Most businesses speak to their guests most at the one moment it is too late to sell them anything. The time before arrival and during the stay is where the value is.
Check-in is too late
AeroGuest told a story from their own arrival at the Summit hotel. At the front desk, the conversation turned to which floor they would get. It was the one moment when an upgrade could no longer be sold. An email the day before could have sold a room on a higher floor for SEK 100.
The problem often starts earlier than that. According to AeroGuest, many hotels only have contact details for around half of their reservations. Without an email address or a phone number, there is no way to reach the guest before they walk through the door.
Before arrival: offer what the guest does not have
GuestXP showed what the alternative looks like, live on stage. A guest booked a weekend package. Ten days before arrival, an email offered something he had not booked. The spa was already in his package, so the offer was something else. Three days before, a WhatsApp message followed, with pictures and several options in one message. He added champagne from his phone. The messages went out the same way whether the booking came direct, through an OTA or through the back office.
During the stay: be there when plans are made
Booking a trip takes ten minutes. The trip takes a week. BYRD asked the room when the relationship with a guest really ends, and pointed out that most decisions made during a trip, where to eat and what to do, go to a search engine instead of to whoever sold the trip. Citybreak said the same about VISIT’s own customers: the in-destination stage is the most underused part of the journey.
In GuestXP’s demo, the guest could simply ask. An AI answered the easy question about the bar’s opening hours straight away. The harder request, flowers for his wife, went to a member of staff in the tool the team already uses.
After the stay is really between stays
The last window is the one after checkout. GuestXP pointed out that the data from conference and group bookings is usually thrown away. One booker, a list of names, and no record that the attendees were ever there. Their conference portal lets each attendee add their own details in about 20 seconds, so every one of them becomes a real guest. Many conferences are booked by people who first came as leisure guests. Knowing who they are is how the next booking starts.
What to do
- Collect contact details for every guest at booking, whatever the channel.
- Send a message one or two days before arrival with something worth adding to the stay.
- Give guests an easy way to ask during the stay, and answer the simple questions automatically.
- Treat conference attendees as individual guests, and stay in touch after they leave.
Heard in: UYOD and the Huge Commercial Opportunities It Brings (AeroGuest) · What’s the NOW of Travel? (Gisli Saevarsson, BYRD) · Knowing Your Guests (Citybreak) · The Grand Finale (Carl Bjerkne, GuestXP, and CJ Holmén, VISIT)