Guest Interaction
First Impression matters :
You have to keep in mind that you have only one chance to make a positive impression you make a bad impression that will be one star down on your hotel reviews, so get it right!
“It’s like dating, if you show up on a first date wearing a dirty, torn up shirt and stinky breath, chances are, you’re likely not to get a second.”
Quite simply its the same for our hotels. You make an fantastic first impression, they’re sure to come back! Or at least make a good review. Our satisfied guests will often overlook small issues, if we know how to properly welcome them.
These are my 4 “must-do’s” for making great impressions.
Friendly Welcome – “Hi, Welcome to the ……. Hotel” or “Good afternoon, Welcome to …. Hotel. Is this your first time visiting our city?”
Stand Up – Make sure to get off that chair and be presentable (iron your shirt!)
Make Eye Contact – Eye contact produces feelings of caring, trustworthiness and likability.
Smile – Why look sad? When instead, you can smile. They say a smile is contagious and it’s actually true! When we smile, it creates a spark that triggers the brain’s pleasure center.
Be Carefull of what comes out of your mouth :
Words comes out of your mouth are powerful tools. They can either make or break any situation, you never want disgruntled customer. Therefore sentences that come out of our mouths make a huge impact on your hotel, how others feel about our hotel and our successes. Hence a habit of using the right words to properly communicate to our guests is crucial.
Here are some Right versus Wrong hospitality words.
“NO” vs Find a solution – No is not the answer
“We can’t do that” vs “Please allow me to figure out a solution”
“We’re sold out” vs “Tonight our hotel is fully committed, can I offer to help you find nearby accommodations?”
“Checking out/in?” vs “Good Morning/Afternoon, How may I assist you?”
“I don’t know” vs “Please allow me to find out this for you”
“I don’t work in that department” vs “I’m happy to help you find that right person to better answer your question”
“It’s our policy” vs “Let me see how I can help you with this”
“You can’t do that” vs “Here are some alternative suggestions for you to…”
“No Problem” vs “It’s my pleasure”
“It’s not my fault” vs “On behalf of ___ and our hotel, I’m sincerely apologize….”
What can we do more
Incorporating this habit into our daily life will be a game changer for any business, and also in your personal life . If you recall the last time you paid for a service, and got more than you expected, “didn’t you feel great”. Simply because you got more than what you expected?. Same goes for everyone else in the world.
Hence here are few things that you can do to offer more:
Anticipate guest’s needs with questions, and be preprepared to offer something more to cater their need.
Tourist will definitely want to find out where the nearest ATM, Post Office, Super market, tourist attractions, their significance etc and make sure to have some printed directions handy so that you can give them to your guest, a small concierge booklet at the room can avoid lot of unexpected questions.
Make sure you have some QR codes printed on your directions and other information material, because everyone comes with a smart phone and they could scan them and directly pull up live direction through Google.
Free drink coupons, gift basket, anniversary cake, birthday card, more towels or room amenities – Make them feel extra special.
Some goodies with guest’s name on it in the room at the time of arrival.
Empowerment
Ohh that… how many times we’ve heard this, this term has been misused so much, I can’t think of a business industry that has never been used. So it is important to dig little deeper and find out what it means within your hotel.
Come to think of it is wide variety of people but mainly the guest and then the staff. Wikipedia says – “Empowerment refers to measures designed to increase the degree of autonomy and self-determination in people and in communities in order to enable them to represent their interests in a responsible and self-determined way, acting on their own authority.”
In simple English, it means we need to understand the problem in hand and make decisions and take correct actions for the overall good of our hotel.
On the other hand anything you can do to make a guest feel better, improve their stay or simply, cheer up their day that is the correct action. So make the environment such that your staff and guest alike could make their own decisions without asking from another.
As far as staff is concern :
make them understand the importance of always successfully resolving guest issues.
Encourage them to take on a new initiative
Ask guests if there is anything that you could help them with
Share ideas on how to improve the process;
come up with ways to save resource like energy, cash flow etc.
Try to do something that will make a guests happy.
Then most importantly empowering guests:
Always thing of ways that guest could achieve their needs one their own. For an example if guest needs to order a meal, make sure you have systems in place that they could order it from their room or even when their out making their tours around the city, still they can make their order. Best would be to have a system like ClickNSource which couple with an App where they could make their order through the App.
Tourist always needs directions, therefore make sure you have things like directions booklet available in each room and also you could provide directions to all available tourist destinations around your hotel.
Provide them with information in price estimations such as tuk tuks, bus-fares, etc without telling where to go, that way you could avoid getting blamed for providing a bad tuk tuk driver. And they them selves could negotiate the prices based on distance. You can provide a such information along with a calculator on you site so they could easily access.
Keep track of tourist destinations around your hotel and keep them up-to date about if there is any danger or any unrest around any of these places. That tells them that you care. Remember such information not only empowers them but also builds you trust and make them happy.
Ask, and it shall be given to you :
How does this apply to hotels? Most of the time you never know what guest needs and what make them happy. Therefore you have to ask.
Ask questions & be empathetic – Learning more about your guests will definitely make an impression on them. Asking questions shows you care, but it also helps you anticipate their needs.
Things such as what brings them to the area?, How was their journey? , whether they are a repeat customer?, where they are them from ?, etc will help you to make a informed decision on what their needs are. For an example most foreigners like to keep the contacts of their relevant country Embassy while they are traveling. Such things can be kept ready even before they come if you have a proper hotel booking system where it automatically does for you. So that it can be part of the welcome pack.
Current competitive hotel industry, reviews plays a major role in success of the business. But not all guests will do that reviews even though their happy. So have small QR code ready at your counter where they could simply scan and get on to reviews section of your hotel at Google, Trip Advisor, AirB&B and directly make their riview. Then you can casually ask them to scan the code an put a review about what you could improve and also make sure apologize for anything that they dislike about your service. So that you are guaranteed to get a good review even if the person give a lover star rating.