Customer Service and Guest Satisfaction
A hotel is only as great as the customer experience it gives its customers: the importance of your attention to guest satisfaction cannot be underestimated. Receiving personal attention from the hotel manager is a gesture that guests value and will remember. Take time greeting VIPS, addressing complaints and making yourself present. Your staff will follow your example and match your commitment to ensuring guest satisfaction.
Developing Your Staff
The people who run your operation, from housekeeping to front desk, will be the creators of the guest experience that dictate your hotel’s reputation. As manager, you can help them develop their skill sets and remain excited about the role they play in your hotel’s success. Take time to listen to how they foresee their careers developing and become their champion. By showing your commitment to your staff, you will develop a culture of dedication and professionalism that guests will inevitably notice in their high performance.
Gathering Data
It is no longer enough to simply provide guests with a pleasant stay—your marketing strategies should increasingly consider ways to customize offers in order to meet your guests needs. Your property management system should be equipped to gather as much data on your guests as possible so that you can develop a plan for personalized deals, attractive loyalty programs and other incentives that will encourage a greater on-site spend and higher rate of return. Look for a PMS system that can show your ADR and vacancies in real-time so that you can predict seasonal trends, forecast occupancy and schedule marketing initiatives accordingly.
Creating an Excellent Online Reputation
Your potential customers are connecting with your former guests like never before, which means that the management of your online reputation deserves your time. As manager, you should ensure your PMS system is compatible with multiple interfaces to help you track reviews and manage your online presence.
It will also be important that you spend time overseeing the management of your social media presence. Managing profiles on social media platforms and review sites is becoming increasingly important in a market that makes more and more decisions based on online reputation. It can be tempting to become discouraged over poor reviews and comments, but use them as an opportunity to improve and know more about your hotel. It’s also very important that you respond to and make actionable changes based on your reviews to show potential customers how attentive you are to guest needs.
As a hotel manager, feeling like you don’t have enough hours in the hectic day is normal. Strategic time management and prioritization are the best ways to streamline your own processes and provide effective leadership across all departments at your property. Managing activities through a robust PMS, while building up your staff and developing a vast knowledge of your hotel will make your property a place guests want to stay again and again.
Looking for the right property management system to ensure your hotel’s long term success? Find out more about how RoomKey’s products can benefit your business.
Photo: Shutterstock / Jacob Lund
