Working in the hospitality industry involves managing not only the various departments but also the issues that constantly arise. Because you’re focused on hotel operations, it can be difficult to identify potential shortcomings when it comes to satisfying guests, and that’s why “Guest Intelligence” has emerged.
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What is “Guest Intelligence”?
This concept, translated into Spanish as “customer or guest intelligence,” is the an in-depth analysis of online reviews and data collected from satisfaction surveys—including surveys conducted both during and after the stay—to provide a detailed understanding of what guests like or dislike about their stay and thus determine how to improve service.
By collecting and analyzing this feedback, there’s no longer any need to guess which actions will improve the stay for future guests. You’ll simply need to check a single, user-friendly interface to see which specific areas or departments are performing well and which ones need improvement. This makes it easy to identify the operational and service improvements needed to increase guest satisfaction.
Results provided by “Guest Intelligence”
By increasing guest satisfaction through operational and service improvements based on the data collected by this new tool, the hotel will receive fewer negative comments and, in many cases, an increase in positive reviews. As positive reviews increase, the property’s online reputation also improves—a factor that can have a significant impact on the hotel’s total revenue.
According to various studies, increasing a hotel property’s standard index—which measures online reputation—by one point can result in an increase in RevPAR. Analyzing guest behavior and preferences at a hotel is the best way to understand their needs and expectations. Therefore, it is the best way to tailor the products and experiences that hoteliers offer their guests, providing them with greater added value and creating a series of positive feelings and memories that can lead to increased guest loyalty and higher revenue for the property. Not surprisingly, A deep understanding of the customer is the foundation upon which experiences are built.
On the other hand, digital transformation requires us to better understand our customers, since hotels generate a massive amount of data every day that can be used to expand business intelligence across all their departments. This data can also be useful for improving the hotel’s marketing strategy and revenue management.
The Importance of “Guest Intelligence”
Today, hotels manage data from customer interactions like never before: reviews (private or public), weekly and monthly activity reports (based on those reviews) with analyses of frequency, averages, and so on… but really, we need to turn that vast amount of data into action, transforming all that information into improvements for both the customer and the hotel business itself.
It is important to offer solutions that enable accommodations to gain a deeper understanding of their reputation performance, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of the service they provide, by giving them the information they need to increase guest satisfaction, improve their rankings on review sites and OTAs, and, consequently, boost revenue.
“Think fast, act fast” is a guiding principle in hotel management and consulting. What sets good service management apart from mediocre service management is the ability to correct issues quickly and to learn. Although most hotels are already active in this area, research indicates that there is a clear opportunity for others to implement the latest technologies and practices to leverage “Guest Intelligence” more effectively, thereby exceeding future expectations.
