With the power and evolution of technology, hotels now have insights on more than guest profiles, giving hoteliers a better understanding of guests’ behaviors and preferences. The hoteliers now have the power of looking deeply into consumer characteristics and how they may change with the passing of time. The CRM system can then help to integrate the information from a first experience with other ancillary activities. Now, more than ever before the hoteliers can have “a more accurate portrait of the travel consumer across a wide spectrum of activities”, as explained by Skift report. Let’s look at how the CRM system can make a difference between repeat guests and loyal guest; but firstly, we should understand what the difference between a repeat guest and a loyal guest is.
A loyal customer won’t be easily persuaded to switch for another business based only on price. They will be passionate about your business and services and also be one of best advocates, spreading positive word of mouth. It is not easy to convince these customers to switch for another brand.
Repeat guest, don’t necessarily get to sit at the loyal table. This customer does not really have an emotional connection with your brand. They will not necessarily promote your brand and they might easily switch if there is a better deal somewhere else. A lot of these repeat guests could possible pick a particular business just out of commodity.
As we know customers have a lot of alternatives nowadays, what can your business do to have more loyal guests than repeat guests. Here is where CRM comes into play. According to Skift reports Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is defined as “practices, strategies, and technologies that companies use to manage and analyze customer interactions and data throughout the customer lifecycle, with the goal of improving business relationships with customers, assisting in customer retention and driving sales growth”. But as any great technology it needs to feed on data to be useful, here are some tips that will help your CRM convert those repeat guests to loyal guests:
- Seeking the best enhanced version of guest profiles: details about the guests should be added and stored as often as possible, even when they are observed by the staff or even by their own request
- Social media as a CRM component: younger travelers, who have not yet established a loyal relationship may do so with those brands who adopted social media; especially those who are active and post attractive interesting imagery and also possible accept payments through social media
- Automating communication: by using data analytics marketing and ops can leverage what they have learned about their guests and communicate this automatically in post experience emails
- Centralize data assets: all the possible data collecting sources should bring the information in one central location, giving a better opportunity to scan and find guest-behavior patterns
- Maintain momentum: constantly tracking and fine tuning your system and the collection process
Making the most of your CRM will only bring both you and your guest great satisfaction. The CRM data should be able to give employees the power to reward, manage and assist guests, reaching and exceeding their expectation every time, converting them to loyal customers.
