers assist guests with such details and direct them about the area; thus, guests don't get trapped in any difficult circumstances.  

7. Offer Free Hotel Facilities

There is a saying, "Nothing is free & there is a price for everything." Guests travel a long way to enjoy all your hotel amenities, comfortable bed, pool, great food & facilities in exchange for currency.

But hoteliers charge an overall price for this enjoyment or great time from guests and show it as a complimentary from the hotel.(hotel pricing strategies)

List of some complementaries offered by the hotel:

• WIFI
• Swimming Pool 
• Spa 
• Fitness Center 
• Conference Meeting Room 
• Toiletries
• Gaming Room 
• Private Home Theater 

8. Offer To Customize The Guest Stay

Another great improvement you can make in your hotel property is; as soon as a guest confirms their booking, you can directly ask or email them. Hence by tracking their personal choice and you can customize their booked room to surprise them. 

Thus another great way to win their satisfaction and lists in good books. Customization can be anything, such as a little note in bed, a decorated room, a name board outside of your room, complimentary drinks etc. 

9. Celebrate Guest Special Moments

As a hotelier, you should know not every guest’s visit purpose is business meetings; some guests also come to enjoy a nice & calming vacation. 

Besides, some may come to celebrate their special moments such as birthdays, anniversaries or any type of happy get-together of any successful achievement etc. 

Therefore, if any guests let you know about their special occasion, offer them a free complimentary cake or gift to the special person. 

10. Note & Develop The Guest Complains

As a hotelier, it’s your responsibility to ask for a review from your guest, 

because it gives you the motivation to improve your hotel service. 

There Are many ways to gather complaints or reviews, such as asking them directly during the checkout process, putting a survey form in the room, or mailing them the survey form. 

Checking Out- Wishing You A Great Read

The importance of guest experience in hotels cannot be overstated, as it directly impacts the success and reputation of the establishment.  

The guest experience is a critical factor in the success of a hotel. After all, Guest satisfaction comes from guest experience; it influences customer loyalty, online reputation, differentiation in a competitive market, revenue generation, and overall growth prospects.

By prioritizing guest satisfaction and continuously striving to exceed expectations, hotels can build a loyal customer base and thrive in a highly competitive industry.