#concierge app

Some of the characteristics and activities of a successful hotel business are a proper presentation and constant improvement of qualitative services, which exceeds the expectations of customers in every way including from pre-booking to post-stay. The choice of hotels becomes one of the main issues of discussion: the variety of hotel services, quality, reliability, and price are important. Since there are many hotels in the market providing the same or similar services, it is very important not only to attract but also to keep the customer in your hotel for the long run (known as guest retention). In order to maintain the position held and to compete in the future, it is necessary to provide quality services by which old customers (patrons) may be retained, and new customers (including millennial travelers) may be attracted.

Customer Satisfaction

Someone says that service quality and customer satisfaction are critical for service survival. So what are they? Both of them are intangible but the exact definition is still a controversial issue. Customer satisfaction is a psychological concept that involves the feeling of well-being and pleasure that results from obtaining what one hopes for and expects from an appealing product and/or service. Customer satisfaction definition is based on the expectation disconfirmation point of view!

Before purchasing or using a product or service, customers always have their personal expectations about their performance. After buying or using a product or service, if the result is equal to or better than expectation, it means the expectation has positive confirmation! In the opposite case, if the result is lower than expected, we have negative confirmation. Customers are said to be satisfied only if there are positive confirmations of expectation. However, in any case, the level of customer satisfaction is different between different customers because each of them owns their personal needs, demands as well as experiences.

Service Quality:

Service quality in the hospitality industry becomes one of the most important factors for gaining a sustainable competitive advantage and customers’ confidence in the highly competitive marketplace, and therefore service quality can give the hospitality industry a great chance to create competitive differentiation for organizations. It is thus considered as a significant core concept and a critical success factor in the hospitality industry. A successful hotel delivers excellent quality service to customers, and service quality is considered the life of the hotel.

Service quality consists of three dimensions: physical facilities, staff, and materials. It also divided into two aspects: functional quality and technical quality. A similar approach argued that service quality includes three dimensions: functional quality, environment, and technical quality. Another approach confirmed that service quality has five dimensions namely: assurance, reliability, empathy, tangibility, and responsiveness.

Customer satisfaction is the internal feelings of every individual which may be satisfaction or dissatisfaction resulting from the assessment of services provided to an individual in context to customer’s anticipation by an organization Hotels are continuously trying to improve the service just to satisfy their customer because higher customer satisfaction will leads towards customer loyalty.

The most important concept of customer satisfaction is accepted all around the world is the expectancy disconfirmation theory. This theory was presented by Oliver, he said that the satisfaction stage is the resultant of the distinction between anticipated and supposed performance. Satisfaction will be encouraging when the actual level of services or products is better than the anticipated (positive disconfirmation), whereas (negative disconfirmation) when the product or services level is lower than expected.

Why measure service quality and customer satisfaction?

According to the latest statistics, the hotel service sector accounts for 38 percent of the value-added in the World Economic Community. In this sector, quality and customer satisfaction play irreplaceable roles! Various researchers such as Knutson and Naumann succeeded to prove that satisfaction of customers is the cheapest mean of promotion. Each year, billions of dollars are spent on improving the level of service quality. It is said that ‘doing things wrong’ accounts for 30 or 40% of operating costs in service organizations! “It’s six to seven times more expensive to gain a new customer than it is to retain an existing customer. A 5% increase in customer retention can increase profits by 25% to 95%”

Measurement also helps the organization compare the difference before and after changes, identify the standard of service delivery and it is also a good chance to recognize problems related to the quality of service. Therefore, the measurement of service quality and customer satisfaction benefits the company in both a qualitative and quantitative way. Gaining a high level of service quality and customer satisfaction equal to enhancement in customer loyalty, market share increase, higher returns on investment, cost reduction and guarantee a competitive advantage. It also has a positive impact on employee satisfaction!

