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

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