Stay different....stay betterAmong countless other questions that race through a good General Manager’s mind, this is perhaps one that keeps coming back regularly - the desire to be different; especially over those other hotels in the area and in the similar category. How can my hotel be different to my competitors? Question; is been different sufficient? Not really… because there is nothing to stop your competitors from eventually copying what you are doing. Remember the introduction of the ‘Breakfast Anytime’ option that created a wave of interest - only to see virtually every other hotel jump the bandwagon. Differentiation indeed protects hotels from the pressure to reduce prices as competition increases, but being better seems to be more effective than just being different. How can you, the hotel manager, deliver the solution in a way that is different and better than all your competitors? To discover the answers to this, managers’ must first and foremost ‘understand’ their guests. What do travellers really want from their hotel stay? How do we manage the guest experience? Our guests are not statistics, although we refer to them as pax, covers, bums-on-beds, etc. A well-managed hospitality organisation understands that within this assorted group of people they serve, each guest is an individual and each is different. Most hotels will not go the ‘extra’ mile for all their guests – only for a few VIPs (Very Important Person) and these hotels will continue to be very ordinary. Only exceptional hotels treat all their guests as VIPs (Very Individual People), because they recognise that each guest brings to the guest experience a different bundle of needs, wants and expectations. Some guests will arrive happy, excited and with a sense of expectation of the quality, value and service your hotel will provide. Others may arrive tired or even angry, because of a long flight, misplaced baggage or due to countless other reasons. Hotels must strive to satisfy each of these varied guests. Providing 24/7 personalized service and communications during the stay (apart from pre and post-stay) is a formidable challenge for hoteliers. What can we do to meet customer expectations? One can argue that most guests have the same general expectations when they go to a hospitality organisation for service. Surveys and similar feedback will establish that the majority of guests expect cleanliness, courtesy, responsiveness, reliability and friendliness. Absolutely true…but this alone doesn’t enable us to design each guest experience from each guest’s point of view, to offer a personalised experience insofar as possible. One needs to drill deeper. Guest-focused hotels understand this better, and hence stand above the ordinary. The first step is to have access to all the information about our guests at our disposal. The second step is for hotels to create a two-way communications channel with guests that allows for trigger-based and personalized touch-points through their preferred channels. And finally, hotels must capture the data from all these interactions to continue to build out guest profiles to maintain the most relevant profiles. There are at least five types of guest data that a hotel can use to improve the guest experience:
Sometime ago, I checked into a hotel that I have stayed at before. Not only have I stayed at the hotel before but I wrote a review of the property on TripAdvisor, which was responded to by the General Manager. Imagine my surprise to be greeted by the General Manager. He explained that he makes it a point to meet every guest who writes about his hotel, (be it positive or negative), on their next visit to the hotel. Now that’s a refreshing example of been different and been better.
Ilzaf Keefahs |
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