For the three-star hotels or above, measurement of the service quality is a way to prove its quality and it is one of the hotel marketing methods. Those hotel management systems look at the hotel rating system. The top ten positions in hotel rating websites are the common target of thousands of hotel because those positions are considered as the certificate for their hotels’ quality service. When travelers search for hotels, they also browse those websites. It is usual that travelers who care about high quality only look at some beginning pages which show the highest positions. Having the name here becomes a competitive advantage and helps hotels attract more guests. It is clear that hotel rating systems encourage hotel operators to improve their service quality, which may lead to changes in hotel performance.

One of the main strategies used by hotels to enhance customer satisfaction is benchmarking! Benchmarking enables hotels to learn from other players in the industry and learn what makes their competitors competitive. In some cases, some hotels may not reveal their secrets to their competitors. However, the hotel industry does not involve sensitive information. For this reason, most hotels are willing to share the secrets of their success. Nonetheless, the only thing that makes some hotels prosper as compared to others is hotel inventiveness. Hotel innovation enables prosperous hotels to create new strategies that enhance a competitive advantage over their rivals.

Importance of service quality & customer satisfaction

Customer Loyalty: Happy customers are loyal customers. Not only is it important for you to provide stellar service, but awesome products as well. Make it a point to be on the fast track for keeping up with trends that your customers may follow such as building personal assistance services for traveling customers or making special concessions for avid repeat consumers. Be sure you have items on hand so when your customer needs you and your products, everything’s available. A customer who has to continuously wait for you to do your part may grow tired, no matter how loyal, and venture off to your competition. Keep customers loyal by focusing on them at all times.

Happier Environment: The physical perception imparted by your hospitality business is important in achieving customer satisfaction. Your restaurant or hotel need not spend lots of money to create an amicable environment. Over-the-top interior design can be perceived as either cold and off-putting, genial and inviting or somewhere in between. The difference lies in the emotive quality of your employees — the main ingredient in creating a special experience for your guests. Your environment must be clean, well-lit and comfortable, however, for your customers to feel at home.

Increased Security: When customers are paying to be served, they expect to be able to relax and enjoy themselves without worrying about security. A secure environment means having plenty of friendly employees visible to guests from the moment of arrival to departure. Helpful, too, are frequent interactions with guests to instill a sense of inclusion in the goings-on at your establishment. Security need not be overt, however. Armed and uniformed security guards will frighten guests rather than impart a sense of safety.

Personalization is one of the most important and happening buzzwords which is dominating the hospitality industry since early 2017. Hoteliers are now better able to collect, store and retrieve data in order to give guests a far more personalised experience, hotel and travel brands must remain relevant in an increasingly competitive area of client service. Every hotel guest expects personalization now, yet many businesses are still struggling to translate their data into meaningful actions!

What report says?

According to a detailed report by Forrester, 40% of marketers said that personalizing offers and experiences based on behavior is a top challenge for them. From a technical standpoint, personalization requires detailed knowledge about your guest, so the best way to begin is to make sure that you are pulling together your big CRM data along with usable data available through public social profiles, email, and Wi-Fi data. By including all available sources, you will have a fuller view of your guest and more contextually relevant information.

By treating your guests as the unique individuals they are, rather than a passing paycheque, you foster greater loyalty by creating authentic and memorable moments for them, as well as forge the positive brand identity needed to attract new business. In a 2017 survey, more than half of the travellers interviewed said they were happy to provide personal information if it meant getting relevant deals, discounts and personalised service.

A hotel’s service personalization is the key to create an unforgettable experience for guests. A personalized hotel experience goes beyond the kind of amenities you have or discounts in store. But what makes a hotel’s guest experience such an important subject? Independent hotel owners competing with larger brands need to set themselves apart from the competition. This is a surefire way to gain repeat guests and position your property right.

With advancements in technology, you can sell your hotel guest experience to keep travelers engaged at your independent property. Guest personalization in the hotel industry goes beyond addressing your guest by a name! And, any business that is about customers is definitely in the people business! Now, saying all these let us see the simplest ways to guest personalization in the hotel industry.

