4 ways hotels can use data to build a personalised guest experience

This is a guest post written by Bookboost, a CRM designed for hospitality.

Data is king in many industries, including hospitality. But if you don’t use it, it won’t have any positive impact on your business. The more familiar you are with your guests, their profiles, and preferences, the better strategies you will create to reach them and drive revenue.

When talking about delivering a personalised experience to each guest, data is also present, as it can help you to go from generalist initiatives to highly targeted efforts with higher conversion. In this article, let’s review four ways you can use data during your guest journey to ensure a personalised experience for your guests.

1. Use data to personalise the booking experience

The more you leverage personalisation, the better results you will get, and this includes the booking moment. Even before a user makes a booking, you can already leverage data to give them a superior experience.

How? For example, if it’s their second time visiting the website, you can personalise the message you show on the home page. In addition, if they look into specific pages, you can trigger a chatbot or web messenger offering support or a special message to convince them to make a booking. 

2. Use data to deliver value-led communication

Communication with guests is not just about selling. You need to make your messages valuable to your guests so they don’t perceive them as irrelevant. To accomplish this, use the value-led principle: Is this adding any value to the guest’s experience?

For example, share information about means of transportation to help guests reach the hotel faster and without problems. You can tell them about the local events around your property and the most famous attractions in your area.

But to make these recommendations truly valuable, you have to go one step further and personalise them based on their profiles. For couples, romantic recommendations around the area; for families, attractions suitable for children, and so on.

This might seem like a lot of work, but if you have a good hotel CRM in place, this will take only a few minutes to set up.

This will not only lower their customer effort as they will have useful information in hand that will make their experience easier, but it’s also a great way to showcase your knowledge of the area and build trust with your guests.

If you want to get more ideas on how to structure your communications across the entire guest journey, take a look at our guide: How to personalise the guest journey for the 2023 guests.

3. Use data for a personalised upselling

Upselling is a great technique for extra revenue… but only if done right.
You can give your guests the opportunity to upgrade their rooms or add additional services to their reservations but be mindful about how you do the offering.
Here is where data plays a key role. Why offer a couple’s massage to a solo traveler? Or a ticket to a family breakfast for a business traveler? Sending irrelevant offers only causes guests to get annoyed and perceive your communication as not useful.
The key? Look into your guest data to identify their preferences and even their past purchases, and offer similar services or upgrades. Look into their booking details and see what services make more sense to offer that specific guest, and only then, target them with personalised messages.
Get inspired with ideas for your pre-arrival communication: How to design a pre-arrival plan that drives engagement with your guests.

4. Use data for attractive re-engagement campaigns

The guest experience doesn’t finish once guests leave your property. Studies show that loyal guests contribute a significant portion of hotel revenue, ranging from 30% to 60%. 

Despite the numbers, many hotels are still focusing only on attracting new guests and creating new bookings when the truth is that re-engaging past guests is an essential strategy to maintain a steady stream of bookings and maximize profitability. 

And data is key to ensuring your re-engagement campaigns are successful.

Using the same template for everyone, only sending out your newsletter, or offering the same discount are examples of what not to do. 

In reality, there are different ways you can reengage your old bookers, motivating them to make a new booking and come back to your hotel, either to the same city or to another location if that is the case. 

You need to spice things up and add some creativity to your campaigns. Engaging and enticing messages that portray interesting benefits and offers are key to delivering campaigns with high conversion. Some examples: Use data to target local guests, re-engagement campaigns based on their past purchases, or your most popular services, among others.

Bookboost: A CRM to handle all data and personalise the experience

Getting all the right data into one place and then using it can get complicated if you don’t have the right resources. Why spend hours gathering data and personalising marketing campaigns when a CRM like Bookboost can do it for you in minutes? 

Bookboost is a CRM designed for hospitality to help hoteliers save time in guest communication while making the most out of their data and personalising the guest experience. 

Remember: your guest data is your best asset, but if you don’t use it, you won’t see the impact it can have on your brand and your revenue.