Personalised Hotel Marketing Can Help You Fetch More Guests, Here’s How

I really love it when I receive personalized marketing messages from hotels. For example, a couple of days ago, I was trying to book a property for my birthday. However, most of them were either sold out or expensive.

But, yesterday I received a notification from Booking.com offering me a discounted tariff on one of the properties. As I checked it, I found it matched my requirements. So, I booked it without wasting a second.

Well, that’s just an example of personalized hotel marketing. There are several other ways of using personalization to attract guests at your property and increase your bookings.

So, to give you better clarity on it, I’ll be addressing all the aspects related to personalized hotel marketing along with some tips to do it right.

What is Personalisation in Hotel Marketing?

Generally, all the marketing messages or emails you send cater to a mass audience. What I mean to say is that it does not address a specific person. 

Personalized hotel marketing is the process of creating and promoting dedicated ads and content which target specific guests. This is done with the help of guests’ data, such as booking patterns, requisitions, travel purposes, stay duration, and other factors. Basically, you need to understand your guests in and out.

Post that, you can utilize the findings to send them offers and deals which match the criteria they look at before booking any hotel. 

Apart from that, it includes adding a personal touch during guests’ stay. Let me explain with an example.

During my training days, we used to keep welcome notes, fruit baskets, chocolates, or such things for some of our guests. Or we would give them gift hampers during checkout. This trick worked well because those guests would book the hotel again whenever they revisit the town.

In case you are wondering if going out of the way and doing such things is profitable or not, then let me tell you about its advantages in the next point.

What are the Advantages of Personalised Hotel Marketing?

One of the main advantages of personalized hotel marketing is that it makes guests feel special. Let’s say, you are staying at a property where everything in your room is as per your requisition; won’t you feel good?

Or, here’s another scenario. You are looking for a hotel with certain amenities, and you receive a deal from a property mentioning all the inclusions and facilities you need. Obviously, you’d book it or check it out, right?

Well, that’s how personalized hotel marketing works. First of all, it helps you to gain more bookings. Secondly, it gives you a chance to understand your guests and work on the feedback they provide. 

Further, this helps in increasing guest retention and allows you to determine the scope of improvement. This also gives you an edge over your competitors.

Apart from that, personalized hotel marketing tends to increase your guests’ loyalty to your property. It’s because you are putting an extra effort to make their stay more comfortable and provide them a better experience, every time they book your property. 

Considering these advantages, it’s time for you to invest in it too. And let me tell you how to do it.

How can Hotels Implement Personalisation in their Marketing?

To be honest, you may find thousands of steps on the internet about personalising your hotel’s marketing. But, not all of them are effective. 

So, I’ve listed some of the top ideas which you can implement at your property for better benefits.

1. Leverage guests’ data

The first and foremost thing in personalised hotel marketing is gathering guests data. Because collecting maximum data can help you in understanding your guests and curating some of the finest personalised marketing campaigns for them.

Try to find even the smallest details. It could be your 

• Guests’ habits
• Booking patterns, 
• Food and beverage preferences
• Reason for traveling
• Any special requisition (pick and drop, sightseeing, wake-up call, or something else)
• Specific room amenities requested (extra TCM, rooms with bathtub, smoking rooms, etc.)

Remember, the more data, the better the campaign.

2. Use AI for better results

It’s no secret that AI (artificial intelligence) has helped us in making a majority of our tasks easier. For instance, Google AI sends you news recommendations or shows you personalized feeds as per your search activity. 

In hotels, chatbots are a perfect example of AI, as they minimize the effort of the front office staff. They use sentiment analysis and machine learning to understand guests. 

Based on the results, they assist guests in booking a stay at the property and recommend guests activities to do at the hotel, room upgrades, or any other facilities which can be useful to them. 

Don’t believe me? Here’s a case study about “Rose”, an AI-based chatbot deployed at ‘The Cosmopolitan Hotel, Las Vegas’. 

Rose’s playful personality and witty answering has helped in increasing the guests’ spending capacity by 37%.

In fact, chatbots help you with collecting and managing guests’ data. As an add-on, it gives you an analysis of the same which will come in handy while creating personalized marketing campaigns.

If you are not using chatbot at your property or have any questions pertaining to it, here’s a guide for you. 

Ironman had JARVIS; Guests have Hotel Chatbots

3. Opt for flywheel marketing

If you are still using the funnel method to track your sales cycle, you need to stop it RIGHT NOW. It’s high time that you switch to flywheel marketing. 

It is the new way of keeping a record of your sales cycle. It involves working on guests’ experience at every stage. 

Basically, from the start of the sales cycle, guests receive personalized marketing materials such as emails, WhatsApp, social media posts, offers, deals, and so on. Eventually, if the lead drops at any stage, the error is rectified and a new approach is used to pitch the guests again. 

The reason behind using flywheel marketing is that it helps you to focus on every guest, thereby adding a personalization factor to your marketing strategies. If you want to understand more about it, check out this blog.

Hotel Flywheel Marketing: The Upcoming Trend in 2022

4. Invest in personalized marketing campaigns

You must be investing in various strategies like WhatsApp marketing, emails, SMS, and social media. When I say about personalizing them, it means creating them for specific guests. 

For example, I tend to travel to any destination for adventurous activities and the beauty of nature. Now, if you have a property located in the mountains, I’m a potential guest for you. 

So, if you want me to book a stay with you, what will you do? Of course, send me an email or WhatsApp. It would be either highlighting the views from your property’s rooms, sharing special rates for solo travelers, or a package including adrenaline rushing activities.

Similarly, once you understand your guests, you can curate such personalised marketing campaigns and share it with them.  

5. Try to provide personalised goodies at check-out

As I said earlier, giving gifts to guests during check out is a sign of goodwill. You can take it to another level by giving personalised gift hampers or accessories to them.

It could be a personalised coffee mug, key chain, pen, discount voucher, or something that could be beneficial for them. However, don’t go for expensive gifts or else this strategy might backfire.

6. Keep a welcome note in rooms

Keeping a welcoming note in guests’ room is a sweet gesture, and it does help in winning your guests over. Because it makes them feel special as well as makes them realise their importance to the hotel. 

Moreover, this is a cost-effective strategy. In case you don’t want to invest in greeting cards, you can simply print a welcoming message on your hotel’s letter pad and place it in guests’ rooms.

7. Suggest add-on services through app

This strategy is useful if you have an app for your property. The way it works is quite simple. 

Whenever guests book your property through the app, they would receive certain recommendations to make their stay more enjoyable. It can be any event in your hotel, paid facilities, local activities offered by your partners, or maybe a candlelight dinner. 

As a matter of fact, these recommendations are shared by AI-based app chatbots. Hence, you don’t need to worry about the personalisation factor here.

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