If you are tired of dealing with disorganised and scattered guest data and manually managing all guest communication, you are probably looking to implement (or already have implemented) a CRM for your hotel.

Hotel teams without a proper CRM very commonly face the challenges described in the opening line of this article. Hotel marketers find themselves taking hours to personalise the messages for guests, only to have to repeat the same process all over again on the next day.

Not to mention having to deal with inaccurate and dirty guest information that needs to be cleaned manually.

With a CRM, however, all these challenges are handled accurately and efficiently, which leads to recovering a big part of the time that before was spent on repetitive tasks.

But pay attention to this: not all CRMs are designed for hospitality and not all of them have the features you need to solve your main challenges.

Although the name might be the same, some systems do not comply with what is needed. Therefore, understanding the key features of a hotel CRM that will allow you to put in order your daily operations is crucial.

Let’s dive directly into them.

Main features your hospitality CRM system should cover

1. Multi-channel campaigns

The time when email was the only way to stay in touch with guests has long passed. In fact, although email marketing is still extremely efficient for hotels, the truth is that new channels have emerged and have become a favourite of many.

According to a Skift research, companies using multi-channel communication strategies retain 89% of their customers, compared to 33% for those without such strategies.

This means that your hotel CRM system should also allow you to communicate with guests through more than just email. SMS campaigns and WhatsApp campaigns are a great way to make your guests aware of certain types of information, for example, when discussing more urgent matters.

A tip for you: Bookboost is a CRM designed for hotels, that offers multi-channel communication, allowing hotels to send emails, WhatsApp and SMS to guests.

2. Hotel Marketing Automation

Life is too short to spend hours of your team every day manually sending messages to guests and updating guest details. Your CRM software should make the work easier for you. This is done by having automation features. In short, your customer relationship management system should allow you not only to schedule campaigns but to set triggers for campaigns to be sent automatically.

This means, for example, that every time a reservation is made, a booking confirmation email will be sent. Or that 2 days before the arrival of guests, a campaign with instructions on how to get to your property will be fired via WhatsApp. Since you are looking to use a CRM in your hospitality brand, you should aim at having a CRM that was built for the same industry, in this way all the automation features will be built to make sense for hoteliers.

3. Enhanced targeting and unlimited segmentation

Personalisation is not going anywhere. And to be able to send personalised messages to your guests, you need to be able to create audiences or guest segments. Basically, these segments of guests will share specific characteristics that will make the message resonate more with them.For example, your CRM should help you to easily identify and target high-spender guests coming only from a specific country. Or millennials who had booked a suite during the past year.

The criteria you can use for this vary from demographic to past bookings, preferences, and more.When a CRM is designed for advanced segmentation and enhanced targeting, you can build as many audiences as you want, as detailed as you want, and target them with personalised campaigns.

Get inspired: 9 audiences you can create for better hotel marketing campaigns

4. Centralisation of guest data:

Messy data is one of the top challenges in the industry and a CRM is key to solving this issue. In fact, according to Skift, 87% of businesses report significant improvements in customer data management and utilization after implementing a CRM system. Think of a CRM as a one-stop hub for all your guest data.

It brings together information from different sources such as your property management system (PMS), online travel agencies (OTAs), loyalty programs, and more. For example, if a guest updates their room preferences in the CRM, this information automatically syncs with the PMS, ensuring that the guest receives their preferred room type during their next stay. A CRM for your hotel should offer the possibility to centralise data and provide unique but comprehensive guest profiles. In this way, you get all the valuable information about a guest in the same place, without having to move from one system to another.

5. Integration and data synchronisation:

Since your hospitality CRM will be the one bringing data together, it is crucial that it can provide a smooth integration to other systems and it can synchronise the data available. It also means that whenever there is an update on any guest information, this change will automatically reflect across all systems.

This helps to eliminate the hassle of manual data entry or data inconsistency, as well as saving time for different teams. According to research by Skift, 69% of hotels report increased operational efficiency and reduced costs through better use of guest data, which is tied to data synchronisation.

6. A guest journey overview

The guest journey is a key part in hospitality. It helps hotels to track every important moment for the guest to communicate accordingly and create a valuable experience. From the moment the booking is made until after check-out, every touchpoint can be carefully curated. And your CRM can help you to easily fulfill this task.

If a CRM is built for hospitality, it will have in mind the guest journey. In Bookboost, for example, you have a guest journey builder that allows you to visualise what will happen at each stage of the guest journey and for which guests. You can personalise it as much as you want, depending on what you want to say to your guests at that specific moment.

This is an incredible help when trying to make sure you reach your guests at the right time and when looking to have a clear overview of what is happening at each property.

Get inspired and learn how to create fabulous guest journeys with this article‍

7. GDPR compliant

Every self-respecting tool that deals with user data needs to offer GDPR compliancy. In short, it means that the system adheres to the requirements set forth by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a regulation enacted by the European Union (EU) to protect the privacy and personal data of individuals within the EU. It protects the personal data and it respects the privacy of the users. This is a must-have when looking for a CRM.

In hospitality, a system design for hospitality

You might have heard about generic tools, either CRMs or email marketing software that offer to do many of the things mentioned above. However, it is important to consider that an industry so specific as hospitality, requires a system that was specifically designed for it.

This will result in functionalities that make sense for the operations of a hotel. For example, considering the triggers within marketing automation, a CRM designed for retail, could offer a trigger to send a message after a purchase was made. This could be seen as the booking. But what about the arrival moment? What if you want to send a message 3 days before arrival or 4 days after check-out? Those specific settings and triggers would only be present in a CRM system that was made for hospitality.

All the features mentioned above are part of Bookboost, a CRM that was developed for accommodation brands, and that is being used by thousands of properties around the world. If you want to know more, book a demo here.

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