The Impact of Guest Experience on Hotel Revenues

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1 WHITE PAPER The Impact of Guest Experience on Hotel Revenues Positive guest experience is the #1 criteria that travelers use to select hotels far outweighing price and location. Positive guest experiences are profitable too. T +44 (0) E ipi.info@ipintegration.com W ipintegration.com

2 HOW THE RIGHT TECHNOLOGY CAN RESULT IN HIGHER PROFITABILITY. Positive guest experience is the #1 criteria that travelers use to select hotels far outweighing price and location. Positive guest experiences are profitable too. According to the Harvard Review, customers who had the best past experiences spend 140% more compared to those who had poor experiences. Clearly happy guests can help ensure that hotel revenues remain healthy. Forrester Research suggests that customer experience is highly correlated with loyalty. It s much less expensive to attract repeat business than to bring in new business. One high-end hotel operator puts the lifetime value of a loyal guest at over $100,000. Choice Hotels studied the connection between loyalty, guest satisfaction and higher revenues. Here s what this hotel chain discovered. A CASE STUDY: CHOICE HOTELS CONNECTION BETWEEN GUEST SATISFACTION AND FINANCIAL SUCCESS Choice Hotels knew that unhappy hotel guests would not recommend its hotels to others. The online reviews were uneven so the organisation decided to take action. Choice Hotels found that the 25% of its properties with the highest Likeliness to Recommend (LTR) scores also had higher-than-average Revenue Per Available Room. The inverse held true for properties in the bottom quarter of LTR. Clearly, guest satisfaction was tied to a hotel s bottom line. With a customer experience management (CEM) system in place, Choice Hotels was able to determine the aspects of its guest experience that most impacted LTR scores. Room condition emerged as one of the biggest drivers. As a result, Choice Hotels instituted a Great Room Condition initiative to help properties make sure their rooms always met guests great expectations. The organisation began by piloting the initiative an participating properties saw LTR scores rise. Choice rolled out the program organisation-wide. The initiative had a big impact on Choice Hotel s bottom line. The chain attributed over $18 million in incremental revenue to increasing guest satisfaction. T Find +44 out (0) how 1189 IPI 184 can 600 enable E your ipi.info@ipintegration.com business today and in the future. W ipintegration.com

3 Gain customer loyalty at every stage of the guest life cycle Hotels that are struggling to deliver that engaging guest experience need to move beyond features, products and processes by creating a positive relationship derived from engagement enabled apps, personalisation and quality experiences. Companies like Ritz-Carlton and well known airlines practice this philosophy. These companies pride themselves on engaging customers and exceeding expectations. Each one has developed an extensive database of customer information so they can analyse how successful their service has been, where it could be improved, and how to predict what customers may expect in the future. They used technology to unify the information silos of guest interactions to be in a position to deliver an engaging guest experience. Detailed guest profiles can transform your guest experience The right technology can help you keep a profile of your guests interactions (reservations, concierge, check-in, room service, etc.) and integrate that information with the property management system (PMS) and CRM. To understand how to engage customers, hotels need to tailor communication options to an increasingly tech savvy guest base and ensure that guest outreach is on-message and targeted to the individual, while taking into consideration that today s travelers: Depend on mobile devices throughout all stages of travel Prefer online and digital communication to human interaction Expect speedy service delivery Rely on social media for recommendations and past reviews.

4 Off Property: The more you know before they arrive, the better When guests contact your hotel what if you knew your guest s history such as type of trip, first time or repeat guest, and average spend, or their preferences such as coffee, high floor, or feather pillows. The ability to automatically access their guest profile during the conversation creates an engaging customer experience: All guest profile information and past activity available in real-time so your hotel staff can anticipate guest needs Guest data is always current and accurate means improved staff preparedness Your hotel is able to track and respond directly to guest comments on social media. Guest demand for mobile interaction opens many opportunities to promote a superior guest experience. By providing an engagement-enabled application to your guests, hotels can leverage resources while providing high levels of interaction with their guests. For example, the hotel app could: Alert a guest that their room is available by sending a message to the guest s mobile device. Serve as a virtual concierge where guests can click and be connected either by video or voice to your hotel staff to receive pre-arrival check-in services Once on property, the app continues to engage the guest: Use integration with their loyalty account to recognise them as a VIP and notify the staff Guests use the mobile app for common needs: - Connect with a live hotel staff such as housekeeping, room service, or valet services with a click - Request wake-up calls and receive a personalised confirmation - Receive a text notification when there is voic in the room phone mailbox - Use text chat to request hotel services and to get a reply from hotel staff - Control the room lights, temperature, and entertainment options Push personalised advertising content to a guest s mobile. During their conversation, a real-time speech analyser recognises certain keywords and pulls up more detailed information about the services. An engagement-enabled mobile app makes it easy to purchase suite upgrades, spa treatments, or room service. Mobile engagement not only benefits guests, it enables hotel staff better and more efficient communications. Dynamic team formation can pull together a video conference session with catering, logistics and operations members to discuss some last minute changes to a customer event with a click. Video conferencing anywhere for fast staff training. One number calling reaches the duty staff independent of shift.

