Importance of guest satisfaction in hotel industry
While guest experience is a main topic of discussion, there is another important factor to consider. This, of course, is the satisfaction of the guests. It reflects the experience your guests have at your property, the performance you get through the services you provide, and how you differentiate yourself from your competitors. It is therefore essential that satisfaction is at the heart of your strategy and that you are able to continuously optimize and measure it accurately.
How to optimize guest satisfaction at each stage of your stay
Guest satisfaction is no longer just the fact that receptionists ask your guests if they enjoyed their stay at checkout. No matter how polite he is and how much guests appreciate him, he doesn’t bring any added value to your hotel. It is therefore essential to arrange contact points in advance to ensure a good level of guest satisfaction.
How to Implement a Guest Satisfaction Strategy in Your Hotel
Put Your Guests in the Best Condition Before Staying
Satisfaction has to be earned, so one has to work hard to get it. It all starts before the guest arrives, as you have the opportunity to prepare for the reception and be in the best possible way. To achieve this, you need to carefully examine your guests and try to get to know them in as much detail as possible. But how is this done? Asked him ! Any information that you could not obtain during the reservation will not necessarily be lost. If you’re sending a pre-stay email or pre-check-in form, you have several options.
On the one hand, you can give your guests useful information to facilitate their stay (WiFi passwords, transportation schedules, restaurant recommendations or other activities, etc.). On the other hand, you can also collect information that will help you personalize their experience (reason to stay, arrival/departure time, etc.). In addition, by collecting this information prior to arrival, it is possible to make the experience more enjoyable by significantly reducing waiting times at check-in.
In short, by initiating a conversation with your guest prior to their arrival, the following develops:
- Better knowledge of your host
- Awareness and understanding of the needs of your guests
- good relationship with guest
- The basis for a good level of guest satisfaction
- Let us now think about how to maintain and increase the satisfaction of the guests during their stay.
Anticipate customer inquiries and respond quickly
The habits and behaviors of customers staying in hotels have developed similarly to those in other industries. Customers today tend to be more in control of their experience and place more emphasis than ever on personalization. In order to be able to offer them this, we have to anticipate and respond to their requests. There are many ways you can increase customer satisfaction by intelligently collecting feedback during your stay. Surprise your guests by asking them if their stay is going well and how it can be improved. For example, they may need an extra pillow or iron and ironing board. The customer may face a problem, if it is not foreseeable, his or her satisfaction level may be low (poor air conditioning, poor room cleanliness …). There are many potential causes of dissatisfaction, but there are also many ways to resolve them.
At Customer Alliance, we’ve developed a range of in-stay interactions to help hoteliers improve customer experience and optimize satisfaction. Of course, this does not replace the work and interactions of hotel staff, which are an integral part of any successful guest satisfaction strategy. After you’ve worked hard through every step of your stay to make sure your guests are satisfied when they leave your hotel, ask them to complete your satisfaction survey before you leave. There is a way to keep them in the best possible shape. That will be an excellent measure of achievement and success.
Make sure your guest is feeling satisfied
Even if you have a good standard of organization, managing the departure of your guests can always prove to be a bit difficult. As a result, it is not so easy to assess the satisfaction of each guest preparing to leave the hotel. To increase your chances of seeing your guests leave after having a positive experience, prepare for their departure the same way you would before their arrival.
All your guests are different: some are present for professional reasons and are therefore more careful to optimize their time, while others who come to stay with their families or as a couple seek a more relaxing experience. are in. By analyzing the customer segment, it is possible to formulate departure estimates
ts in a personalized manner and ensure a good level of satisfaction. some practice here There are tips that you can implement by communicating with your guests just before their departure.
implement by communicating with your guests just before their departure.
- Business Guest:
- Pre-Check-out option for faster departure
- Transport time to station or airport
- Possibility to book a taxi the night before departure
- Possibility to order a takeaway breakfast box for early departure
- subscribe to a loyalty program
- Holiday Guests:
- Late check out option
- Possibility to order breakfast in the room
- Possibility of getting in touch with the car rental operator
- optional baggage service
- Possibility to subscribe to the newsletter to receive personalized offers
The pre-checkout phase is more important than you think, even if it is often underestimated. This allows you to capitalize on guest satisfaction even more. All you have to do is measure the level of satisfaction by inviting your guests to give their opinion on their experience. You can be sure that the level of satisfaction with all the work done during your stay can only be very positive. But how do you invite your guests to have their say? Here are the various options:
Send a personal satisfaction questionnaire (via e-mail, SMS, tablet or QR code)
Redirect them to various review portals (Google, TripAdvisor, Facebook, HolidayCheck….)
