The hotel guest journey encompasses the entirety of the guest experience, from initial pre-stay engagement with your hotel all the way to post-stay communication. The cumulative effect of everything you do across all engagement points (digital and physical) ultimately determines whether someone will become your loyal guest.
This is why you need to focus on continuously providing value to your guests and finding ways to better serve their needs and deliver on their preferences.
Digital touchpoints powered with the right hotel technology make this a whole lot easier. Now you can respond to your guests' needs better than ever before and use data, insights, and AI technology to deliver the right message to the right guest at the right moment across their journey with your property.
Platforms like LasoExperience provide exactly this capability – focus on helping the guest maximize their stay while providing just the right amount of information and in the context of their stay.
Now, let’s look at how you can leverage guest experience technology to power numerous direct guest touchpoints, from booking to post-stay, to increase guest satisfaction and boost ancillary revenue for your hotel.
Pre-stay touchpoints
The pre-arrival period gives you a unique opportunity to proactively engage with your guests early on. Before your guests set foot through your door, you should focus on sharing valuable information and offers that will enrich their experience.
So, what are your key guest touchpoints at this stage?
- Confirmation link (email/sms). Send a personalized confirmation message with booking details and a link to your hotel’s Web application where guests can explore relevant offers and activities. Now your guests will be empowered to design their ideal stay ahead of time.
- Inspirational notifications. Send information that will help your guests plan their visit and enable them to book offers and experiences, like your top amenities, activities, local attractions, events, and more.
- Check-in notification. Provide your guests with the mobile check-in link and let them know they can complete the pre-check in process remotely in just a few steps, get their mobile key, and go straight to their room when they arrive at your property.
- Upsell offers. Send upsell offers, like room upgrades and ancillary services, based on guest context e.g. upgrade to a family suit to guests staying with children. Highlighting relevant services will also give your guests additional things to look forward to.
Guest experience platforms like LasoExperience help you connect with guests from the moment they book their room. It's all about building trust early in the relationship by showing them you care about making their experience the best it can be.
In-stay guest touchpoints
When they’re all settled in, your guests will be more open to explore hotel offers that can enhance their stay. Ideally, you’ll deliver personalized information based on their booking data, or any recent activities/requests. Here’s a few touchpoints that you can leverage to improve guest experience and your ancillary services revenue.
- Quick in-stay check. Ask your guests to share their feedback on their stay so far. This will help you address any issues early while making sure your guests are well taken care of.
- Just-in-time offers. Send meaningful offers that your guests are more likely to purchase e.g. a promo for a late checkout deal on the guest’s last day with your property.
- Broadcasts. Send notifications on experiential offerings to inspire your guests ie. in-house or local events, specials, personalized activities, to maximize their enjoyment during stay.
Post-stay guest touchpoints
After the guests have left, you want to learn about their experience while it's still fresh in their minds. This is an often overlooked hotel-guest touchpoint since most properties still work with outdated paper questionnaires that they hand out to guests at check-out. LasoExperience gives you a more guest-friendly, convenient way to collect guest feedback.
- Post-stay feedback. Send scheduled questionnaires to ask about guest’s stay with a link to Tripadvisor giving them an option to leave their review.
Collecting timely feedback helps you learn from your guests’ experiences so you can continually improve your service delivery and ensure that more of your guests leave happy and satisfied.
Takeaways
All of the touchpoints we covered are opportunities to activate your guests, leading to increase in revenues and higher guest satisfaction. With the LasoExperience platform these touchpoints are scheduled precisely and our system chooses the best channel to send the message and activate the guest.
Learn how LasoExperience can help you both personalize the guests’ stay and drive ancillary revenue opportunities at every touch point → lasoexperience.com