5 THE KEY TO ACHIEVING HIGHER GUEST SATISFACTION IS ENGAGEMENT Driven by hospitality business needs, not technology silos, Avaya helps you consistently increase satisfaction across all customer touch points. Instead of handling each customer interaction independently, you can connect all of a customer s engagements across their entire journey. For example, you can track web, mobile, and customer service department interactions. Enable customers looking for information on your website to click to chat, click to call, or click to video with your staff. By connecting all of your customer touch points, you create a seamless experience. Technology is the key to managing a guest s experience at all stages of a visit from the moment that a guest plans a trip to when they check in, are on property, check out, and even after they have walked out the door. Today s travelers value brands that fit into their mobile lifestyle and can adapt to their technological demands and preferences.

6 WE CAN HELP YOU TURN ALL THIS INTO REALITY. Enable your staff to be more engaged To create an engaging customer experience, you need up-to-the minute information in order to truly anticipate your guests needs and wants. That intelligence requires access to a high speed, real-time data repository for tracking, collecting, and sharing relevant data points across your organisation. The Avaya Breeze Context Store Snap in provides access and tracking in realtime across all touch points including web, mobile, and enterprise transactions giving the comprehensive and complete profile you need to provide better customer service and more personalised on-going conversations. Imagine how much more personal, relevant and engaging your customer experience could be if you could: Capture and consolidate guest data across touch points to simplify data mining and analysis Collect and preserve information about your guest s web visits to better personalise follow-on call routing and self-service Simplify the delivery of real time guest information to agents via screen Enhance staff awareness of key events, such as when guests make a new reservation Save responses from outbound promotions or notifications and tie to incoming guest calls. Transform your applications Reinvent the definition of guest experience with Avaya Engagement Portfolio. Avaya is the leading provider of customer and team engagement solutions as well as future-proofed networking architectures to create mobile engagement environments for better guest experiences, increased productivity and higher profitability. Avaya solutions are interoperable with hotel s existing networks and applications, allowing for the seamless integration of engagement solutions. The entire Avaya ecosystem allows companies to harness the power of engagement to increase customer lifetime value and drive business performance. A partial list of products in the engagement portfolio include: Customer Engagement Solutions: Avaya Oceana, Avaya Elite Contact Centre, Avaya Experience Portal, Avaya Social Media Manager. Team Engagement Solutions: Avaya Equinox, Avaya Aura Platform, Avaya Scopia solutions, Avaya Aura Conferencing. Mobility: Avaya Equinox for iphone, ipad, Android devices. Fabric Networking Solutions: Avaya Virtual Switching Platforms, Avaya Ethernet Switching Routers, Avaya WLAN, Avaya Hospitality Access Point. Engagement Environment: Avaya Breeze, Avaya Context Store Snap-In, Avaya Real-Time Speech Snap-in, Avaya WebRTC Snap-in, Avaya Work Assignment Snap-in, Avaya Client SDK. 3rd Party Business Applications and Partner Enablement: DigiValet, DuVoice, FCS Computer Systems, Intelity, Iris. Cloud: Avaya Private Cloud Services, Avaya Powered Cloud Services, Avaya Branded Clouded Services.

7 Avaya Breeze: Driving a breakthrough in engagement-enabled applications Most any vendor can provide a mobile website or application but only Avaya can properly engagement-enable your applications to deliver a truly personalised and unique guest experiences with the Avaya Breeze Environment. The Avaya Breeze Environment is an application development platform that allows customers to add communications capabilities to their applications. The single, integrated platform extends across multiple devices or systems, enabling enterprises and developers to build and deploy collaboration and customer experience management applications in days without prior communication development skills. This allows you to decide which capabilities are required, and how to best incorporate them with existing investments and processes. Avaya Breeze Environment can help solve other unique communications and collaboration challenges that face hospitality organisations. Solutions can be tailored with capabilities that differentiate how to respond to customers, and collaborate across locations. AVAYA BREEZE IS: An open, extensible applications development environment. Multimodel, working across communication channels, processes, and systems. Fully integrated into the Avaya Aura Platform for rapid integration with built-in scalability, security, and virtualisation. The introduction of the Avaya Engagement Designer, extends Avaya Breeze with drag-and-drop simplicity. Developers no longer need a deep understanding of communications solutions or protocols to create meaningful applications that solve important issues.

