Without guests’ data, your hotel’s marketing campaigns are like vehicles without fuel. That’s why it is rightly said that ‘data is the new oil’.

But, have you ever thought, how do hotels collect this data? How can you use it? If so, then I have got you covered in this blog. 

What is Guest Data?

Hotel guest data is simply every piece of information of a person who can be a potential lead for a property. It could be email addresses, phone numbers, social media handles, traveling habits, traveler type, work details, and so on. 

Even if you have just the name and number of a person connecting over a call, email, or on the website, it counts as guest data. Just remember, every single piece of information is valuable.

You might be wondering, why am I emphasising so much on guest data? Let me tell you the reason ahead.

Why is it Important to Collect Data from Guests?

If you are a fan of F.R.I.E.N.D.S, you might be aware of this scene.

Similarly, guest data is the essence of every hotel’s sales and marketing campaign. First of all, the more you have it, the wider your reach is amongst the audience. Secondly, it helps you craft personalised marketing campaigns. 

Guest data is not only important for marketing, it also helps you in knowing them in a better way. So, next time they book a stay at your hotel, you can keep all the arrangements ready for their convenience prior to their arrival. 

Let me share an incident from my hotel diaries for a clear understanding. 

Once we had a repeat booking from a guest. During his previous stay, he had asked for vegan food. Since we didn’t have such a special menu, he had to order his food from another vegan restaurant. 

So, when we received the booking this time, we cross-checked the profile in our hotel’s database, and this request came to light. And before he arrived, we kept a vegan menu in his room.

The point I’m trying to make here is that keeping a record of such tiny details can make your data-rich and more effective.

How can Hotels Collect Guest Data?

According to me, gathering hotel guest data is one of the easiest tasks. All you need to do is, implement the following strategies. 

1. Check past booking records

The best way is, to begin with analyzing what you have in your hand. Yes, your past booking records.

You can pull out various details from it, such as: 

• Guests’ contact details
• Social media handles
• Any special requests (pick and drop services, smoking room, or one with any specific view etc.), 
• Travel purpose
• Room plan 
• Type of traveler (Solo, group, corporate, and so on)
• Duration of stay

Once you have the data, you can learn about your guests and craft personalised marketing campaigns for them. 

2. Bring a hotel PMS to your aid

When I talk about pulling your past records, you can take help of a PMS. That’s because it’ll be easier for you to accumulate all the data and you’ll be saved from the arduous task of managing it. 

Moreover, you can analyse the sources of bookings. This will help you in identifying and working on the channels with low productivity rate. 

Another best part of investing in a PMS is that all the data is stored on a cloud-based server. Which means that you are saved from hassles of keeping hard copies of guests’ data. 

3. Pull data from reviewing websites

If you thought that reviewing websites are only for maintaining your online reputation, think again. It is the ocean of guests’ data.

All you need to do is invest in review management software.

Its core purpose is to fetch reviews from all the websites on a single platform. From there, you can read, reply to, and flag them at your convenience. 

Further, it gathers guests’ data and tells you about their likes and dislikes with the help of sentiment analysis. You can address those aspects next time they book a stay at your property.

Not only this, you can also get the reports of compset’s reviews, and see where they are criticized. If you have facilities that can address the issues of those guests, you will have an edge over your competitor. 

4. Capture guest details from social media

If your hotel has a social media page, this strategy will work for you quite well. And if you don’t have it, make one NOW.

That’s because it is more convenient to reach out to the young audience. Plus, it is a good platform for marketing your property to travelers across the world.

Talking about guests’ data collection from these platforms, it is a bit of a time taking task. Initially, you need to visit the profiles of your followers, and check about their travel habits. It could be places they’ve visited, kind of trips preferred by them, any recent check-ins made in any hotel, and so on.

This data will be helpful in creating a personalised marketing content for them. In fact, with help of push notifications, you can alert them about any ongoing offers through stories and posts. 

5. Chatbots can prove useful

You must have come across chatbots on websites. So, what’s the first thing it does?

Right, it collects your information, which is your name, phone number, and email address. In case it’s a hotel chatbot, there will be additional details such as travelling date, room plans, number of pax, and so on.

Once you have all the information, you can proceed to the next step at your convenience. Also, you don’t need to worry about the data storage part. See, these chatbots are software. Meaning, it saves all the data on their backend or directly to your repository (with help of integration), so you can extract it anytime you want, as a report. 

In fact, some advanced chatbots have a provision of cloud storage. In short, your data is safe and secure.

6. Use Wi-Fi to capture data automatically

You might be wondering, how’s this possible and whether it’s legit? 

