Introduction
The experience plays a central role in the success (or lack thereof) your hotel experiences. Hotel owners and managers often assume that the guest experience begins when the guest gets into the hotel property, which is not true.
What happens if a visitor has a bad time? There is a very real chance that they will decide to look for accommodation elsewhere – there’s plenty of competition. There is also a chance that they will share this negative guest experience online which would further ruin your hotel’s reputation.
So how do you improve the guest experience? For hoteliers concerned about how to improve customer satisfaction, here’s some simple recommendations.
Your website should be easy to use:
The most important thing you can do is make sure that you have a modern and easy-to-use website. If it’s clunky, outdated, full of flashing graphics and garish colors, you’ll turn the potential guests off and they’ll cancel their stay at your hotel. Today’s travelers are much more sophisticated and expect your website to be better in comparison with your competitors.
But what makes the web easier to use? Some of the points are mentioned:
Navigation
Ensure your guests can easily navigate the pages they want to visit. In most cases, this will be an exploration of the rooms you have to offer. Furthermore, they might also want you to review your amenities, help you in exploring the locality, things to do in the local area, or help in getting a cab to the nearest airport.
Images –
Use high quality images to illuminate most areas of your hotel. You can upload photos of the pool (if you have any), hotel lobby, hallways, guest rooms, restaurant and more. Make sure they are done professionally as amateur photography can make even a beautiful guest room look bad.
Helpful Content
Provide helpful information to ensure your guests have the information they need. Consider using a tool like Buzzsumo to browse and discover the topics your guests are most interested in learning about so you can create relevant content for your website.
A note on the images
Let’s touch a little more on visual media. The images you use on your website should be light to ensure good load times, but should be evocative of a hotel. You also need to break out of the mold – sure, those lobby pictures look nice, but you can do so much more.
Consider lifestyle photos of travelers at your hotel engaging in activities. Highlight hotel architecture and design through photos. Consider adding virtual tours and 360-degree photos to help guests feel like they’re actually in the space and connect with your property over the web.
Your web booking system
If there’s one element that will instantly ruin your hotel experience, it’s a poorly designed and unresponsive web reservation system. If your guests can’t book online, they won’t have to bother contacting you to do it manually. The whole point of a web booking system is to offer your guests convenience and streamline the process.
Your web booking system should be responsive and modern. It should allow guests to easily choose the type of room they want, indicate their preferences in terms of beds, views and more, and then confirm the length of their stay.
Hotelogix offers a premium web booking system that is responsive, reliable and easy to use. Guests simply select their room type and preferences and then enter their length of stay. The intuitive design also means you lose fewer guests during the online booking process.
Secure payment gateway
Booking a reservation is fine, but you must ensure that your guests can pay for their stay in advance. Today, that means using an online payment options to avoid having to take credit card numbers manually, but there are some important considerations to make, especially when it comes to security.
Your guests entrust you with their financial and personal information. It is your responsibility to ensure that your payment gateway is fully secure and resistant to digital threats.
At Hotelogix, we understand the importance of providing guests with not only a modern experience, but also peace of mind when it comes to sensitive financial and personal information. We offer connections to over 50 payment options, all of which use robust digital encryption to protect your guests’ data as well as your hotel information.
Mobile first design
Once upon a time, your guests were much more likely to access your hotel’s website from a desktop computer or perhaps a laptop. Today, things aren’t exactly the same. Instead, your website visitors are much more likely to be using a mobile device.
