In the hospitality industry, one of the most fundamental aspects of enhancing guest satisfaction, driving customer loyalty, and staying ahead is understanding your guests and their needs. Appealing to your guests’ emotions and building a strong connection with them is crucial as humans tend to act and/or buy based on their emotions, then justify that purchase with logic later on.
We see this across many other types of industries as well. As an example, Rolex doesn’t just sell watches, they sell prestige and success. Disney doesn’t just sell movies or amusement parks, they sell fun and nostalgia. Tesla doesn’t only sell cars, they sell sustainability. The key takeaway is that the emotional connection comes first.
Hospitality leaders can use this to their advantage not only while guests are visiting their property, but also long before and long after their stay. It all breaks down into understanding guest demographics, creating emotional connections, personalizing experiences, engaging authentically on social media, and embracing what’s next in hospitality marketing.
Understanding guest demographics
Generally, each demographic group has distinct preferences when it comes to booking trips and choosing a particular resort or hotel. Tailoring experiences to specific demographics is key to capturing their attention and loyalty. Here are some of the unique preferences to consider within each group:
- While the Baby Boomer demographic is beginning to “age out” of frequent travel, their priorities lie in being well looked after, experiencing that extra personal touch while checking in and throughout their stay, and receiving all the bells and whistles of top-notch services and amenities.
- Gen X are very value-oriented and tend to balance cost versus comfort when evaluating potential properties.
- Millennials, which are a big focus within the buying demographic, are careful with spending but are more willing to invest in memorable experiences.
- Gen Z are digitally native, meaning they grew up with technology and mobile phones at their fingertips. They are also conspicuously conscious, which means they love and gravitate toward particular brands.
- Gen Alpha, while not quite among the purchasing demographic yet, will gravitate toward shorter, more frequent trips, and they want their say in planning family vacations, which will have an impact on Millennial parents.
Captivating your guests with emotional connection
The more you can glean from your guests, the more you can focus your marketing efforts and tailor your messages to create emotional connection. Hotels should strive to create authentic experiences that resonate emotionally with guests, as this is what ultimately drives customer loyalty and advocacy. There are five fundamental ways to captivate your guests in this way:
- Be real — With the internet at their disposable, potential guests can sort you out and form decisions fast. People are more educated than ever about different brands and what/who they want to associate themselves with. Be real and authentic with your guests so they know what to expect from you.
- Start conversations — You want to start a conversation long before guests arrive at your hotel as well as long after they’ve gone home and unpacked their luggage. People get excited about taking a trip and starting a conversation helps build on that excitement.
- Enable community — Guests seek to connect with destinations, local communities, and like-minded people. Gen X and Millennials in particular are shown to enjoy being connected to the communities in which they’re staying, which creates a sense of belonging at your property.
- Tweak and test trends — A strategy that works well for one hotel might not work the same for another just down the street. Trends emerge from niche groups and are constantly evolving, so it’s important to understand how your hotel fits into these trends within the hospitality industry.
- Extend engagement — We live in an ever-connected world, and the relationship you build with your guests does not begin and end with their trip. You want to use strategic efforts to create a memory that sticks and encourage your guests to become advocates for your property.
Strategies for engaging with your guests
Pre-arrival communication and personalized gestures really do make a difference in your guests’ stay. Welcoming them with small acts of kindness can go a long way and creating “memory triggers” after their stay creates a feel-good experience that encourages them to come back.
Utilizing specific strategies to cater to individual preferences contributes to building a positive emotional connection with guests. These efforts can significantly enhance guest satisfaction and increase the likelihood of repeat visits.
- Pre-arrival communication — It’s exciting to get texts or emails from a property you will be visiting, especially if it’s tailored specifically to you. Showing guests new things they can do that they might not have known were available is an attractive way to demonstrate what your property has to offer (as well as increase revenue for your property). You can offer discounted packages for spas, restaurants or experiences in advance, or provide special offers on room upgrades, late check-outs, or early check-ins.
- Mobile app —You can encourage guests at check-in to download the app so they can get information on what to do around the hotel, in the area, and events happening during their stay. A mobile app also allows for push notifications to keep guests informed, provides exclusive deals, can be used as a digital room key, and allows guests to easily book services.