Work (almost) complete. From booking to departure, you have been there to ensure your guests’ satisfaction. So, it’s time to move on to the analysis and reap the benefits of your work.
How to measure guest satisfaction
It is absolutely important to analyze your reviews to measure guest satisfaction. It also allows you to get an idea of the strengths and weaknesses of your hotel, which facilitates the implementation of tasks at the commercial or operational level. As we’ve already said, impact on guest satisfaction requires effort, but with a good strategy, the whole process becomes fluid. Similar speech to measure guest satisfaction. This may seem like an insurmountable task considering the many different portals and sites where guests can leave reviews, but once you have a well-structured strategy, everything becomes clear.
Analyze guest reviews efficiently
There are many review portals. Whether they come from OTAs (Booking.com, Expedia…..), open portals (TripAdvisor, Google….), Comparators (Trivago, Kayak….) or from a satisfaction survey, reviews are everywhere and it’s foolish to ignore Will have them because they provide the best indication of your guest’s satisfaction. So, how do you navigate the endless stream of reviews?
At Customer Alliance, we understand the priorities of hoteliers: managing daily activities and being as close to guests and staff as possible. For this reason, we stress the importance of centralizing reviews on a single platform. Access to all distribution channels and analysis of each review portal done individually involves a huge amount of work. It is essential to adopt a structured approach so that no important information is lost. By centralizing everything, you have the possibility to conduct detailed analysis by filtering by date or portal.
Guest satisfaction
To deepen the analysis, we will now look at how to examine your reviews through semantics. Then we’ll discuss the benefits of effectively analyzing your competitors’ reviews.
Which measurement scales should you consider?
There are different scales of measurement; It depends on the sector and the portal. In general, the main platforms of the hotel/restaurant area use a scale of 1 to 5; This applies to Google, Yelp, and TripAdvisor, to name a few. This allows the guest to express a neutral feeling if he does not have a solid opinion on his experience.
guest satisfaction
Another measurement tool, which is becoming increasingly popular, is the NPS (Net Promoter Score) which translates to the likelihood of recommending a company, service, structure, etc. This scoring criterion is one of the options available in the Customer Alliance solution. Give companies (not just hotels and restaurants) more flexibility in analyzing customer satisfaction.
There are many measurement tools available to you to use as part of your guest satisfaction strategy, but what matters most are the methods implemented to improve your performance. For this reason, at Customer Alliance, we have introduced goals, based on which objectives are set in the strategy to improve the score and response rate on the portal.
Better understanding of satisfaction for meaningful and competitive analysis
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Another good indicator of guest satisfaction is the ability to quickly identify features of your hotel or services that have received criticism or low scores, making them easy to fix. Semantic analysis of guest reviews allows you to isolate individual words and evaluate the content of the reviews that accompany it
M. For example, if you filter your searches by the word “room,” you can better understand what guests are saying about this particular criterion. What better tool than this to efficiently shine a light on your strengths and weaknesses What else could happen? Hence this type of analysis is strongly recommended to get the optimum guest satisfaction strategy.
There are other ways to analyze guest reviews that can be integrated into your satisfaction strategy. One of these may already be part of your business or revenue management strategy. We’re talking competitive analysis, but let’s apply to guest reviews. There are several ways to measure your level of satisfaction compared to your competitors, including the number of reviews, average score, response rate, and the ranking of your city/region.
At Customer Alliance, we encourage hotels to take control of satisfaction through our comparison and competition monitoring functions. This makes it easier to take effective action, manage operations better, and ultimately increase satisfaction.
The last point, but not least, pertains to the responses to the reviews.
Response to reviews: Another important factor in guest satisfaction
The final step in our guest satisfaction strategy is responding to reviews! This may seem like a daunting and unnecessary task, but it is actually very important.
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