Throughout the customer journey, your hotel is battling fierce competition. From securing bookings and creating a memorable stay, to winning guest loyalty – meaningfully engaging with customers at every touch point is tough. So how can technology help to give you the competitive edge you need?
Travellers today look at 277 web pages on average before booking a trip, according to Travel Market Report. They look at online travel agencies (OTAs), airline websites, hotel websites and meta travel websites, plus sites where they can read traveller reviews and recommendations. So if you’re a hotelier, your hotel needs a presence in all of these places to have a chance of securing a booking. And each time your hotel comes up in a traveller’s search, plenty of other competitors will be sitting there right next to your hotel.
Being genuinely competitive in this landscape is no easy task, and as a hotel, you need all the help you can get. So what exactly can technology do to give you a competitive edge?
Keeping Rates Competitive
Cost is a big factor in the decision-making process of prospective guests. If the rate of your hotel rooms doesn’t look competitive in relation to other hotels that come up in a user’s search, they’re very likely to book elsewhere.
However, technology such as SIHOT.RATES+ can help with this. You can set the best available rate (BAR) according to demand. Using SIHOT.YIELD|EXPRESS too, you can also manage the BAR according to occupancy. This helps ensure you’re reactively offering rates that are both competitive, and that reflect real-time changes in supply and demand.
Improving Guest Experience
Providing an exceptional guest experience leads to brilliant reviews. And top reviews generate more bookings. Reviews are the most important part of the pre-purchase journey for guests, and 57% say they check other travellers’ experiences before booking a hotel (YouGov).
Keeping in touch with guests before and after their stay makes them feel valued and keeps them informed. You can manage communications easily through modules such as SIHOT.PRE & POST-STAY.
Using technology to help guests manage their own seamless stay can also be beneficial. Self-check-in systems such as SIHOT.KIOSK reduces waiting times and helps guests get to their rooms quickly. Offering guests an app such as SIHOT.GO! means they can even complete pre-check-in information before they even arrive, and make service requests while they’re on the property, such as extra pillows or airport transfers. Tech like this can create positive and memorable experiences that make guests want to give favourable reviews.
Enabling Operational Efficiency
If your hotel runs slickly, you can maximise your use of staff resources, increase your profit margin, and deliver great guest experiences. Technology can help to take the legwork out of the most time consuming manual tasks.
This can be done by adding a range of modules to your property management system, such as SIHOT.PMS, that make sense to the specifics of your hotel operations. Automating guest registrations, billing and guest communications can save a lot of time and reduce the number of staff you need working on these functions. Using an employee app such as SIHOT.MOBILE to more efficiently manage housekeeping and maintenance tasks also helps to make time efficiencies.
Securing Loyalty
When you put so much effort into securing bookings, it’s increasingly important to nurture guest loyalty and opportunities for repeat business. Technology can help you put measures and schemes in place to keep your customers actively engaged.
As well as automating post-stay emails, you can use modules such as SIHOT.LOYALTY to manage loyalty cards and membership schemes. Much of this can be automated, so guests get the rewards and discounts they’re entitled to with little administration needed from staff. Tools like this also collect information about guests that can be used to feed into targeted marketing campaigns.
Contact us to find out how SIHOT could help to make your hotel more competitive.