There is nothing new in managing a guest arrival if you aren’t providing a magical hotel experience to your guests. This is what you strive to do as a part of your routine job at your hotel. Right from the moment you get a booking confirmation to the guest’s arrival and to his departure, you need to be constantly on your toes to meet his expectations.
Indeed, the hospitality industry being one of the most courteous profession, giving a commendable welcome to guests is an indispensable part of an outstanding guest arrival. To match the competition, these days you require matching your hotel services to that of guest’s values and preferences to deliver a memorable hotel guest experience.
And it all starts with bookings and arrivals; on which the guest’s whole stay experience is based. So, here I’ve got a small visualization as to what can be done to enhance your guest experience.
Here are some ideas to improve your guest’s hotel experience through arrivals:
1. Easy booking process with a discount
Your potential guest searches a hotel room online. A list of all the hotels in the preferred location is displayed, he’s searching for. Having one’s hotel website, being listed on OTAs, meta-search engines and GDS will make it easy for your guest to find you. You also need to be available to take bookings or inquiries on the phone.
You must be already working on increasing your direct bookings. For that, you need to offer something which your competitors aren’t. Coming up with attractive deals and packages is one such way to attract lookers and simplify the decision-making process.
2. Know your guests
It is imperative to perceive your guests and understand their purpose of visit; whether they are on a business visit, or on a leisure visit; so as to decide their choice, food preferences and if allergic to anything at the time of booking confirmation.
Based on the purpose of guest visit, you can offer them vouchers to a museum or a casual sightseeing or rent-a-car for a long drive.
3. Offer your hotel amenities to enhance hotel experience and gain some additional revenue
Sending an email notification just a day before the arrival can be a booster for a guest experience and revenue generator for your hotel. You can ask your guest to avail your hotel amenities. Like a spa or steam bath so that your guests feel rejuvenated after a long-hectic journey and a car parking facility.
Providing them with a welcome drink at arrivals is a must these days. You can also ask for morning wake-up call and breakfast that’ll freshen-up your guest for the day.
4. Pre-arrival emails
For a lasting first impression, you ought to send a pre-arrival email to welcome your guest. Your hotel’s location can be added in the email, helping your guest reach your hotel easily. This way a rapport is developed between your hotel’s guest relationship manager and the guest. A good rapport makes a guest to be frank enough to avail services which they require. At this very point, guest may also notify you of a special facility to be provided at your hotel.
5. Managing early check-in
Let’s consider, you receive a call from your guest before his arrival mentioning an early check-in. And on the other end is a guest who informs you from the guest portal of his early arrival by 2 hours.
What will you do in such a case? Would you ask your tired guests to wait in the lobby? Or would you ask them to initiate an early check-in? The first option may create a bad impression of your hotel, while the second one may be less likely to be enacted as they’ve already informed you in advance. Here, providing an early check-in with no extra charges is the best option.
So, your maintenance staff gears up and goes at a hotel room with a checklist whether everything is OK. Bed, AC, lights, intercom are functioning or not. And, once you get a nod from the staff that everything is fine, you’re ready to hand over the room to your guest.
6. Pickup service
Now that you are well aware of your guest’s day and time of arrival, you just need to check and see whether a guest has requested for pick-up services. If not, you can call them and ask if they need one; and work on improving their experience with you.
7. Self check-in facilities
If you’re providing a guest self-service portal or a self-check-in kiosk, it will simplify your guest’s check-in and arrival.
In case of a hotel guest portal, you can approve the check-in, have the guest registration card ready using the pre-filled information in their guest profile and guide them towards their room.
This way guest check-in process which took 10-15 minutes earlier is now done in few seconds.
Besides, your guest can request a change in his reservation, build his profile, get route-map of your property, give reviews, manage group reservations, be updated with hotel bill and even ask to consume your hotel’s recreational and transport services using the hotel guest portal.
So, this was all about how you can nail your guest experience at arrivals. Well, we’ve also listed 17 easy-to-apply ways to enhance your guest experience before arrival, on arrival, during the stay, on-departure, and post-departure. You can explore those strategies from here and can deliver an overall amazing experience to your guests.
Conclusion
Having gone through the above strategies, you can decide which of the following hotel services are eligible at your property, as per the type of guests you cater to any type of property you own. Most important is that if you succeed to provide an ultimate hotel experience to your guest, you will see an upward curve [hike in guest influx] in your hotel revenue graph.
