How can the arrival & departure

experience be personalized in boutique

hotels
One way of doing this, is through appropriate use of social media and the Internet.
For example, your bookinng confirmation emails could contain a link labelled something like
"Personalise your experience with us!", which directs guests to a webpage that gives them a variety
of options to customize their stay in your property. They could pre-select their favourite newspaper,
pick their favourite type of pillow from a selection of pillows, maybe even decide what welcome
amenity they want (personally, I hate fruit baskets and I wish hotels would ask me what I want
instead of a fruit basket). Thsi could also be a platform to upsell your restaurants and bars, i.e. guests
could be given the option to reserve a table in advance.
All of this data should then be fed into your PMS and communicated to the various departments
concerned. I would encourage you tom include a free-format field that allows guests to leave their
own comments about what they like your dislike - you may be surprised by the simplicity of many of
the requests - it often only takes a minute and no considerable investment in time or money terms.

I think it is important to ensure that the arrival as well as the depature experience is covered - too
often in hotels the arrival experience is great, but the departure experience is a let down. Guess
which of the two most guests will remember more...
So let guests decide whether they want to request for a late check-out (and if they do, make sure
your Front Desk programs the key cards accordingly), etc.

Also, engage your guests through sites like Facebook and Twitter, or through a company blog, before
and after their stay with you. Guests tend to share a lot of preferences on these sites, which you can
feed back into your PMS.

Create a "Arrival & Departure Experience Wizard" position - an associate who does nothing else but
gather data from guests and feed it back into the PMS and ensures the appropriate departments
pick up on the requests. On the Bonnington's Facebook pages we frequently have guests asking us
questions about Dubai or the hotel, which often provide excellent opportunities to personalise their
stay with us. For example, I had a guest ask whether we serve Malibu liqueur in our bar and she
mentioned that this is her favourite drink. This info went straight into the PMS and when she
arrived, she was welcomed with a glass of Malibu on the rocks.

Once they have left your hotel, do you contact your guests again to thank them for staying with you?
Do you give guests the chance to share their opinions what could have been better? Do you reply to
all reviews on online sites which allow you to post replies? If so, do you write individual replies or do
you just use templates?

The bottom line is that nobody wants to be another number and you need to train your teams to
recognise that. Every touchpoint, every single conversation with a guest, every email exchanged with
a booker, is a chance to gather data, which will help you personalise guests' experiences in your
hotel.

Good luck & have fun! 5 months ago in Hotels | Closed