The Perfect Mantra for a Hotel’s Successful Online Reputation Management

It is famous fact that selling to an old customer is far cheaper than getting a new customer. Increasingly hotels have realized this fact and are now focussing more towards increasing customer satisfaction and brand loyalty to retain existing customers. In the world of online reviews, prospective guests can easily evaluate and estimate the quality of services being offered by a particular hotel and hence it is imperative for hotels to perform extraordinarily well at all times. Moreover, give no chance for the guest to be unsatisfied with their stay experience in your hotel. Nice reviews ultimately lead to attracting new customers with the credibility and brand image built in the process.

Do not give wrong expectations – Do not set guest hopes on things you cannot deliver. Like hotels should stop glorifying their budget hotels as luxury hotels. This practice does more damage than profit in the long run. Instead of over glorifying, hotels should excel and advertise what they are capable to deliver. They should delight the customer at every service they provide so that their guests spread positive word of mouth about the hotel on all review websites and remain loyal.

An easy tip can be to remain an underdog and offer services more than you were expected to.

The hotel staff is the heart of any hotel and needs to remain motivated at all times. It’s only they who are the touch point to the guests. Therefore, it is necessary that they be trained to handle unpleasant situations at all times even when the customer is angry or makes unnecessary demands. Staff should be well aware about hotel’s policies and offering so that they do not have to contact manager for every small guest demand and provide a resolution immediately.

Staff needs to be empathetic and have a problem solving approach for customer grievances.

Hotels should be able to recognize repeat guests and regular visitors and make them feel special during the entire stay. Repeat visits explicitly imply that you are doing something right that these guests appreciate. The hotel should ensure that the service quality graph only goes higher. Repeat guests are like brand ambassadors to your hotel who spread positive word of mouth both offline and online.

A quick tip can be to remember all the loyal guests by their name and if possible, by faces too, and welcome them warm-heartedly every time they pay a visit to your hotel.

Hotels can nail customer satisfaction by continuous learning about guest expectations from their stay experiences. The medium can be as simple as a short feedback form when they check out or a survey over e-mail. From the input, the guests provide, whether they praise or complain about your hotel, the more the hotel gets to learn about their guests’ preferences. Hence better is the quality of services they can provide.

That is why guests should be encouraged to post and share reviews, write testimonials, give feedback and suggestions on review websites and even brand website. As this will help hoteliers to meet customer expectations to a greater extent.

Revenue Managers and other hotel staff should also ask their guests to follow the brand on social media so that they can remain updated about the latest offers and discounts.

Once the guests have checked out, hotels should take initiative to remain in touch with their guests, inquiring them about their stay and also ask them what else they will like to add on the existing services of the hotel, etc. Engaging past customers amplifies the chances of them visiting again.

Hotel can stay in touch with past customers through SMS and emails telling them about new facilities, food menu, new festivals and exclusive offers etc. However, that not at all means that they bombard mails every next day that can instead irritate and force them to unsubscribe. Additionally, hoteliers should also ensure that the offers are reasonable and do not have irrelevant terms & conditions and are easy to avail.

Hotel business can be very rewarding and profitable if run with empathy and efforts. Hotels should be easily able to adapt to changing customer’s demand and continually improve their services and offerings. Proper staff training can play a key role in ensuring promising guest experience. Incorporating latest tech in hotel industry like revenue management software, Online Reputation Management (ORM) tool coupled with a guest review collection can further help hotels to earn more revenues and maintain scintillating brand image at the same time.