What You Need To Know About Making Your Guests Feel Special

Posted on Aug 10 2016 - 7:43am by Editor

If you’re in the hospitality industry, you know how important it is to make your guests feel special. You want to make your guests feel so warmly welcomed that they never forget it. You then need to follow up by treating them like royalty until they leave! This might sound like hard work, but it’s essential if you want your business to thrive. Here’s what you need to know:

Guest

Create A Lasting Impression

In order to make your guests feel special, you need to create a lasting impression. Much of this is done when they first meet you, but it should be throughout the duration of their stay too. You can create a lasting impression many different ways. You can make sure their table/room is set to perfection. You can leave them a small gift inside, such as a box of chocolates or even a bottle of wine. Make sure you’re sincere when speaking to them, use the right body language and look them in the eye. All of these things will help to create a lasting impression on your guests.

Make Their Lives Easier

By making your guests lives easier, they’ll be far more likely to return to you. Make it easy for them to order. Make it easy for them to settle into their room. Make it easy for them to park, with a parking guidance system. You have many options to make your service unique while making your guest’s lives easier.

Find A Way To Stay In Touch

Find a way to stay in touch with your guests, if possible. You could send a newsletter, or an email every so often updating everybody with what’s going on in your business. You could give exclusive discounts and offers to make signing up tempting for them.

Ask For Their Feedback

Asking for your guest’s feedback and genuinely caring about it will take you far. Find out what they liked about their stay, and if there’s anything that they would change. You could do this by giving them an anonymous card, which will make it less pressurising for them and make them more likely to be honest with you. After all, what’s the point in feedback if it isn’t honest? Contrived feedback is the worst kind.

Address Guests By Name

By addressing your guests by name, they’ll feel more welcomed into your establishment. If you can remember their name and use it where appropriate, they’ll likely feel at home and want to return to you at some point. It shows you are paying attention and that you really care about your guests.

Don’t Neglect Your Returning Guests

Make sure you don’t end up neglecting your returning guests. You need to spend as much time impressing them as you do your new guests. Just because you impressed them once and they returned, doesn’t mean you can turn down your A game. Continue to go the extra mile for returning guests, and consider even giving them special discounts and offers to make them feel extra special. You could also offer things like loyalty cards.

Make Sure Your Staff Members Are Trained

There’s nothing worse than an establishment whose staff members just aren’t on the same page. Staff training is absolutely vital to your success. Make sure they know how to speak with customers and around them. Make sure they know what is appropriate and what isn’t. You should all be on the same page and know what you envision for the future of the place. Making sure they fit in with the culture of your business is a must. You can also do things like team building activities to ensure everybody can work well together. Having staff who treat your customers like gold is amazing, but having them work in harmony with one another is even more so.

Make sure you always go out of your way to make your guests feel special. Bear in mind that you can’t please everybody all of the time. You may have somebody on a bad day, which is absolutely none of your fault. However, if somebody does raise an issue, you should do your best to rectify it. Do this in a timely manner so the guest feels like they have a victory. If you leave a situation without rectifying it, guests could end up bad mouthing you and ruining your reputation. Bad experiences reach people far faster and wider than good experiences. It’s unfortunate, but it’s true. That being said, word of mouth is a fantastic marketing tactic. Do your best to wow people.