The Elements That Shape the Hotel Guest Experience
Albert BarraSeptember 12, 2018 · 4 min read
The subject of Experiences appears day after day in Hotel Marketing manuals. Increasingly, a hotel stay is geared towards offering guests experiences, beyond an enjoyable stay, which is itself also an experience. However, determining the experience associated with each product and each guest is no easy task.
What is an experience? Simply put, special moments that exist in the guest’s mind before, during and after their trip.
These special moments, which represent our guests’ expectations, are not only something we should strive to meet, but to exceed if we aspire to increase our average rates year after year.
In any case, we should not think that the experience itself is linked solely to the accommodation, food and beverage offering or service. Every interaction with the guest makes up the experience itself: from our visual communication, the way we answer the phone and respond to emails, our website, staff uniforms and the smile with which we welcome them on arrival. These are all elements to which we sometimes fail to give the importance they deserve, yet together they make up the guest experience.
Let us remember that the experience we offer our guests is not linked exclusively to the property’s architecture, décor and furnishings. Many other aspects of essence and presence, together with everything else, make up the experience we offer our guests and for which they are paying. This is why, in a previous article, I highlighted the need to recognise the value of marketing within the day-to-day operation of our property, as well as the importance of Leadership and Human Resources management as essential components of the experience.
The search for experiences motivates them to choose a destination or a hotel in itself. Throughout the journey, encounters become experiences, which may or may not meet expectations, and subsequently, those experiences and what the guest communicates about them will determine the reputation of the hotel or the tourist destination itself.
One might think that experiences are associated with a particular product standard, generally at the high end, or with guests who have a certain, distinctive lifestyle. Nothing could be further from reality.
There can be—and indeed there are—experiences associated with budget hotels, such as those based on their location, and likewise unique experiences for a father from a modest background like myself.
Staying in a hotel right in the city centre or beside one of the city’s main tourist attractions can be an experience, and as such should be one of that hotel’s key marketing strengths, regardless of its category, together with all the elements I mentioned above.
That said, we must be realistic: an experience becomes a magnificent experience when, in order to enjoy it, the guest expressly rules out all our competitors. Hotels capable of offering such experiences are sometimes the main reason for the trip, even above the tourist destination itself. Of course, this only happens in destinations that are not of the first international rank and in highly exclusive, differentiated hotels. For example, one of my best personal experiences was at a hotel in the middle of the Arizona desert, where the hotel product outweighs the destination. What is the name of the town where Marina d’Or is located? Many people have probably had to stop and think about the answer.
However, in leading cities, the destination itself provides the main experience, and the experience offered by a hotel complements it, however good or special it may be.
We must be aware of this when designing our communication strategies. Are we the very reason our destination exists? In other words, would the destination exist if we were not there? To what extent do we make our destination a better destination? And, in terms of the individual guest experience: what can we offer our guests to make their stay unique, special and unforgettable?
Then let us put a price on that experience, compare it with that of our competitors, and let the law of supply and demand do the rest, with the Revenue Manager’s permission.
The search for experiences motivates them to choose a destination or a hotel in itself. Throughout the journey, encounters become experiences, which may or may not meet expectations, and subsequently, those experiences and what the guest communicates about them will determine the reputation of the hotel or the tourist destination itself.
One might think that experiences are associated with a particular product standard, generally at the high end, or with guests who have a certain, distinctive lifestyle. Nothing could be further from reality.
There can be—and indeed there are—experiences associated with budget hotels, such as those based on their location, and likewise unique experiences for a father from a modest background like myself.
Staying in a hotel right in the city centre or beside one of the city’s main tourist attractions can be an experience, and as such should be one of that hotel’s key marketing strengths, regardless of its category, together with all the elements I mentioned above.
That said, we must be realistic: an experience becomes a magnificent experience when, in order to enjoy it, the guest expressly rules out all our competitors. Hotels capable of offering such experiences are sometimes the main reason for the trip, even above the tourist destination itself. Of course, this only happens in destinations that are not of the first international rank and in highly exclusive, differentiated hotels. For example, one of my best personal experiences was at a hotel in the middle of the Arizona desert, where the hotel product outweighs the destination. What is the name of the town where Marina d’Or is located? Many people have probably had to stop and think about the answer.
However, in leading cities, the destination itself provides the main experience, and the experience offered by a hotel complements it, however good or special it may be.
We must be aware of this when designing our communication strategies. Are we the very reason our destination exists? In other words, would the destination exist if we were not there? To what extent do we make our destination a better destination? And, in terms of the individual guest experience: what can we offer our guests to make their stay unique, special and unforgettable?
Then let us put a price on that experience, compare it with that of our competitors, and let the law of supply and demand do the rest, with the Revenue Manager’s permission.