Enhance Your Hotel Guest Experience

What is hotel guest experience and how to enhance it? Read on and find out 8 ideas for taking your guest experience to the next level.

Scroll to read
These days, an exceptional guest experience is far more than a comfy bed and a nice breakfast. With customer demands rising in an already competitive industry, hotels need to be on their A-game from start to finish to ensure a positive guest experience, 5-star reviews, customer loyalty, and repeat business.
As Covid restrictions have lifted and people are travelling once again, now is the time to update and develop all aspects of the guest experience.

What is the guest experience in hotels?

Excellent customer service probably springs to mind when thinking about creating a positive guest experience, but the experience starts before your guests have even arrived.

The guest experience now encompasses all facets of the customer journey, from the moment they visit your website and book their accommodation to when they check out of the hotel and return home. These are just a few of the top factors that may contribute to a memorable guest experience.

  • Online booking
  • Flexible booking policies
  • Pre and post-stay communications
  • Check-in and check-out
  • Customer Service
  • Hotel facilities
  • Room amenities
  • Hotel perks
  • Personal touches
  • Local attractions
  • Cleanliness
  • Connectivity
  • Sustainability

Hotel Guest Experience Journey

In order to understand the full guest experience, it is best to break up the customer journey and various touchpoints. 

Pre-Stay

  • Website and mobile experience 
  • Online booking process
  • Booking confirmation 
  • Pre-stay communications

In-Stay

  • Check-in and check-out
  • Customer service 
  • Food and beverages
  • Hotel facilities
  • Room amenities
  • Personalisation

Post-Stay

  • Post-stay communications
  • Feedback loop
  • Loyalty programmes

Ideas to Enhance Hotel Guest Experience

Guest experience starts online

Browsing travellers have a short attention span, so ensuring your website makes a good impression is your first priority. Hotel websites should not only look good and give the customer a taste of what they can expect, but they should provide a seamless booking experience. These days, tech-savvy travellers expect websites that are easy to find and easy to navigate, with an integrated booking system, real-time rates and availability, secure payment methods, multi-language and multi-currency options, and advanced mobile capabilities. 


Make the first impression count

Check-in is a hotel’s chance to make a good first impression that sets the tone for the rest of the guest’s stay. Ensuring your hotel has a friendly front-desk staff and seamless check-in procedures can make all the difference. Guests love feeling special, whether greeting them by name, offering an upgrade or welcome package, champagne on arrival or complimentary gifts for celebratory occasions. Hotels should also consider what the guests see as they arrive. Making sure the entrance and lobby are clean and tidy, with fresh flowers and special touches, can give guests a taste of what’s to come.     


Stay connected and smart

In the age of convenience and efficiency, business and leisure travellers alike have become increasingly dependent on modern technologies. Hotels can help improve the guest experience by offering high-tech features, from free high-speed wifi to LED lighting, temperature control, electric blinds and smart TVs. Guests are also becoming more accustomed to mobile apps that allow them to make requests, order room service and check in remotely. And, with an increasing number of remote workers, guests are also looking for in-room workstations and shared spaces with AV equipment.


Partner with local companies

With a surge of travellers looking for adventures and experiences, ensuring your hotel has a variety of activities on offer is a quick way to improve the overall guest experience. By partnering with local companies, you can help remove any guesswork needed by guests, with a range of discount activities on offer. Whether reserved online during the booking process or at the hotel, special offers to zoos, galleries, and museums and tickets to one-off events and festivals can add value and help create lasting memories for your guests. 


Make the most of your hotel facilities

Another way to enhance the guest experience is by making the most of your hotel facilities and cross-selling during the booking process. VIP pool cabanas, luxury spa treatments and private dining experiences can all help to enrich a guest’s hotel experience. Bundle these options into packages to prompt guests to make use of these facilities, and be sure to include information about what’s available at the hotel as guests arrive. 


Ask for feedback

Feedback is your most valuable tool in improving guest experience and identifying which areas in the customer journey need work. Sending follow-up emails asking about their stay and providing online or social media links to review the hotel not only make your guest feel heard, but positive feedback can help boost your ratings, Google rankings and bookings. While this also opens the door to negative feedback, this will allow you the opportunity to respond and convert that customer, as well as identify areas of improvement.


Leave a lasting impression

Just as your website and the hotel check-in can make an impression, so do your final interactions with your guests. Again ensuring a seamless check-out experience and friendly customer service is essential, but asking for face-to-face feedback can show guests you are genuinely interested in their hotel experience. But it doesn’t end there. Once your guests have returned home, you have the opportunity to send post-trip surveys, offering special deals and loyalty programmes to entice guests back.


Test it

While feedback can offer powerful insights into the hotel guest experience, organising a mystery shopper or setting up room inspections and spot checks are excellent ways to ensure your hotel is up to standard. Mystery hotel guests can provide an in-depth evaluation that looks at all aspects of the customer journey, from online booking to food and beverages, hotel and room cleanliness, customer service, employee attitudes, hotel facilities and whether all expectations are met.

How to Measure Guest Experience?

There are various ways to measure guest experience and satisfaction, which can help inform your strategy and the changes required to improve the customer experience, both online and at the hotel. 


Net Promoter Score (NPS)

NPS is a customer satisfaction benchmark that measures how likely your hotel guests are to recommend your business to a friend. This is typically a 1-10 rating or yes or no response that will help indicate customer's overall sentiment about a hotel.


Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

CSAT measures how happy a customer is with their overall experience. Using a scale between 1-3, 1-5 or 1-10, customers are asked “how satisfied are you with your experience?”. Ratings can be captured at various touch points, whether post-booking, during or post-stay, which can give key insights into weak spots in the guest experience. 


Customer Retention Rate

The customer retention rate measures the percentage of customers who return to your business within a specified period. To calculate your retention rate you will need to define your time period (quarter, annual). Take the number of hotel guests at the end of this period and deduct the number of guests acquired during this period, divide that number by the number of guests at the start of the period and multiply by 100.

Final thoughts

With guest expectations continually rising, it is important to follow and understand the complete customer journey and how each touchpoint and interaction may impact the guest experience. Remember that the road to guest satisfaction is a continuous process, and there is always room for improvement.