This is how you use automation to grow guest loyalty and save time

Yours Truly is a hotel under the brand TheNew Group, a company that strives to create a sustainable hospitality brand with a positive impact on the hotel industry. Moreover, The New Group actively seeks innovative solutions to provide high-quality service and shape the future of hospitality.

Aligned with TheNew Group's vision, Yours Truly aims to be highly guest-centric, offering hyper-personalised guest experiences while remaining digitally focused. They utilise technology and automation extensively, but personal connections between guests and staff are still the heart of the experience. 

The team at Yours Truly wants to create a cosy and home-like atmosphere where guests are called by their names. And because the staff is made up of Munich locals who love their city, instead of offering a typical tourist experience, they hope to serve as a gateway to the city's soul. 

This means guests can learn about the local culture, traditions, hidden gems beyond the tourist trail, and have an authentic Munich experience. 

As a small team, they found themselves spending too much time crafting and sending messages to guests manually. Spending time there meant that the staff didn’t have the opportunity to interact with guests personally as much as they would like to. 

They wanted to change this situation and that’s why they partnered with Bookboost.

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The challenge: Saving time while still calling guests by their name

The team spent a lot of time each day manually contacting guests. Previously, their guest journey included confirmation emails, pre-stay emails and WhatsApp messages, and they had to create all of them from scratch. 

This included manually saving contacts, verifying phone numbers and email addresses, ensuring the message is sent in the guest’s preferred language and more.

“This was very frustrating and stressful for us,” said Meghan Dinegar, General Manager at Yours Truly. “Every morning we spent 1.5 hours discussing what needed to be sent. We wanted to reach as many guests as possible but couldn’t do it since we were doing everything manually.”

This situation also left room for human errors that were difficult to identify and resolve, which ended up impacting guest satisfaction. “If guests type the number wrong, then they wouldn’t receive any message from us. And we wouldn’t know about it", Meghan added.

Additionally, although the mission of the brand is to build a personal experience, the team couldn’t afford to spend time personalising their communications or create a VIP journey for their returning guests. 

They could see the difference between the guests that received a personalised communication and the ones that didn’t, which encouraged them even more to find a tech solution that could help them. 

To save time while still personalising their guest experience, Yours Truly decided to partner with Bookboost, which seamlessly integrates with their current PMS Apaleo.

According to Meghan, the Apaleo Community was very helpful in finding out about Bookboost and other tech solutions. "They recommended many solutions, but Bookboost was the one very highly spoken of”, she said.

The solution: Automating the guest journey and creating hyper-segmented audiences

By partnering with Bookboost, Yours Truly was able to experience a change in the way they operate, not only freeing up a significant amount of time but being able to focus on the interactions and personalisation of the guest experience. 

An automated guest journey to save time

With Bookboost CRM, they can streamline many touch points across the entire guest journey. For example, booking confirmations, check-in processes, and email campaigns can all be automated, freeing staff from these repetitive tasks. 

It also minimises the possibility of human error and ensures consistency and accuracy across all guest touchpoints. No more typos, missed communications, or reservation conflicts.

"We're saving one to two hours per day now that we don’t have to manually send out messages or save guests' contacts and details", said Meghan.

Now the staff can focus on interacting with guests face to face and spend time on high-value tasks to improve guest experience. “My goal is that all of my team’s tasks can be automated but that is so personalised that our guests don’t even realise it”, she added. 

Different tokens and templates to personalise messages

The filters within Bookboost allow Yours Truly to create highly targeted guest segments, from returners and one-timers to families and business travellers. 

“Bookboost has so many options for us to personalise things and to add segments and different audiences. And that was really important for us, that we could build countless audiences for the guest journeys”, said Meghan.

The personalisation tokens and dynamic templates enable the team to customise the message however they want with real-time guest data. Now they can craft messages that resonate with each guest's unique needs and preferences, which helps build guest relationships and foster guest loyalty.

Meghan talked about her favourite segment: repeat guests. 

“I can recognize not only just repeat guests, but how many times they’ve been with us. So I can greet my guests differently every time they come back. I’ve been experimenting with different campaigns each time a guest visits a hotel. If it’s your second time visiting, you get a different welcome email as opposed to if you’ve been with us 5 times. It becomes more personal each time”, she added.

Forgetting about switching between messaging platforms 

Implementing Bookboost Unified Inbox has significantly improved their efficiency. Now, they’re able to check all incoming messages in the same place, without the need to log into different platforms every day, which already saves a lot of time. 

They can reach a wider range of audiences compared to before, and strategically assign chats and inquiries to staff members with the most relevant expertise to answer the guest questions.

“Sometimes when guests arrive, they will be like, Oh you must be Sarah, or you must be Anna!”, said Meghan, “They remember who they’ve been chatting with and it’s not a chatbot.”

Result: Enhanced guest loyalty and increased team efficiency

Increase in repeat guests and direct bookings

After implementing Bookboost's multi-channel CRM, Yours Truly can send hyper-personalised messages to different guest segments at the right time through the right channel. This makes guests feel valued and recognized, fostering a stronger bond with the hotel.

“We’ve seen a big increase in repeat guests ever since we started to use Bookboost. We’ve seen an increase in positive feedback and reviews as well. Guests feel like they’re bonding with the team and forming a connection with the hotel. And when they come back to visit, they say they feel like they are visiting an old friend”, said Meghan.

More time was saved for innovation & connections

Since all the repetitive tasks are automated, the team saves around one to two hours per day. This allows them to shift their focus to more strategic initiatives, like experimenting with new approaches to enhance the guest experience and make every stay truly unforgettable.

Their goal is not to automate all operations and interactions but to use automation to free up time for the team to truly connect with guests and have face to face interactions, providing outstanding service that makes them stand out from the competition. Bookboost empowers them to do that. 

This new found extra time also fosters creativity, since they can invest time exploring new ideas. 

“Before, I had an idea of how I wanted to build the guest journey and create relationships with guests. But because we had so little time, we couldn’t really think about the different kinds of messages our guests could receive. Now, with the opportunity to create different audiences and segments, I come up with new campaign ideas every day”, she added. 

Main takeaways from Yours Truly

‍Identify your unique point

What makes Yours Truly stand out from the crowd is the authentic Munich experience and genuine connections it provides. Think about what makes your hotel unique and build your strategies around it.

‍Always put your team first

If your team spends a lot of their time manually working on repetitive tasks, it will reflect on the guest experience as well. Listen to them and pay attention to their needs, so you can find the right way to help them. This will benefit your guest experience and satisfaction.

‍Don’t be afraid to experiment with new things

Guest expectations change every year, and so should your way of interacting with them. Give new technology, approaches and communication methods a chance. See how your guests react and adjust your plan accordingly.