[nextpage title=”1. Loyalty Program” ] 1. Offer a loyalty program reward at sign-up. A good one. Let’s say you offer a standard 7th night free. Make it a 4th night free for signing up. Then when they book that, they get 800 points. Downloading your mobile app earns them 1000 points. Replying to your welcome text is 2000 points. You get it. People like points. [/nextpage] [nextpage title=”2. Snap!” ] 2. Snap! If you’re not all over social media, you’re missing out. What better way to show guests how beautiful your property is or how fun your events are than with image-centric SnapChat and Instagram? I can guarantee someone on your team is all too eager to run these for you. Bonus: It gives angry guests a place to vent frustrations instead of TripAdvisor. [/nextpage] [nextpage title=”3. Videos” ] 3. Videos A new study from Cisco predicts that by 2019, video content will account for an astonishing 80% of the world’s total internet traffic. So make sure you provide video tours of your property, but also include culture videos. Show your staff as personable, and if you can swing it- include your guests. Especially if you target families. Show kids …
We know why guest data is important to hoteliers; no matter how streamlined your operations, if the guests aren’t happy, nobody is happy. Information gathering has come a long way since the days hotels relied on comment cards. While those cards are not yet extinct, hoteliers have come to rely on technology for gathering, translating, and reporting guest data. Online booking and behaviors provide insight to guest preferences and satisfaction, but without mobile, are you getting the entire picture? A recent report by Flurry shows that mobile users are spending 86% of mobile time on apps, and only 14% on mobile web. This means that companies relying solely on web are missing out on a huge piece of the data puzzle. So what could mobile do for you? Here are five things that we’ve found, actionable by hotels into a better experience for all of their guests. Are your guests sharing your hotel information on their social networks? What is grabbing your guests’ attention in your app, and what are they ignoring? Better yet, which aspects of your app are bringing in the most revenue? Are guests using your app more on property or off? Are the guests in your …
Today’s post is written by our Marketing Coordinator, Angie Ford. Along with the creation of promotional material and being a go-to for all sorts of brilliance, Angie runs our company Instagram account, manages our videos, and instigates office pranks. She attended the University of Tulsa, has a background in Video Production, and at home she plays violin, tackles home improvement projects, and hangs out with her Jack Russell Terrier. Breaking news, the very last smartphone holdout finally jumped in with the other salmon and headed north. I’m exaggerating, of course, but the truth can still be found here: I did in fact get promoted to “Smartphone Owner” at the end of last year. Being the last adult in America to buy a smartphone, naturally I wondered who else was with me. Turns out, more than I expected. 56% of adult Americans are now smartphone users, and as of last June, 72% of UK adults owned one. So what does this mean for a centuries-old industry built on classic services? It presents an opportunity for hoteliers to reach that segment of the population that may not respond in the same way guests did 50 years ago. So let’s say you have …
No matter how great your staff is, and how high you set your service standards, mistakes are bound to be made. The good news is that it is not the mistake that leaves a lasting impression for your guest, it’s how you fix it that matters. Apologize. I think this is obvious, but I’ve noticed that there seems to be a new trend of service staff refusing to offer an apology. Whether the mistake was made by you or a team member, or even if your guest is upset over nothing, a simple “I’m sorry” goes a long way. Fix the problem as quickly as possible. If you can’t empower your staff to offer resolutions, then a member of the management team should be readily available to deal with the situation right away. If a guest is complaining about a particular staff member, do not, under any circumstance, send that staff member to remedy the situation. Aside from making both parties feel completely awkward, you should understand that trust has been lost there, and will not be regained by a forced interaction. If you cannot resolve the problem to the satisfaction of the guest, apologize again. There is no pleasing …
The hospitality industry moves so quickly that sometimes it is hard to blend the new and the old. The well-known hospitality professional, Larry Mogelonsky, has developed a tool that will keep hotel executives, managers, staff and students up to date with current issues in the hotel industry. The Llama Digital educational program is an online interactive suite specifically designed for hoteliers to sharpen their skills. I had the opportunity to use the product as both an instructor and a student. It is built on Larry’s writings in online hospitality journals. Instructors can log in to the site and set up courses geared toward desired skill-sets. It’s a simple process, due dates are fully customizable, and completed assignments can be graded with comments from the instructor. What I liked most about the answers section is the lack of “multiple choice.” The questions are posed in such a way that students have to come up with a creative solution to the issue at hand – just like they would if faced with the situation in person. Larry gives real-world scenarios, everything from dealing with travel writers to mitigating bad TripAdvisor reviews, and asks the students how they would respond. I believe this …