8 TEAM ENGAGEMENT IMPROVES GUEST EXPERIENCES When aligned with your business processes and objectives, a Team Engagement solution can provide your contact centre, front desk and hospitality staff with access to a wide array of productivity applications that improve efficiency, productivity and guest experience. For example, Team Engagement solution allows your organisation to: Use one familiar interface to access many communication applications, regardless of location, which makes contact centre agents, hotel staff and back office more efficient and productive. Have a single contact number, regardless of the device, which improves staff responsiveness and customer satisfaction. Improve collaboration and increase time-to-decision by unifying telephony, , calendars, corporate directories, presence, conferencing, and Instant Messaging. Bring third-party conferencing and mobility solutions in-house and eliminate the expense and learning curve. By leveraging your enterprise dialing plans, you can further reduce costs. Avaya Team Engagement is about bringing everything together all in one portfolio. You get everything you need to allow your users to work productively wherever they happen to be. Customer Engagement can make the difference between loyal guests and lost opportunities It takes 12 positive experiences to make up for one unresolved negative experience. Source: Understanding Customers by Ruby Newell-Legner With the use of mobile devices, search engines, text messaging and social media commonplace, connecting with people or information is instantaneous. This rapidly changing environment means hotels need to evolve their customer experience management processes and contact centre capabilities just to meet, let alone exceed, guest expectations. Since exceptional customer experience depends on knowing your guests and delivering a highly personalised, engaging experience, arming your contact centre with powerful customer experience management capabilities should be at the heart of your guest experience strategy. 3 in 5 Americans (59%) would try a new brand or company for a better service experience. How your front desk contact center staff manage guest communications can make the difference between loyal customers and missed opportunities. The Avaya Customer Engagement solution can help you drive higher performance by improving the quality and value of guest interactions, providing: Increased loyalty with valuable customer relationships Reduced operating costs Competitive differentiation

9 SUMMARY Your organisation can build on existing systems and deliver a radically different approach to communications and customer service. We can help you transform traditional, single-purpose solutions for voice, video, and instant messaging into a true Engagement architecture. This enables hospitality organisations to: Deploy an interconnected team and customer engagement platform that eliminates information silos and provides a comprehensive view of guests and their history. Leverage broadband internet to enable guests to use their own devices to request and book services. Create an infrastructure that is capable of storing guest interaction at every touch point. Provide the tools needed for the staff to engage with guests. The result is a solution that simplifies engagement and delivers cost savings. Most importantly, it provides: A platform that abstracts the complexity of the communications layer from the applications layer, enabling developers to focus on business needs and requirements rather than on becoming experts on communications solutions or protocols. A foundation that offers scalability, reliability and security for every solution and lets developers concentrate on value creation instead of logistics and interoperability. A snap-in model that allows capabilities from a variety of solution providers to be included, enabling rapid, more cost-effective solution development. Avaya solutions enable you to realise the total power of engagement when hotels implement guest and staff engagement capabilities and an infrastructure that is capable of supporting them.

10 CHANGE TODAY AND YOU CHANGE TOMORROW The way we communicate continues to change at pace. Tomorrow has never looked so different from today. IPI is here to keep your business in touch with its customers. With innovation in our DNA, we deploy pioneering solutions to help create the smartest, most efficient Contact Centres in the world. Optimised hubs that offer a more satisfying, more cost-effective customer experience. And just as our offering is complete, so too is our support. Helping you to not just prepare for what s to come, but to embrace it. Our team of experts understands the technical, commercial and organisational challenges contact centres face and offers a wide range of solutions that help organisations overcome them to increase effectiveness, efficiency and customer satisfaction. Our customers range in size from 30 to 10,000 seats, such is the flexibility and scalability of our solutions, and are split across many vertical markets including finance, insurance, retail and distribution, public sector, transport and travel, and entertainment and leisure. In addition, IP Integration meets BSI standards in Quality Management, Environmental Management and Information Security Management. Headquartered in Reading, and with offices in Manchester and Edinburgh, IP Integration is a leading independent contact centre systems integrator. We partner with many leading vendors, including Avaya, Verint, Microsoft and VMware. We also develop in-house bespoke applications that support end-to-end contact centre deployments, from network service provision, through systems design and deployment, to application development and postimplementation service and support. Change your tomorrow, today. Get in touch. T +44 (0) E ipi.info@ipintegration.com W ipintegration.com