Hotel customer relationship management should be one of the key tasks of any good hotelier. Customers are the lifeblood of a hotel, and refusing to listen to their concerns can cause even the best hotel to lose customers and, thereby, its profit. While hotel customer relationship management is of the upmost importance to keep customers coming back for stays, hoteliers will find that it is not that difficult to manage a relationship. The best tips for hoteliers are understanding the guest, asking for customer feedback, making an emotional connection, and ensuring that staff is knowledgeable enough to answer questions and make decisions without a manager present.
Guests are not a standard breed; each guest is different and brings different expectations. People come to a hotel because they are looking to get work done, to get away from work, to vacation with family or to relax in quiet surroundings. Understanding what the guest is looking for, which can be done via simple prompts and questions, will help a hotelier know exactly what that guest is looking for in his stay. If the hotelier knows this information, he or she can usually serve the guest satisfactorily.
A guest may be happy to stay at the hotel, but if he sees just one bored or angry staff member, the entire trip may be ruined for him. Emotions play a huge part in hotel customer relationship management but often do not receive much attention. Every staff member should be cordial and polite, and services such as room service and check-in should be done quickly. If tasks cannot be completed quickly and kindly, the guest may feel unwelcome or frustrated.
While the staff should be trained to get a manager if a difficult decision has to be made, this should seldom be necessary. If a guest is asking a staff member several questions and he or she has to get a manager to answer each one, this can cause long pauses in the conversation, leading to a poor customer relationship. The staff should be properly educated on all the services and policies of the hotel for effective hotel customer relationship management.
A hotelier can do everything right and some guests still may not be happy. If a hotelier encourages guest feedback, this allows the hotelier to look at his or her hotel through the customers’ eyes. This will tell an hotelier if an employee was curt, if services were not up to par, or if anything else went wrong. By understanding the problems, hoteliers can efficiently find solutions.