The answer is, yes, it is possible, and it’s certainly a legit way of capturing guests’ personal data in hotels. It is called Wi-Fi marketing. Now, let me tell you how it works.

One thing that any person does while visiting a hotel is ask for Wi-Fi. In fact, I do it a lot. And it doesn’t matter if I went there to stay, meet a friend, or just for a dine out. I always ask for Wi-Fi.

Now, here’s the interesting part. The moment I connect to Wi-Fi, a pop-up appears, asking me to sign-in. When I click on that pop-up, it’ll redirect me to a browser page, where I need to fill in the details like my name, contact information, or social media handle. That’s all.

See how simple it was. You just have to configure your Wi-Fi for this and you are all set to collect guests’ data through Wi-Fi.

7. Fetch data from loyalty program members

Details of people signing up for loyalty program membership are also a part of guests’ data. Moreover, the potential of generating leads from it is higher as the guests listed in it are already aware of your property.  

You can simply pull the data from the list of your loyalty members and utilise it to market deals and offers at your property. 

8. Get records from ancillary services

Last but not least, collecting guest data from your property’s ancillary services. This includes restaurants, bars or lounges, cafes, spa, and so on.

It’s not necessary that these departments host only in-house guests. At times, visitors do come to experience only such services at your property. 

You can collect their data using either feedback forms, entry registers, payment modes, and so on. Apart from that, many hotels ask the guests to share their business cards to notify them about events happening at their property. That’s also a clever strategy to capture guests’ data and that too with their permission. 

How can Hotels Use Guest Data for Creating Marketing Campaigns?

There are two ways to leverage hotel guest data for marketing campaigns. You can either use it for promotion to the audience in bulk or go with personalized marketing. 

The former one is pretty simple. Just create a common template with an ongoing offer, and shoot it via emails, WhatsApp, SMS to the audience. For this, you just need to have their contact numbers and email addresses.

Talking about the latter one, it requires a robust approach. It requires understanding guests’ behaviour. 

For instance, I stayed at your hotel a couple of months ago. So, you have certain data about me from my previous records, such as:

• Solo traveler
• Opted cab for pick and drop
• Visited hotel’s bar during the stay
• Asked to arrange for local sightseeing

Now, with this data, you can craft a personalised marketing template for me. It could be something like this:

Celebrate this new year by booking a stay with us, and get free access to ‘the XYZ lounge’, the hottest pub of the town. Enjoy unlimited drinks and food, followed by the new year’s countdown. 

This is just an example of how you can use hotel guest data for creating personalised marketing campaigns. You can take a cue from it and implement this strategy at your hotel. 

Here’s a blog that can help you in understanding your guests’ behaviour.

7 Brilliant Strategies To Understand Travel Behavior Of Your Guests

The post 8 Simplest Ways To Collect Hotel Guest Data appeared first on eZee Absolute.

This is because the hospitality industry is data-rich. And the key to maintaining a competitive advantage has come down to ‘how hotels manage and analyze this data’. 

With the changes taking place in the hospitality industry, data analysis can help you gain meaningful insights that can redefine the way hotels conduct business. 

Below are some of the ways through which data analytics in the hospitality industry can help hotels with business strategies.

Ways Data Analytics Can Help the Hotel Industry

The importance of data analytics in the hotel industry is necessary, since it serves millions of guests every day. Each of them has their own set of preferences, expectations, and needs for the journey.

But, how does it impact your hotel’s business? Let take a deeper dig at the use of data analytics in the hospitality industry.

1. Can assist in improving revenue management

Data analytics in the hospitality industry can help hoteliers to develop a strategy for managing revenue by using the data gathered from various sources like the information found on the internet. 

Through analysis of these data, they can make predictions that will help owners with forecasting. They would learn about: 

• Expectation in terms of demand for accommodation in the hotels
• The best price-value ratio for their guests 

Revenue management professionals are in search of opportunities for marketing services to the right buyer through an appropriate marketing channel at a fair price. 

Various measurements are monitored by experts for determining how competitive a property is, in comparison to its compset. 

Different kinds of data can be beneficial in improving revenue management, such as current bookings, past occupancy levels, and other key performance statistics.

2. Helps in improvisation of services and guest experience

By using hotel data analytics, you can get information like customers’ feedback about their services and experience at the hotel.

This information is readily available on platforms like social media, reviews made on magazines and hotel websites, or even notes left for the hotel. 

However, for reviews, you can also use a traditional survey method which is more detailed, and provides insight into factors that influence guests’ booking decisions. 

