Historically, hotels have prided themselves on getting to know both regular and new guests so that each guest’s experience can be personally tailored to their tastes and plans. Today, however, the blended digital hospitality experience can be best tailored and personalised using data.
Using data analytics, hoteliers can use information gathered through a guest’s online interactions to tailor every aspect of a guest’s experience. These can include special deals, enticing opportunities, and classics like remembering a guest’s favourite room service order or predicting how to enhance a couple’s romantic getaway.
Improving your hotel customer experience using data analytics unlocks your modern hospitality potential, from online booking to your on-site technology. Implement the data you already collect to win the loyalty of guests who will be delighted with every intuitive upgrade.
1. Enhancing the Booking Experience
Modern guest experience begins with online booking. Guests will favour one hotel over another simply by the ease and intuitive features used as they book their room – especially if they are return customers who should have data already in your books.
Hotels have the opportunity to enhance the booking experience with intuitive add-ons and special offers that speak directly to each guest based on their search pattern and history with the hotel. You want to provide both a flawless online experience and personalised elements that make each booking feel special, welcoming, and help guests to do more with every stay.
Data analytics can help you both remember guests and even predict the preferences of first-time guests based on any lead data that is available. Personalised packages, booking, pricing, and promotions will all play a role.
Mid-Stay Upgrades and Opportunities
If your mobile app is also rewarding and intuitive to use, guests will likely enjoy booking add-ons like room service, spa appointments, and sponsored tours through the app instead of looking for third-party services. You can enhance your mid-stay earnings and create unforgettable guest experiences by utilising data analytics with your hotel’s mobile app design.
2. Personalising Guest Experiences
When guests book a night, it’s just the beginning of a hotel’s effort to create a personalised experience. Loyalty programs, social media, and smart TV selections are just some of the ways hotels gather information about their guests. Room service and restaurant orders, as well as logging into the smart fitness centre, provide additional insights. Even tours booked through the hotel can add to the unique profile of each and every guest.
It’s possible to use this data and sentiment analysis to create a more personalised guest experience at every step. Your hotel website may have recommended rooms and amenities prepared for known guests the moment they log back into your website or app.
You may be able to predict their favourite foods and beverages or suggest nearby attractions that will make each guest’s stay more delightful, easy, and enjoyable, recreating that time-honoured feeling of being a beloved regular even on their second stay.
Creating Personalised Offers
Guests love to be presented with their favourites, especially if there is a deal associated with choosing the most desirable path. For example, if you have an anniversary guest, you may already have their favourite room ready bundled with a deal on their favourite romantic room service or a candlelight dinner in the restaurant. Or you might have a perfect adventure and post-adventure massage ready to delight a guest who always comes for rock climbing and relaxation.
3. Improving Operational Efficiency
Data analytics can also be used to enhance customer experience from behind the scenes by improving the efficiency of your hotel operations.
Data analytics can help you identify bottlenecks and make suggestions on how to solve them, identify potential dips in service quality, and even balance your resources more effectively to provide optimal service during both your busiest and slowest times.
Faster Service
Using the right software, you can analyse what causes slowdowns in your operational efficiency and streamline service. Your data may identify the days you are most likely to be short-staffed, or when your typical staffing is often overwhelmed.
Higher Quality Service
Service quality can also be improved with the use of data analytics by identifying the factors of great service and optimising their provision. For example, data can help you keep enough towels by the pool by tracking predicted temperatures, occupancy, and likelihood that an increased number of guests will take a swim. The same can be said for all of your on-site services, from the fitness room to spa bookings.
Better Resource Allocation
Running out of things or irregular supply is a natural part of an on-demand business like hotel management. However, data can provide the insight and oversight necessary to achieve better resource allocation. Allow an automated system to help you keep enough supplies and staff ready to meet the ebb and flow of guest needs.
Fewer Mistakes
Lastly, data analytics can help avoid common mistakes by identifying correlating risks. For example, people analytics may track new team members and remind you to pair them with your best trainers, or your data may notice that not of an item is being restocked in rooms, increasing the chance that something is left unreplaced when it should be.
4. Anticipating and Resolving Guest Issues
In addition to creating opportunities to delight guests, you can also anticipate potential problems through patterns in past data.
By analysing customer data, hotels can identify trends in guest behaviour that will allow you to prevent guest issues before they happen. You might be able to predict which rooms produce the most frequent maintenance complaints or patterns regarding large groups and higher volumes of specific complaints.
By identifying patterns in guest issues, your hotel can proactively take care of these matters before they become problems.
Predictive Maintenance
Predictive maintenance is the ability to determine the best repairs and upgrades to make before complaints happen. Data analytics can help you monitor the condition of your facilities, rooms, and equipment to predict when each will need to be maintained.
For example, the rooms with the most common complaints may be correlated with the oldest light fixtures or proximity to an ageing laundry machine one level below. When several complaints of slow drains occur, your data analytics program may predict that you have an underlying plumbing or drain problem that affects several connected rooms.
Your program may even be able to track the age of batteries inside each smoke detector so that the dreaded beep never disturbs a guest. With analytics, you can take care of maintenance in a timely manner with a seemingly psychic ability to determine problems before they happen.
Personalised Service Recovery
For guests who do need to make a request or complaint, data analytics can predict the best way to recover the quality of their stay. You will be able to tailor a personalised discount or promotion to make it up to the guest for any inconvenience. With the right deal, many guests will be delighted enough to forget their initial complaint while enjoying a truly superior stay.
Using Guest Data to Thrive
Data analytics can be a game-changer for the hospitality industry when it comes to improving the guest experience. By gathering and analysing data on guest behaviour and preferences, hotels can gain valuable insights into what their guests want and need. These insights can then be used to personalise the guest experience, from customised amenities to tailored recommendations, and ultimately create an exceptional and unforgettable stay.
Additionally, data analytics can help hotels anticipate guests’ needs, resolve issues proactively, and make informed decisions that drive business success. With the right data analytics tools and strategies, hotels can provide a more personalised, efficient, and enjoyable guest experience that keeps guests coming back time and time again.