The hospitality industry is going through an exceptional change. Whereas before travelers would have only a couple of options to book their stay, nowadays there’s a huge market for them to pick from.
From budget accommodations to peer-to-peer housing, the options are endless and this comes in as an increasing opportunity for hoteliers to capitalize on this emerging market growth. But most hoteliers have only a general overview of what their guests like and dislike about their hotels and do not go into details about what triggers these people to book or not their next stay with them.
There’s still a lot of hotels that rather leave some paper questionnaires inside the hotel’s bedrooms for guests to fill in. But is this enough? How many guests actually leave their feedback? And what kind of analysis can hoteliers run from these answers? Can they make use of this data to improve their properties and services?
Today, travelers are looking for quality, convenience, and value, so hoteliers should make use of the digital era as an ally to gather this information and use it to increase their business and support their decisions. With the help of technology, it is much easier not only to build surveys, but to analyze the data you gather from them. So no more excuses to skip this step! Here’s why you should start surveying (properly!) your guests right away.
Grow your business
Surveys can be seen as a platform for success since they quickly highlight the key factors that drive businesses’ growth. Besides informing and educating hoteliers, surveys make your guests feel like you really appreciate their opinions, and customers tend to remain loyal to businesses that pay attention to them and take care of them as if they were family.
By extracting the golden nuggets out of your hotel satisfaction survey and putting in place strategies that show your guests how much you value their opinion, you will boost your hotel’s customer care making your customers more likely to continue booking their stays with you. And when feeling valued, they’ll easily become brand ambassadors and attract new customers with them.
Word-of-mouth as a marketing strategy is one of the top approaches you can adopt, so everyone wins: your guests are happier and you get to grow your business!
Improve your service
There is always room for improvement and, when it comes to your hotel’s services, surveys can help you with that. Surveys will give you the opportunity to understand where the main flaws are and what you need to do to face and overcome challenges.
Customer service is the most important factor in this industry. Your guests aren’t just paying for a room to spend the night, they’re paying for a service and a whole experience that you ought to be able to provide them.
With the help of guest surveys, you can get insights on the quality of the services you are providing and what your guests expect from them. And when you have different types of guests visiting your properties, you’ll get different feedback. Some people appreciate room service while others give more importance to SPA facilities. No matter which services they tend to appreciate the most, it’s important to always survey them about this.
Once again, leave the paper aside and make use of digital feedback collection tools. Besides being less tedious to manage, you’ll get more accurate results.
Control your reputation
Every hotel wants to give their guests the best experience but sometimes they fail for reasons they weren’t even aware of in the first place. Given the competitive industry they act on, hoteliers must keep in mind that their properties’ online reputation will directly affect their sales and by successfully engaging in hotel review management, hoteliers can proactively control their hotel’s reputation.
According to TripAdvisor, 93% of guests use online reviews to help them decide which hotel they want to stay at and 53% mention they wouldn’t book a hotel that didn’t have online reviews. As a hotelier, you can either decide to ignore these figures or take them and use them for your own benefit.
User-generated content such as online feedback and reviews should be your priority since they have a massive impact on your guest’s purchase decision.
Just keep in mind: every touchpoint counts when it comes to guest satisfaction. There are platforms, like HiJiffy, that can help you gather feedback from the first interaction with your guest, by sending out automatic surveys just a few hours after your support agent closes a guest’s request. From here you can analyze the feedback regarding your overall or individual customer satisfaction score, by staff member.
Customer satisfaction is what drives every business’s success and feedback surveys will help you gather your guests’ insights, earn their trust and improve your direct bookings, so why not start investing more time and effort in hotel reputation management now?
