7 Tech Tips to Improve Your Hotel’s Guests Experience

by Kelly | 11:21 pm | Blog

With a seemingly endless and ever-changing array of technology available for hotels, how do you know what is worth your time and money? Fortunately, the wealth of options means that you can find the perfect fit for your hotel’s needs. After extensive research, here are a few of our top picks to help you connect with your guests before, during, and after their stays – and most importantly, keep them coming back.

Before the Stay

Get Social: It’s imperative for hotels to have a social media presence, especially on Facebook and Instagram. Potential guests will not only visit your website, but will also check out your social media platforms. Make sure that you have a cohesive look and feel, and all of the posts reflect the brand and voice of your hotel. Also, keep the content fresh by posting 3-4 times per week.

Go Mobile: More than 25% of all hotel bookings are made on smartphones and tablets, so if you don’t already have an app for your hotel, now is the time to get one. Not only is it an effective way to communicate with current and potential guests, it can be utilized to increase sales through sharing special promotions and hotel happenings.

During the Stay

Automate: Even a small hotel with a small staff can provide a great experience, especially if you use the latest technology to take some of the pressure off your team. Keypr is a system that automates many back-of-house and front-of-house jobs, freeing up your staff to focus on direct interaction with guests. The program can handle mobile check-in and provide keyless entry through its app, plus alert guests to promotions and provide on-demand services. It also provides management software to analyze what your guests want and need, and how to best anticipate any demands in advance.

Consider Robots: The Relay robot has been around for a few years, and more hotels are taking advantage of this technology. Designed by Savioke, the robot can deliver items to guest rooms, freeing up hotel staff to focus on other needs. Tessa Lau, chief technology officer at Savioke, has said that hotels also use the service as an upselling opportunity: One Residence Inn with a robot charges $2 per coffee delivery—a small price for a guest to pay for a unique experience, and an easy upsell for you. (If nothing else, think of the bragging rights—your guests will tell everyone they know about the hotel that delivered extra towels via robot!)

Take Art Interactive: Want to create a sense of place with cool, local art but don’t have the time or resources to make it happen? Problem solved: Daylighted, a San Francisco-based fine art consultancy, displays artwork from more than 1,000 artists on digital screens, allowing hotels to promote local artists and create an exclusive atmosphere. Art can be changed at anytime to tie into seasons, trends, party themes, and interior design, instantaneously adapting the ambiance. Even better, guests can use nearby tablets to learn more about the artists and purchase artwork for their own homes. Since the artwork can be changed daily (if not more often), regular guests will always have something new to see.

Turn Locals into Your Concierge: A small boutique hotel may not have the budget for a full-time concierge, but there are plenty of locals around who can offer tips and advice for your guests. Hello Scout is a virtual concierge service that connects guests with local residents via text message for advice on restaurants, shopping, top attractions, and anything else a guest would want to know about. After all, who knows more about a neighborhood than the people who live there?

After The Stay

Reach Out: Don’t forget to include functionality that reaches out to guests after their stay and keeps the conversation going. Your PMS or app can send emails to ask for feedback on the stay and alert guests of upcoming deals and events that will encourage them to book again. Pop-up or text messages on guests’ phone can keep them engaged, and can keep your hotel front-of-mind for their next trip.

Most importantly, figure out what technology is right for your hotel, and start taking advantage of it now. Your competitors most certainly are!

Difficult Guests? What You Can Learn From The United Airlines Fiasco

by Kelly | 6:51 pm | Blog

By now, you’ve probably (repeatedly) seen the video of a passenger on a United Airlines flight being dragged off the plane by airport security. While blame can range from the passenger to the airline to the security team, the whole situation could have been avoided had United taken steps from the beginning to keep the customer as happy as possible. These steps are not exclusive to the airline industry, but apply to any business where the customer’s satisfaction takes priority – especially hospitality.

As consultant Peter Shankman has written, “every single time a business interacts with a customer, that business can either reinforce their relationship with the customer, or they can end it.” While no hotelier can make every guest perfectly happy all the time, taking the time to see things from the guest’s perspective can go a long way in improving the experience for everyone – from the hotel team to current guests to future guests.

Even if no one in the lobby is recording the desk agent’s conversation with a guest, a negative Yelp review can do a lot of damage. Instead, if your team is proactive and either prevents a problem or solves it as quickly as possible, positive word-of-mouth will only help future bookings.

To prevent problems before they begin, encourage your team to be proactive when asking guests what they need or like, and give them the authority to make quick decisions that will improve the guest experience. Take a page from The Ritz-Carlton handbook: this luxury company famously authorizes every employee at every property to spend thousands of the hotel’s dollars each day to make guests happy, no questions asked.

Even if you can’t authorize a front desk agent to spend thousands on each guest, you can authorize your team to do small things, like sending some fruit and bottled water to the guest’s room. It may only cost you a few dollars, but for a frustrated guest whose delayed flight caused her to miss dinner, it will mean the world and she will remember to tell her friends how your team helped her when she had a bad day.

Of course, things will go wrong, and that’s when your team has to be ready to make things right again, even if the problem wasn’t their fault. Maybe the housekeeper missed a spot. Maybe a faucet has started dripping. Maybe the reservation program double booked a room. When these problems are brought to the attention of your hotel staff, the staff should not get defensive. Instead, they need to apologize on behalf of the hotel and let the guest see that they are dealing with the problem.

When a guest loses his or her cool in the lobby, that’s when your staff really has to shine. They need to stay calm and they need to figure out a solution quickly before the guest can take to social media to complain. When a hotel’s team is attentive to guest needs, sympathetic to their concerns and authorized to handle problems before they escalate, you won’t have to worry about your property being pilloried on social media.

Hotel Survival In An Airbnb World

by chamberlinpr | 8:00 am | Blog