Tag: Hotels

Tips for Personalizing the Hotel Experience for Your Guests

Tips for Personalizing the Hotel Experience for Your Guests
Tips for Personalizing the Hotel Experience for Your Guests

Retail companies have successfully leveraged IT platforms to personalize the customer experience with actions such as suggesting purchases based on individual preferences. However, the hospitality industry is lagging behind in offering personalized service.

Bringing Personalization to the Hotel Guest Experience

Hotels have two significant roadblocks to personalizing a guest’s experience:

>Using different platforms for booking, POS, loyalty and other activities makes it difficult to efficiently capture the required data.

>Many guests book rooms through online travel agencies such as Expedia, so hotels don’t have access to email addresses unless desk clerks request them at check-in.

When Customer Service Misses the Mark

Carolyn Murphy, a marketing specialist for hospitality consulting firm Revinate, wrote about a less-than-satisfactory experience she had when checking into a hotel. The desk clerk asked Murphy if it was her first visit, despite the fact that she had stayed there twice before.

Murphy went on to add that she had posted a review of her original experience at the hotel on TripAdvisor and received a reply from the general manager. In addition, the day before Murphy’s arrival she tweeted about anticipating her visit and included the hotel’s Twitter handle.

According to a Yahoo survey, 78 percent of respondents expressed a preference for more personalized service. Giving guests a satisfying experience can pay off in more repeat business and word-of-mouth referrals.

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Hotels Embrace a “YOUniverse” Experience to Woo Bookings

Hotels Embrace a "YOUniverse" Experience to Woo Bookings
Hotels Embrace a “YOUniverse” Experience to Woo Bookings

From the lobby to the guest room, people want to feel a connection with the places they stay. What if every aspect, from the decor to experiential moments, felt utterly personalized?

If hoteliers can predict what their guests want rather than waiting for surveys and feedback, it’s much easier to get people’s attention and win their loyalty. Instead of just keeping on trend in terms of shower curtains and healthy food options, a hotel needs to be proactive about delivering the kinds of experiences that guests love, or even share on Instagram.

Data analytics can now go further than ever before to provide this kind of proactive insight. Sabre Hospitality describes the effect in its report on the “Youniverse,” which means the idea of creating a product or service tailored to various individuals’ tastes and preferences. Today’s highly connected world with big data available makes it possible to correctly predict, not guess, what your hotel customers want.

Much the way Amazon can guess what products a consumer wants, hoteliers can predict what amenities will delight a guest and make them feel a brand connection.

Staying Ahead of Hotel Trends

Though your customer demographics may vary, the biggest trends in hospitality right now center on experience, collaborative spaces, and clean design.

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Bed Bugs in Hotels – The Problem is Getting More Notice from Guests

Bed Bugs in Hotels - The Problem is Getting More Notice from Guests
Bed Bugs in Hotels – The Problem is Getting More Notice from Guests

Over the Past few years, reports of bed bugs in hotels have received a great deal of media attention. Despite this fact, the hospitality industry is fighting an even greater battle with the public’s lack of general understanding regarding bed bugs.

Battling Public Misinformation

Researchers at the University of Kentucky recently conducted a survey to explore public perception of bed bugs in hotels. While 60 percent of respondents said they would move to a different hotel if they discovered evidence of bed bugs, no more than 25 percent would do the same with problems like smoky rooms or dirty linens.

Surprisingly, most respondents don’t know what bed bugs look like. When shown a “lineup” of five different insect pests, only 35 percent of business travelers and 28 percent of leisure travelers recognized the bed bug.

More than half the respondents said they would avoid a hotel that had a single online report of bed bugs. Jerrod M. Penn, PhD, lead author of the study, expressed concern at this finding, citing the unreliability of online reviews.

How Should Hotels Respond?

Wuyang Hu, PhD, senior author of the study, suggested a two-pronged approach to the issue:

  • Train hotel staffs to recognize bed bugs in the early stages.
  • Develop a reputation management plan to respond to online reviews as well as incidents within the hotel.

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Hotel Industry Gripes About Airbnb and Illegal Hotels

Residential building
AirBnB is competing with hotels.

Short-term rental company Airbnb has become a major player in the hospitality business, but is it on the level? A recent industry report shows that the home-sharing service may actually be giving some commercial business operators an unfair and illegal advantage.

Home-Sharing or De Facto Hotels?

Airbnb has widely publicized its concept of matching travelers with people renting out space in their homes. According to a recent report sponsored by the American Hotel & Lodging Association and conducted by CBRE Hotels America, true home-sharing accounts for less than 20 percent of Airbnb’s business.

So what makes up the rest of Airbnb’s multi-billion-dollar revenue? The report states that it comes from “whole-unit rentals where the owner is not present,” which skate dangerously close to being commercial properties like hotels yet are not subject to the same regulations and taxes.

Findings are based on data from Airbnb’s bookings over a two-year period from October 2014 through September 2016. More than 50 percent of the company’s revenues in Miami and Oahu, two major travel destinations, came from hosts with multiple units as opposed to individual residences.

Airbnb Answers Back

Not surprisingly, Airbnb is refuting the report’s findings. Company spokesperson Ben Breit claims that many of their commercial listings actually come from AHLA member properties.

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