Elevating the Guest Experience: A Necessity in Modern Hospitality Management

Managing the guest experience used to be much easier formerly; it all began when they entered through the front door and ended when they left. However, nowadays customers expect more than just a place to stay; they expect a combination of exceptional customer service, excellent lodging facilities, wonderful food, and world-class hospitality on a plate of luxury by their hosts.

In order to create loyalty and bring in more business, hoteliers must now turbocharge the guest experience they provide by listening to their guests’ demands.

According to the Harvard Business Review, “we should understand the customer experience not as something that occurs in relation to a specific function of a firm, but as how a consumer feels after having dealt with a business in different situations”.

Hospitality Management To Make The Better Guest Experience

Imagine a job where the core of your responsibilities is to make guests feel welcomed, happy, valued, and appreciated, all while wearing a pleasant smile on your face.

Fulfilling the duties of a lodging manager requires more than just effort and completing assignments - after all, keeping others happy isn’t easy.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “lodging managers guarantee that customers on vacation or business travel have a nice experience at a hotel, motel, or other types of establishment offering accommodations”.

A hotel manager or a guest experience manager is responsible for a number of departments, including:-

• Front Desk
• Housekeeping
• Concierges
• Restaurant
• Room service
• Budgeting & Finances
• Spa services
• Maintenance services
• Conferences, and other guest services

The customer experience starts when they walk in and concludes when they checkout and leave. Whether or not your guests enjoyed their stay with you, will be determined by how you treat them during this process. There are no shortcuts here, as people in charge of taking care of visitors must be skilled in areas such as motivation, communication, and decision-making.

The course of a successful customer service experience is determined by your ability to stay motivated, communicate effectively, and make sound decisions.

Customers create touchpoints with businesses wherever they go. This means that every time a consumer contacts a service provider, whether in person or online, they establish several touchpoints.

Going over other customers’ reviews is also one of these touchpoints. Businesses involved in the guest experience must properly manage this complicated experience space since it is a deciding factor in the decisions made by customers. Failing to manage these patterns will have a detrimental impact on the brand.

McKinsey’s Kevin Neher has identified the critical elements of successful customer experience transformations. In the Harvard Business Review video webinar, Neher shares the keys to customer experience transformation success.

Ways To Enhance Guest Experience

Consumer expectations - It would be unfair to compare past and present customer expectations because of issues such as changing technology, the environment, and society’s overall digitization.

It is not an exaggeration to state that today’s clients want more of everything: their expectations have skyrocketed, and keeping up with them is difficult. It’s difficult to predict how a customer will react to your services- some may find them advantageous, while others may not.

Fortunately, thanks to DT’s Intuitive Interface, capturing feedback along the client journey, both online and in-person, becomes easier. Capturing feedback from guests can help you to figure out how they feel about your services.

Other tools, like text analysis and Net Promoter Score (NPS), gather important information to better comprehend client signals that would otherwise go unnoticed. It’s all in the details, after all. This leads us to the next crucial issue.

It makes a tremendous difference to pay attention to details: Obviously, it’s critical to pay attention to things like calling guests by their correct names, ensuring that they have access to basic amenities, clean rooms, providing timely responses to their questions - determines the direction of their experience.

It is difficult to achieve everything, but the effort is what counts! If you show your guests that you care, that you are doing your best to assist and provide them comfort, you are likely to earn some bonus points and possibly some positive reviews and referrals.

Identifying the annoyances and offering a pleasant guest experience: The process of identifying pain points gets much easier with platforms like DT. You can quickly identify your Promoters and Detractors using NPS snapshots: promoters are guests who love your services and will remain loyal to you, detractors are clients that you have failed to please and most probably end up providing you unfavorable reviews, which directly translates to a loss.

Customers’ pain points signal troubles they are having now or in the past, so you can figure out what went wrong in time to potentially prevent damage by offering them comfort to help them get out of the situation. You may offer them discounts, complimentary services, free meals, or coupons in exchange for their feedback and a commitment to improve their next trip.

We at Dropthought believe that in order to develop a long-term relationship with a consumer, we must value their input. We believe in creating a situation based on a feedback-centric client engagement plan that will not only assist businesses in maximizing the data acquired but will also provide a long-term potential to keep customers happy and income flowing. Customers can use the surveys to share their ideas and provide suggestions for future changes.

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