With this information, hotel owners and managers can know about their property’s strengths and weaknesses. Hoteliers can also improve their services and provide guests better experiences. 

By using data analytics for hotels, new perspectives can be generated in the hospitality industry. Hoteliers can discover new and better ways to leverage big data for attracting customers and increasing sales. 

3. Data analytics can improve the effectiveness of your marketing

With proper data analysis, the hotel industry can improvise and make its marketing more effective, by knowing exactly what to market to potential customers. 

This enables advertisers to build more unique segments that may assist in identifying key consumer groups who frequently visit hotels or other relevant locations. 

If a guest books the property for the whole family, then with the help of data analytics, one can market the family activities available in the hotel. 

If one usually comes for business, they will showcase activities related to business, which will effectively influence them to come to the hotel. Also, you can market to a specific demographic to beat your competition through target marketing.

4. Helps to scout the business environment and competition

To stay ahead in the industry, hotels must keep an eye out for the competition, and there is no better way of doing so than with the use of data analytics. 

Competitor rates can be determined using real-time data analytics that compares your hotel’s current pricing strategy to your compset. 

This assists in determining the right price for each room using competitive pricing that operates 24/7, resulting in increased hotel bookings. 

The data collected can help you figure out what others in the hotel industry are doing, and how to become better than them in terms of services and experience.

5. Aids in providing additional services 

Hotels communicate with existing and potential guests in a number of ways, allowing them to collect large amounts of data. When data is properly gathered and analyzed, it will show a great deal about not just the programs that guests use, but also the services that they avail. 

In addition to this, hotel owners are able to decide on new products and services to introduce. If guests often request gym equipment that the hotel is lacking, this can assist them to refurbish their gym. 

Data analytics can also help in making decisions about forming partnerships with other companies, such as taxi companies, pubs, restaurants, and travel agencies. 

The use of data analytics in the hotel industry is essential for increasing productivity, efficiency, and profitability. The outcomes of data analysis informs a business where they can optimize, whether operations need improvement, which activities can gain higher efficiency, and more. 

6. Can help in using social media platforms to your advantage

Social media platforms are the most powerful tools for engaging and connecting with the audience from all over the world. 

These media tools are important, especially if you want to have better communication with your guests and remain ahead of the competition. 

It’s feasible for guests to interact with the hotel in new ways because of social media. Nowadays, they are using it for requests, needs, opinions, or concerns. Whereas, hoteliers may use these platforms to offer useful information to their guests about their services. 

On the other hand, being active on social media also means that customers may use it to express their dissatisfaction over the services they received.

Types of data analysis reports your hotel needs

Effective analytics can aid in the development of intelligent marketing and logistics strategies, as well as the identification of target audience. This approach has shown to be quite significant in the hotel business. 

Guests’ sentiments  must be carefully monitored by hospitality services at all times. Here are some of the most important hotel reports to keep an eye on.

1. Identification of guests

For better and more successful service delivery and promotion, the hotel business must first identify and understand its guests. They are more likely to share a positive feedback for a hotel that tends to their needs and preferences. 

This technique of identifying target audience considers certain criteria, such as age, family background, income, hobbies, and previous purchases. 

The hotel industry can use this technology to serve current guests by personalizing services to their specific requirements, as well as target new customers.

2. Report on transactions

By analyzing your daily transactions, you could learn more about what works best for your hotel. You could observe a pattern and figure out which days are more productive and which are not.

You can include payment methods that are more preferred for your hotel. Here are some factors to be considered while creating the transaction report:

• The total number of check-ins
• The total number of check-outs
• The number of unpaid check-outs
• Occupied and unoccupied rooms on average
• Method of payment 

3. Forecasting

Every corporation develops a sales forecast for strategic planning, by using customer data, and conducting regular reporting. Such predictive analytics have proven to be useful tools in the data arsenal. 

Forecasting is used to estimate future demand for products and services, and further sales. It also assists businesses in operating more efficiently by managing money. 

The use of analytics to forecast consumer behavior, improve inventory, and product availability is known as revenue management. The objective is to provide good products to the consumers at the right time.

4. Report on statistics 

Small hotel businesses must be able to measure specific indicators that provide them with an insight into how well the business is performing. 

Here are the important factors that you need to consider for analysis:

• The total number of nights spent (Closed, occupied, and vacant rooms)
• Canceled reservations
• The average occupancy
• Length of stay
• Lead time
• Revenue per booking
• Daily pricing

The post How Data Analytics in The Hospitality Industry Can be Helpful? (6 Tips Inside) appeared first on eZee Absolute.