5 ways to increase revenue with a hospitality CRM
If there is something that people working in marketing in hospitality is talking about is the power of a CRM system. But why has there it become so important? Today, the challenges of hotel marketing are increasing consistently. People demand more personalisation, better reach, multi-channel approaches, and so on. And if you are not meeting these requirements, the numbers will show it. One of the main points that accommodation providers must consider is how to stand out in front of other hotels. There are so many brands offering the same and using the same messages that brands must fight to get the travellers’ attention.
However, one of the most powerful tools to help you make this happen is CRM software that is focused on the hospitality industry. With a CRM not only you can build a relationship with your guests but also make the best use of your guest data, which is extremely important for hotels to increase revenue, guest loyalty and guest satisfaction. A CRM tool holds incredible power to help you navigate those waters and help you deepen your customer relationships and increase conversions, but only if used properly. These are five ways that a hospitality CRM will help you to increase revenue and achieve your goals:
- Personalise your communications from pre-stay to post-stay
The power of personalisation is real. 79% of people say they are more likely to engage with a brand if the communications they receive are targeted especially to them and consider their preferences. With a CRM you can create different audiences based on hundreds of characteristics. For example, identify high-spenders, one-time visitors, returners, business travellers, and more.
You can track guest behaviour and preferences, such as their room type preferences or preferred amenities, and use that information to personalise their marketing efforts. For example, you can even personalise the communications based on the type of room they chose or the services they bought when they stayed at your hotel. Personalising your communications across the entire gets journey will greatly impact your open and click rate and your engagement rate. More interactions mean building a relationship with your guests, and therefore a higher chance of ending in more bookings and more services acquired. People want to be seen and heard, and by receiving relevant information you are showing that you take into consideration their preferences.
- Unlock the power of multi-channel communication
If the CRM you are using is a multi-channel one, just like Bookboost’s, you have even more power in your hands. Guests not only use email. Some of them prefer to be reached via WhatsApp or SMS. A multi-channel approach allows you to reach your guests in the most effective way, which translates into 8 times more conversions than with an email-only CRM. The right channel added to the right message sets you up for success.
Hospitality brands using a multi-channel guest journey have highlighted that, among the main benefits, is that the brand comes across as more professional and innovative, which also leads to increase brand awareness, get better positioning and increase revenue.
- Get insights to empower your services and offerings
To leverage your guest data you need a way to organise it and structure it. A CRM is a tool that will allow you to do it. Once the data is structured and duplicates are gone, you can start crafting insights out of the information. You will be able to identify opportunities to upsell and cross-sell services or amenities to guests. How? By obtaining and reflecting on the data about your best-selling services.
What do the people that buy them have in common? You can identify preferences based on location, the type of traveller and even the other services they bought, to put together smart packages that are more likely to be bought. Here again, paying attention to your guest data is key not just to increase revenue but also to enhancing the guest experience and generating guest loyalty. To get more keys about this topic, take a look at these 6 hotel mistakes that destroy your guest experience.
- Nurture a relationship and increase guest loyalty
Acquiring new customers is highly more expensive than engaging with your existing customers. And this is the same for hotels. Therefore, nurturing the relationship with your guests once they leave the hotel is key to turning them into loyal customers. With a hotel CRM, you can track all your communications and create nurturing workflows to ensure you are communicating to the right people and with the right message to bring them back to your hotel. An example of this is using your guest data on the CRM to create an audience from people that haven’t made a reservation in the last six or twelve months. You can go further and then divide them by the type of traveller, if they booked family stays, leisure or business trips, and so on.
- Lead the guest journey
One key point is that your CRM can track 2-way communication. This means, not only tracking what the guests send you but that you can start the conversation as well. In this way, you will go from being reactive to being proactive, and you can lead your guests across the entire guest journey instead of just reacting to their messages and answering their questions. When you are proactive, you can be a step ahead, providing information about their concerns before they even realise it, and building bridges between your hotel and your guests.
Proactively taking care of your guests across the entire guest journey will result in higher guest loyalty which turns into higher revenue. Despite CRMs being among the top topics in 2022 and present in the hospitality trends for 2023, there is still a great percentage of hotels that haven’t looked into it or consider it as a new addition to their tech stack.
Without a doubt, a CRM system not only will help you to achieve higher revenue but also to provide an enhanced guest experience to your guests and to increase your guest loyalty, both key for a hotel’s survival and success, not only now but also in the future.