Methods of Guest Personalization

1. Devise a CRM to track guest activities: An easy-to-use CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software should be implemented and used for VIP guests. Hotels should already have a list of VIP guests – high spenders, important individuals, or customers who return very often. Many CRM’s allow a certain level of automation to customer communication, and can log every interaction that VIP guests have with the hotel and its staff members. By doing so, hotel management can provide an extraordinary customized experience to VIP guests.

This could be as simple as providing a VIP with a free drink of their choice at their bar, or booking a reservation at a VIP’s preferred restaurant in advance, before their arrival. By leveraging a CRM software and customer data, hotels can provide unparalleled service to VIP guests, and further increase their satisfaction in their experience.

2. Involve hotel managers: Guests love personal attention – and attention from managers is especially welcomed. Guests understand intuitively that the time of management is precious, so they appreciate getting a moment to express any concerns or questions they may have about their service.

This doesn’t mean that managers have to be involved in every conflict or issue that a guest may have, but they must at least listen to the concerns or praise, as much as practically possible – that a guest offers, taking appropriate steps to resolve the situation. This has an added benefit – management can add the information gained from conversations with guests into their CRM systems, allowing for a better customer experience during future stays.

3. Know your guests during pre-booking: The hotel technology has improved so much that now there are applications that can help you collect important data about your existing and new customers. You can now get to know who the top 100 customers are that come to your hotel. You can also get to know their personal favorites in terms of food, facilities, activity preferences, etc.

Details about their birthdays, anniversaries, job title, current employer, etc are all easily available. After this, you can have a statement, which is as long as a single tweet like “Donald Trump is a well-known dancer and he has paid 100 visits to your resort in the last 3 months.”

4. Hyper-personalization via AI-enabled chatbots: If we talk about the ever budding hotel industry the chat-based assistants are becoming an innate part and parcel of the industry. Many hoteliers are utilizing chatbots on their websites and Facebook for guest demands and personalization in their hotel rooms. AI-powered chatbots have been all the buzz these days and by rendering amazing and relevant hyper-personalized with diligently curated recommendations to the guests as per their behavior and preference Trilyomakes your hotel more relevant than ever! Doing this helps businesses save a lot of money which is why many business owners are adopting this technology.

And given the fact that these bots can be placed in places like Facebook Messenger, Slack, Telegram, SMS or on your own hotel website, it gives you the potential to reach a bigger audience.

5. Custom tailored recommendations via AI voice-assistants: A voice-bot or voice-based solution is also nifty for the hospitality industry because it saves considerable time and effort by becoming a tool for hands-free conversation and the guest who is already staying in your hotel won’t have to leave their room in order to know more about other amenities and extra benefits. While hotel experimentation with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant has been limited so far, hoteliers are reporting that guest feedback has been largely positive! Also, with voice-based solutions, a query from the guest would directly go to the respective department and can be solved in a jiffy.

Voice-based solutions has the power to upsell and cross-sell hotel’s amenities without touting. For example, a guest has arrived to your hotel after a long and tiring journey; so Amazon Alexa can suggest them to try the hotel’s spa section or pool area for refreshment. Another advantage of incorporating and utilizing a voice-based service in a hotel is that you can provide them digital concierge services without employing an attendant! How? Amazon Alexa can act as a digital butler and with the help of Artificial Intelligence it can anticipate a guest’s demand prior to saying ; for example food preference of a guest or their exercise habits.

In recent years, online reputation management for hotels has emerged as a critical function; a means of measuring guest satisfaction, guiding improvements and attracting more bookings. According to a recent TripAdvisor survey of over 10,000 hospitality businesses worldwide, online reputation management is the top investment priority in 2018, outranking renovations, marketing, staff training, and technology. But not every hotel is clear on the best approach to managing reputation. By taking an organized, hotel-wide approach, your hotel can reap the benefits and avoid pitfalls such as missed opportunities, negative reviews, and wasted time.

It’s frustrating not being able to control what people say about your property. Saying the truth, in the past, the damage was minimal. One disgruntled guest could impact only a handful of people. Today, one disgruntled guest can ruin your entire gamut of business! All it takes is one viral video showing bedbugs at your property, and your business is forever harmed. It’s important to go online and check up on your business’ reputation, to see what people are saying about it. It is tricky to know where to begin and sometimes it takes more than usual time, effort, and energy to come up with ideas that can boost your hotel’s online reputation.

