What are the main challenges for hoteliers when building a guest journey?

‍Building a guest journey presents a complex landscape for hoteliers. They must navigate understanding diverse guest needs, tailoring the experience to each property's unique location and facilities. Seamlessly balancing digital and physical touchpoints, from online booking to front desk interactions, is another hurdle. 

System integration and automation are crucial for optimizing processes, requiring careful management of data flow and addressing any manual tasks that hinder efficiency.  

Considering edge cases, such as handling different guest types, and ensuring processes effectively cover various scenarios is essential. Finally, effective communication and expectation management throughout the journey are the final puzzle pieces, ensuring a positive and memorable guest experience.

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How can hoteliers utilize guest data to understand what guests really need to map the entire guest journey?

Hoteliers can utilize guest data as a treasure trove to understand guest needs and map the entire guest journey. By analyzing data beyond just feedback and reviews, hoteliers can gain insights into what resonates with their guests. 

Upselling campaign results can reveal what offerings guests truly value. Click-through rates for different communication channels can indicate preferred methods of contact.  

By leveraging a centralized CRM to store and analyze this data, hoteliers can  identify key touchpoints throughout the guest journey. This data-driven approach leads to a more meaningful guest journey, fostering satisfaction while optimizing efforts and maximizing revenue.

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What are the top 3 things, hoteliers who don't have a guest journey and want to create one?

Hoteliers lacking a guest journey can take three key steps: 

1. Send a booking confirmation: By initiating a conversation with guests through an open-ended question in the email.  
2. Send a pre-arrival message to proactively reach out and use guest feedback to tailor their stay, ensuring a smooth check-in. 
3. Finally, craft a post-stay email that expresses gratitude and offers a small incentive, going beyond just an invoice to encourage future stays.

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When creating a guest journey, what are some of the risks hoteliers face regarding tech? 

Hoteliers implementing a guest journey face several tech risks. Ensuring  systems integration is crucial. They need to understand their existing system landscape, how different systems interact, and the depth of integration. Overly complex systems or outdated systems not designed for integration can hinder automation.

Hoteliers must consider edge cases like corporate guests or OTAs.  Their current systems need to  accommodate these variations and have  fallback options  in case unforeseen situations arise.  Monitoring these edge cases  is essential.

With more  digital touchpoints,  increased resources are needed to monitor and  ensure they function correctly.  Hoteliers must  balance offering these touchpoints with having the staff  to  maintain consistent service quality.

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How can hoteliers bring their staff on board for the implementation of a guest journey? What are the main challenges in this aspect?

A key challenge in implementing a guest journey is ensuring staff buy-in.There are several strategies. Establish common goals by ensuring everyone understands the company's  DNA.  

This includes aspects like preferred partners for  excursions or transfers. Involve staff in the creation process.  Brainstorming together helps them understand the journey and anticipate challenges.

Emphasize that technology is there to assist them, not replace them.  By  involving them from the beginning, the transition is smoother. 

Last but not least, create a USP for employees. The digital transformation process  offers opportunities to develop new skills and contribute to a  superior guest experience. Letting staff experience the guest journey firsthand is another powerful tactic. By trying the journey themselves, they gain empathy for guest frustrations and can identify areas for improvement.

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How can hoteliers use elements like communication and inevitably with data to deliver a more personalized experience? 

Hoteliers can craft highly personalized guest journeys by strategically using a combination of communication and data.

Clean, accessible guest data is crucial. This data provides insights into guest preferences, past stays, and booking habits. By understanding your guests, you can tailor communication to resonate with them on a personal level.

Leveraging guest data, hoteliers can personalize communication throughout the guest journey. This can include pre-arrival emails with room upgrade options based on preferences, or post-stay surveys to gather feedback on specific aspects of their stay.

Guest journeys are fluid and ever-evolving. By analyzing guest data, hoteliers can constantly iterate and experiment with communication strategies. Testing different approaches allows you to see what resonates best with your guests and what personal touches enhance their experience.

Hospitality CRM platforms, exemplify this data-driven personalization. They use guest information to deliver exceptional experiences. Imagine a guest who always requests a quiet room. Bookboost can use this data point to automatically assign them a room on a quieter floor during their next stay.

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How can hoteliers optimize guest journey strategies through automation?

In order to optimize guest journey strategies through automation, hoteliers can leverage data and existing systems.

Manual tasks that integrate poorly with existing systems can be automated. For instance, automating invoice creation after guest journey completion can free up staff time.

Another approach is to leverage no-code/low-code solutions to automate specific edge cases.  For example, an automation could be built to send a WhatsApp message to the general manager to greet a loyal guest upon arrival.

Hoteliers can focus on automating tasks that consume the most staff time. This could involve automating data manipulation between systems or automating specific city tax calculations.

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*The information of this post is based on the webinar hosted by Bookboost. You can find the details below

Watch the full recording of the webinar here.

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