It’s ubiquitous for most businesses to focus on acquiring new customers and build strategies to achieve the same for their growth. This is a great way to increase revenue and brand awareness but at the same time when compared to client retention, the outcomes are not all that noteworthy.
It is statistically proven that the regular guests spend 10 times more than their first visit due to their credible loyalty.
According to studies, 20% of repeat guests will probably account for nearly 80% of future income.
Thus it is essential for hotels to divert their attention to retaining existing customers and use it to increase their business value with these loyal customers. Because they are devoted to your brand and are likely to make several further purchases from you in the future, repeat consumers are also referred to as recurring or loyal customers.
Additionally, returning customers end up being the finest brand ambassadors and sources of new business.
The question that arises from this is how these customers are so profitable for the hoteliers?
The primary guideline of every firm in the hospitality sector is to keep clients happy and establish a lasting relationship with them in order to reduce the expense of new client acquisition. Repeat consumers not only convert more frequently, but they also place orders with greater average values than first-time visitors.
The earnings of your business may be greatly increased by looking after your regular customers, satisfying all of their expectations, and maintaining their attention. There are several approaches to the same problem, particularly when it is considered realistically.
There are various theoretical solutions to attracting customers and maintaining the loyal relationship with all the statistical data which gives us the percentile benefits of building loyal relationships with customers. There is a common solution which tells us to make changes in a few operations of the hotels in such a way that it gets the curiosity of people.
Meanwhile when you also look at this from a psychological point of view and ask yourself as a business what does your business have that will make your customers come back to you and stay?
A quick look into what your guests look for and their expectations from their next visit and even the remarks or feedback they back help you understand the minds and asks of your guests.
All you need to do is just look deeper into what your guests want and how they feel about the chronological updates in your hotel.
Let’s look into some of the logical reasons as to why giving this a priority is important,
1. Lifetime Value:
In addition to having greater conversion rates, returning customers typically place larger average orders than new ones. A returning customer will be more ready to spend more money per transaction than a new check-in, either through upsells or higher occupancy rates.
Furthermore, frequent visitors are more likely to stay at your hotel than first-time guests. As a result, advertising new deals to loyal consumers requires significantly less work than advertising to new ones.
2. Comfortability is your gift
It might be far more expensive to attract more clients by marketing your hotel than it is to persuade current customers of the new deals. This is due to apparent factors like returning consumers who are already familiar with your service and favour your company over all of your rivals.
3. An opportunity to get new customers
Again the familiarity and the comfortability of your guests play a huge role in promoting your business. When the guests have a great experience in a hotel they tend to share it with other people from their friends, family, colleagues or even on social media…bringing out the quality of the services you provide. This helps increase your occupancy rates as well and at the same time with promoting your hotel.
As we looked into why it is important to prioritise attracting old guests, now let’s also look at how exactly can we achieve that:
1. Easy Accessibility:
When it comes to the hotel industry, the uncertainty of the origin of a guest stays as the contact comes from all over the world and from places with different time zones. This is where your accessibility is challenged. They’ll count on you to answer their questions as quickly as you can.
You can create a chatbot that is specific to your services without any coding knowledge. Once everything is set up, you won’t need to be concerned about clients leaving because of slow service. You may convert a significant portion of your clients into repeat customers by enhancing their interaction with your brand via the use of automated chats and 24/7 accessibility.
2. Loyalty Programmes:
A fruitful customer loyalty programme may significantly help you keep consumers and turn them into repeat clients. In fact, when compared to other visitors, an individual who is a part of your loyalty programme is 47% more likely to make another booking from you.
The fundamental justification for this is that loyalty programmes have the ability to make your guests feel important, in control, and closer to your company. Such a link gives your visitors the proper type of incentive, encouraging them to book in your hotel.
This can be done in many ways,
- Rewards and offers: You can create a win-win situation for both you and your guests by including useful prizes in your loyalty programmes, this encourages people to book and this way the occupancy rates also increase as the guests try to accumulate more rewards.
- A unique way to welcome: The first impression lasts for a long time, find ways to welcome your guests in creative ways which will help add value from the guest’s point of view.
- Awareness: Before you start the loyalty program, it’s important to make your guests aware of this initiative and get them excited and interested in the upcoming offers.
- Discounts: People love discounts and we humans always look for discounts whenever we decide to spend our money. Discounts always catch their eyes and this is the perfect way to repeat guest visits. Through discount offers, this can be given in different ways, not just on occupancy but maybe on other services provided by the hotel.
3. Feedback is your backbone:
For every operation that you carry out in the hotel, the success of those operations is only determined by the feedback you receive from your guests. As opposed to being reactive, customer feedback should be proactive because most individuals won’t approach you and request more features. It is your duty to speak with them and enhance your current items in accordance with their comments.
How to take feedback is also a very important trait. Once you collect the remarks from different communication channels, it is on to you about what kind of remarks are you paying more attention to. In this, it is very important to notice patterns of remarks which helps you prioritise your next steps to effectively work on the feedback.
Also, acknowledgement of the consideration of the remarks is something your guests would like to see which just shows how honest and healthy the hotel functions.
4. Educating the guests:
Only when a guest is fully aware of your hotel’s services and operations do they feel empowered and confident about their stay and booking. Therefore, if you don’t provide timely information and updates, your guests might not know how to get the most out of your offers.
Use a variety of communication platforms, like blogs, social media, one-on-one live chats, video meetings, and chatbots, to stay in touch with your clients and be there for them whenever they run into a roadblock throughout their booking experience.
Provide high-quality video lessons to help your guests become well-versed in your offerings.
In conclusion, whether a firm is B2B or B2C, recurring clients are much more profitable. You may dramatically increase the sales and profitability of your business by focusing the majority of your services on providing satisfying visitor experiences.
Additionally, interaction with individuals continues to be the best strategy for retention. The greatest possible guest service and assistance is the key to converting one-time visitors into loyal customers. You may increase the lead to repeat visitor conversion rates by using improved guest experience. strategies.
Hotelogix is one of the platforms that can help you achieve that and be in touch with you through every process or change in the functioning of your hotels for a better guest experience.