Small hoteliers which include B & B’s , guest houses, boutique inns need to accept that as the industry has grown, the hard truth is customer loyalty has all but vanished.

Nowadays travel customers are deal-seeking, very wary about the hotel’s pricing strategies and tech – savvy. Result being that the consequential market of travel consumers have even more buying power and are now searching for the best deals, especially online with access to an abundance of property information.

Below we enlist some important steps that a hotel can take to build long-term customer relationships and customer loyalty:

Listen

Find out your customers needs both prior to booking and during their stay. If your guests are largely corporate clients, make sure you add information in your email confirmation of places around your location; facilities offered and must have food in your restaurant which will come in handy when they visit. A good all-in-one online distribution system will facilitate automatic emails to your guests, pre and post-stay.

Customise

Customise packages that will surprise your guests in a pleasant way according to the room they book. Ensure all their needs are captured when the booking was made and are delivered upon their arrival.

For example, if your guest has requested champagne and chocolate on arrival as a surprise for their partner add an extra element of flower or a small hotel postcard to make it special. If however, your guest is a business traveller you could offer ‘upgraded toiletries’ as an extra.

Deliver special requests

By using an efficient front desk and booking engine you can repeatedly correspond with your guest to capture any customer data at the time of booking like the time of their arrival, to any food allergies or preferences they might have.

Get technological

Travellers are now not only booking online over the web but they are also using a variety of devices to do so. Hence it is necessary that your hotel can be easily booked online through various sources like mobile device, tablet or desktop to make their booking.

With an all–in-one integrated PMS and channel manager small hotels can now take bookings from innovative booking channels like Facebook, twitter and their own websites.

Enhance creativity

Get creative and engage your customers to delight them for their next stay. Promote surprising gifts like postcards or hotel goodies, remember a guests birthday; run small competitions on your Facebook page for discount on accommodation services or add-ons. This will help to catch the attention of the guest when they want to be around the area. Some hotel PMS helps to capture such guest information and print reports about same.

Ask for feedback

When guests complete their stay, ask the customer “How was his stay?” or “Is there anything else that we could have done differently?” These questions make the customer feel you have interest in them. An all-in-one PMS and extra integrated service software’s can help to capture guest scorecards.

Small hotels need to focus on building their customer loyalty to stay ahead of competition from big hotels who offer a full fledged customer loyalty package. This will ensure a steady flow of repeat customers who will endorse your hotel via word of mouth to their friends and trip advisor. Following some of the small steps mentioned above will help small hotels to get along the creative route which will provide real value for money, elevate the customer journey and turn guests into returning campaigner of your hotel’s brand. There are lot of software’s in the market that help a hotel provide exceptional service within a set framework of time and satisfy customer demands as and when they arise.

By:Minakshi  Dave.

About mycloud

mycloud is developed and promoted by Prologic First – a hospitality technology innovator and a leading international hospitality IT solutions provider. Prologic First is a group of companies that develops and internationally markets integrated software solutions for the hospitality sector. Prologic First software solutions are in use at more than 1300 sites in 35 countries. Professionals formed Prologic First more than a decade ago with extensive experience in developing and deploying hotel IT solutions. For more information visit www.prologicfirst.com.

Media Enquiries:

Deepak Chauhan, Phone +44-074-1844-8130, Email: deepak@mycloudhospitality.com