How smart hotels leverage digital hotel tech to deliver a safe and amazing guest journey (after Covid-19)

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Hotels are not hospitals: more than offering bed and safety you need to remain hospitable ! Here is how to do it. Look how hotels leverage digital hotel tech to deliver safe and amazing guest journey.

Current hygiene and safety standards made hotels rethink their customer journey. Digital, automation and process optimization are the new norm. Let me share with you some essential low-cost initiatives that all hotels can and should implement ASAP. 

Let’s start with convincing your customers to come back. 

At this stage, there is usually very little physical contact between you and your customers. (Learn more on how to make your guests visit tour hotel after covid-19) You also know that international travel is slowed, that domestic demand is your best hope and your hotels should be clean and safe. But how do you market that? 

Search phase: Reassure your customers and convince them to book direct

Demand for international travel is recovering little by little. Brit and Germans need their yearly shot of sunshine. The problem is that every country has its own rules; Italia pays half of your holidays while Spain quarantines you (#WTF_Spain?).

All this creates a lot of uncertainty. International customers are NOT geopolitical experts. If you want to convert the few that venture to your website make sure you make it easy for them to know if they can travel to your country. That is the one time where guests are massively worried and might not trust Booking.com. Seize this opportunity!

Domestic travel is likely to see a surge. After 2 months locked at home, any opportunity to go out feels like an exotic getaway. Since the end of the lockdown I have been on an adventure <100km away from home every weekend. Why don’t you tell me what to do around your property? I don’t mean a random list of attractions nearby. I mean suggest me actual plans. I live in Paris and I might not be so used to local tourism and need your advice.  If I am a cyclist what do I do around your hotel for 2 days? What if I am a young couple or a family? Give me actual ideas. Think for me tho that I don’t have to!

leverage digital hotel tech

People might also travel to reunite with relatives. What do you have to offer?

Finally, when researching and booking a hotel, cleanliness will be most guest’s number one priority. A hotel chatbot is useful  to reassure potential customers and future guests about your hygiene protocols, your breakfast dining options, kids’ activities and anything else they can think of. Even when you say you are open people ask if you are FULLY open. You’d be surprised how much a quick and precise answer to these questions can boost your conversion rate. 

A person browsing your website is going to travel. The only question they are trying to answer is Should I go with your hotel or the competition? Give them the right arguments to choose you over your competition

Booking and pre-stay 

Flexibility is key… but you knew that already. It is one thing to have a flexible cancellation policy and another to make sure that guests fully understand it. At Quicktext we saw a surge of AI hotel chatbot questions about cancellation. So make sure your answers are short but clear and up to date. It is also a good time to think about having a customer portal where guests can manage their booking by themselves without staff intervention. Hotels spent days canceling reservations manually when the crisis started. This is just a massive loss of time. 

Once a guest has booked, let them customize their stay. By sending targeted pre-arrival messages via an upselling platform like Oaky, you can easily give them access to all the upgrades available at your property. Quicktext chatbot is connected to Oaky and can also manage your guest favorite upsells such as: Airport transfer, early check-in, breakfast… This integration saves your team valuable time to focus on more important tasks.  See it in action

Let’s talk!  If you would like to leverage chatbots and AI to reassure your guests and increase direct bookings, or you would like to know how hotels leverage digital hotel tech feel welcome to contact Benjamin Devisme at bde@quicktext.im. Visit our website.

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