Like in any other business, in the hotel industry too, guest satisfaction is a core factor that determines the success of your hotel business. When you attend to your guests with utmost care and sincerity, you really don’t have to put in extra effort on how to increase hotel revenue. Because happy guests spread the good word about your property, they help you strengthen your hotel’s online reputation and also come back to you for more and thus, they help you to improve hotel revenue in the long run.
There are various ways to increase hotel revenue. In this blog, we will discuss how to increase hotel revenue with top class hotel guest experience. Now let’s go step by step to understand how you can serve your guests better in order to ensure an increased hotel revenue.
#1 – Start with post-booking follow-up communications
Your engagement with your guests starts the minute they book with you. So, just don’t wait for them to arrive at your hotel so that you can start serving them. Instead, send them booking confirmation mail immediately and let them know that you look forward to serving them.
In the case of new guests, ask them if they have any special preferences that you need to take care of before they arrive. Let them know that you have arranged a complimentary airport pickup if this is an option. In case of old guests, find out their preference from your cloud hotel property management system’s guest history module and inform them that you are ready to serve them as you did it during their last stay.
What happens in such cases is that the guest tends to come to your property. Since you have been proactively talking to them much before their arrival, it makes them believe that you are going to honor their bookings and they have no fear about being driven away due to overbooking at your hotel. Even if they have multiple bookings at other hotels, they would most probably choose you over others. This is the best approach to ensure reduced booking cancellations while increasing your hotel occupancy.
#2 – Post-arrival engagement, give your best here
Allow them to select their rooms before they arrive so that you can have your housekeeping staff to get their rooms ready in advance. Once they walk into your hotel, never ever make your guests wait for more than a few minutes at your front desk lobby. It adds to their frustration. Make sure that you check them in at the earliest while bypassing the time-consuming front desk formalities. You can use a Mobile Hotel App to scan guests’ ids while walking them to their rooms.
Make sure that their service requests and complaints are handled at the earliest. If possible, adopt a guest-facing mobile app and empower your guests to raise requests through the same. Invest in an app that allows you to keep track of their complaints and requests so that you get your staff to complete the same in time.
Like faster check-in, guests also appreciate a hassle-free check out process. Introduce a process that allows guests to raise check out request in advance. This helps your front office staff to get ready with all the bills much before the guest approaches the front desk to make the final payment.
#3 – Offer them room upgrades, they would love it
Upon your guests’ arrival, depending on your availability, ask them if they are ready to pay a little extra to upgrade their room. You can also offer free upgrade facilities to your loyalty members and repeat guests. This makes them feel special, and remember this, guests who avail upgrades tend to spend more at your hotel, adding extra revenue to your coffer.
If served and engaged properly during their stay, 40% of guests are likely to come back to your property, with an extended stay of 2 nights each. Now, isn’t this a great way to improve hotel revenue!
In this context, you can also upsell your non-room items to your happy guests. Consider this statistic here – according to the Harvard Business Review, happy customers tend to spend around 140% more than customers who experience bad service. So, create a specially curated spa/gym package or F&B package, sell them to your guests when they are at the property and you are done. But don’t forget your basics here – serve them efficiently and make them happy, so that they buy what you sell. Upselling is relatively an easy task with repeat guests.
#4 – Give them something special when they book with you directly
When we talk about how to increase hotel revenue, direct bookings add a lot of value. So, the mantra here is to encourage your guests to book directly with you. Approach your guests during their stay or check out to let them know how they can benefit if they book with you directly next time. Offer them discounts on room rates, food and beverage, free pick up and drop or even an extra night that is free.
If they are happy with you this time, they will come back to you for sure. And if they book via your website, then you get to earn more room revenue while saving big on OTA commission. Direct booking, coming via your hotel website leads to an average of 2X increase in booking value compared to OTA.
#5 – Get them to write reviews on your hotel
In today’s online travel, your hotel’s online reviews play a very important role in terms of getting new guests. Around 96% of users consider reviews important when planning trips and booking hotels. So, it is paramount to offer a personalized experience to guests so that you will be in a position to ask them to write reviews on your offerings and services.
Exceptional guest service creates happy guests. They write good reviews about your hotel on online platforms. With this, if you can manage to increase your review rating by just 1%, you can increase pricing by around 11.2% without adversely affecting the likelihood of sales. Plus, it also helps you see increased bookings by around 14.2%.
Guest experience has a direct impact on your hotel revenue. Apart from helping you with an increased sales volume, it also assists you in lowering marketing costs. Be in touch with your guests to understand their feedback and concerns and act accordingly to improve your services and offerings. Don’t forget to create guest profiles to come up with targeted and personalized campaigns. All these will efficiently support you in your effort to offer the much needed ‘experience’ to your guests which will ultimately have a positive impact on your revenue stream.
Source:
https://www.getwebee.com
Harvard Business School & Cornell University School of Hotel Administration
