The guest experience from pre-stay to post-stay
In days long gone by, the price of admission required a hotel to be clean, comfortable, safe, and welcoming. To elaborate, when people travel for any reason, their basic needs are the same: a clean room and comfortable bed in which to sleep, confidence in the safety of their accommodations, and helpful, friendly staff. These basic expectations are timeless and need to be covered by any property offering lodging. Nowadays however, there is much more that hotels need to do to attract business and with emerging technologies and evolving guest needs; hotels have to play catch up to stay current with guest needs.
In this constantly changing scenario, it’s in the hotel’s best interests to engage with the guest throughout their journey. Guest engagement is the name of the game. This calls for a sharp examination of the entire guest journey; from pre-stay to in-stay to post-stay. Done properly, the ‘guest journey’ study will highlight some hundred-plus ‘touch points’ that a guest would encounter or identify, when deciding to go to a hotel, staying at that hotel, and leaving the hotel. Those are a hundred-plus challenges or opportunities for us, to make sure that we’re anticipating what the guests want. It’s our responsibility to make sure that we’re listening to the customer so we can satisfy them and they have a positive experience.
Hoteliers constantly talk about ‘Sense of Place’ been hugely important to hotels – from offering amenities that invite guests to want to hangout – be it at the beach, poolside, dining, the bar, rooftop, etc. so that guests come away with impressive experiences. Simultaneously, staff is on the look out to indentify at-risk in-house guests and to recover them by resolving issues in real-time, before they voice concerns online.
Clearly, most of the effort to cultivate that ‘Sense of Place’ experience occurs predominantly during the ‘in-stay’ phase of the guest journey. While the focus is towards improving the ‘in-stay’ (onsite) guest experience, there is a huge missed opportunity at the pre-stay level, i.e. the failure of hotels to raise the guest’s level of anticipation even before he or she arrives.
University of Southern California’s Prof. Helen Chun passion is to understand human behaviour. “You will obviously enjoy your favourite dessert while eating it, but you can also savour the thought of eating it before you do it” says Chun. What this means is that savouring a future experience actually increases the pleasure of that actual experience – both when delivered well and when recalled. From numerous experiments, Chun claims that the data consistently points to this power of anticipation.
For hotels, this pre-stay period may be a valuable and under-utilised area in which to impact guest satisfaction. Viking River Cruises is a good example of doing it right. Before the trip they send brochures, video clips, and short phrases in foreign languages, based on the destinations. BMW, likewise, allows customers to track production at each phase, building anticipation for the car’s arrival.
Guests are increasingly demanding more personalised experiences. Hotels should therefore try connecting with their guests pre-arrival in a variety of ways, like assisting guests with directions, sending timely seasonal packages, offers or upgrades, pre-selling products, and sending marketing material that fit the profile of repeat guests. Hotels that engage with their guests even before their arrival get a head start.
Shafeek Wahab – Editor, Hospitality Sri Lanka, Consultant, Trainer, Ex- hotelier |
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