- Room amenities — Based on guest preferences or the nature of their stay, you can offer complimentary room amenities like a bottle of champagne or a fruit basket and wish them an excellent stay. These gestures tie directly into the emotional hook.
- Check-in process — During check in, you can upsell different room categories or packages. For instance, you might ask a guest if they’d like to change to a room with a view, or upsell packages that include breakfast, spa access, event tickets, etc., and offer a loyalty program sign-up with immediate benefits.
All these strategies are intended to make your guests feel important and valued. If guests feel as though they are recognized and provided with special offers, their time at your property will take them from an average guest to a lifelong advocate and repeat visitor.
Social media authenticity and engagement
Engaging authentically with guests on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, and TikTok is key to building a strong online (& offline) presence. Utilizing these platforms effectively contributes significantly to positive guest engagement and reputation management. Pro tip: it’s important to ensure your promotional photos, videos, and other posts are professional and engaging so as not to turn away potential buyers.
The use of social media also allows your guests to “promote” your property to their friends and family online when they share photos and videos, document their journeys, and discover new destinations and accommodations. A great way to encourage this is to create a hashtag or put up something of importance around your property that people can build photos around, like a unique backdrop or beach scene. So many people live in the social media sphere and are sharing their lives with their following (which includes their experience with your property before, during, and after their stay.)
There are a few social media pitfalls that hotels and resorts have experienced in the past that can hinder your reputation. This includes inconsistent posting, ignoring guest interactions or feedback, failing to engage with the local community, and a lack of authenticity. If you are consistent, engaged, and authentic, social media is a great tool for connecting with your guests.
The pain points a CDP resolves
It’s no secret that there are fundamental issues hotels see arise time and time again, including:
- Messy, scattered guest data and data silos (front desk, sales team, housekeeping, engineering, etc.)
- Manual exporting of spreadsheets and data scrubbing
- Low engagement rates and high unsubscribes
- Inability to track or report ROI
- High cost of OTA bookings – 30% commission per reservation (on average)
When hotels and resorts come across these problems, the typical idea is to work harder to improve them. Instead, you should be working smarter by implementing a customer data platform (CDP). This type of platform eliminates scattered data silos by bringing all your guest data together, cleansing it automatically to ensure accuracy, and creating robust, 360-degree view guest records that make it simple to manage and market your services as well as tailor messages to your audience.
A CDP also helps improve engagement rates and lessen unsubscribes because once you have crystal-clear data to work with, you can see exactly how your guests are behaving, where, and when, and build a marketing strategy made just for them. The more personalized your messages, the more emotionally connected your guests will feel.
You’ll also get a clear picture of ROI so you can see what’s working and what’s not. If you blast a generic message out to your entire database and hope for the best, you won’t be able to attribute any of your conversions to specific marketing campaigns. A CDP allows you to automate your campaigns and tie ROI directly to each one.
And at the end of the day, you want your data to be yours. OTA bookings don’t share the guest data coming in, and if you’re already spending roughly 30% on each reservation, wouldn’t you rather invest in a CDP that allows you to keep that information and turn it around to re-attract guests? The answer is likely yes, and guest acquisition is far more costly than guest retention—a CDP can help you achieve that.
What’s next in hospitality marketing?
As many know, AI is beginning to upend the industry, albeit with a bit of hesitation. But an increasing number of hotels are starting to embrace the benefits of AI, which includes lowering operational costs by redeploying staff and using chatbots for easier guest communication. Incorporating AI for guest service ensures cost effectiveness while maintaining high-quality experiences.
Another growing trend in the future of hospitality includes embracing sustainability and efficiency. Many people are prioritizing giving their business to those that embrace sustainability, especially the younger generations. Hospitality leaders should also focus on embracing contactless technology such as using phones for check-in, room keys, and chatbots, as well as infusing local experiences across their resort.
Let us show you how a Customer Data Platform (CDP) can help you emotionally connect with your guests, activate your data, and personalize the entire guest experience from before they arrive to long after they leave!