There’s a ton of information available to buyers these days. It doesn’t matter the industry, there are reviews, guides, and walkthrough videos to help consumers make decisions. So reputation management is important for most businesses. Unfortunately for travel agents, we don’t rely on expert opinions to book travel anymore. Before the Internet, nobody would have traveled to parts unknown without their trusty Lonely Planet or Rough Guide. And a good review in one of these publications would keep your hotel’s reputation safe for years.

Now, everyone‘s reviewing, all the time! Sites like Booking.com, TripAdvisor, and Yelp have made it easy to rate your latest night’s stay. And these reviews are an integral part of a guest journey. Before, expert reviews were crucial, but they were mostly separate from the customer’s buying process. Today, a guest read reviews and book your accommodation at the same time. In today’s world where consumers are more empowered than ever (thank you, technology) and can access to seemingly unlimited sources of information on the Internet, your online reputation can either serve as your ultimate competitive differentiator or work against your favor, leading to serious losses. Saying all these, now let us see how to manage an online reputation for hotels (including chain and independent hotels).

1. Set reputation objectives and strategies:

Set a vision of what you want guests to say about your hotel after they leave. Analyze your ratings and rankings on key review sites, and decide where you should be (objectives) and how you will get there (strategies).

2. Respond to negative reviews:

It’s never nice when someone slams your business in public. A few seconds for them can turn into an ongoing headache for you and your team. And the reviewer either doesn’t care, or actually wants to cause you harm. While it’s tempting to return fire, there are actually positive things you can do to improve the worst reviews. And it starts with a quick response.

Brand reputation experts Reputology on a blog mentioned that response time is one of the most important factors in improving a bad review. Customers want to feel heard – especially the angry ones – and sometimes a friendly message is all it takes. But it needs to be timely, otherwise, they’re never going to change their review.

3. Engage in social media:

Social media has become a core marketing strategy for hoteliers and is an effective way to build engagement, staying in the minds of potential guests. While you can have a friendly persona on social media platforms it’s typically best to keep it professional, viewing it as an extension of your other customer service aspects.

4. Turn on your Google Alerts:

Google Alerts is a tool that notifies you when someone in the world publishes news about your brand. You can use this tool to discover reviews and ratings to the moment they’re published. Go to Google Alerts, and create a new alert for the name of your business. Google will now email you when they discover someone talking about you. This allows you to quickly respond to negative reviews and false information, to mitigate damage.

This is something someone at your property must do. You can do it, or your marketing leads. Not only can you use Google Alerts to manage your online reputation, but you can use it to monitor your competitors’. Set up alerts for your competitors’ brand names to discover exactly when the media mentions them. You can reach out to these places and ask that they cover your property too. Google Alerts can help you learn when your competitors list inventory with niche OTAs or directories.

5. Utilize monitoring tools:

With so much chatter on social media, it’s virtually impossible to keep up. To ensure that you don’t miss a thing, set up alerts on review sites and social networks to be notified of reviews and mentions of your hotel. Appoint a gatekeeper to monitor reviews and distribute them to appropriate staff. A reputation management tool will help to automate this process.

6. R for Recognition and Reward:

Provide employees with regular updates on progress toward achieving reputation objectives. Incentivize and reward staff and managers for achieving objectives, recognize them for the positive feedback, and celebrate your successes.

7. Never forget to refresh listings:

Refresh your listings – When you come across a listing for any business that’s outdated it can be frustrating and off-putting. Regularly go through the online listings for your hotels to ensure it has fresh pictures, data, and more. It’ll show that you’re a business that takes a proactive approach.

8. Be available where your guests are already present:

In the real world, a good hotel manager doesn’t hide away in the office; instead, he or she is present in the lobby or walking around the hotel, in order to connect with guests as well as get the staff together to deliver the best possible guest experience.