The relationship you build with your guests during their stay should flourish after they leave, not fade.
Post-stay messages are a great way to stay top of mind long after your guests have left your hotel. They improve the overall experience, provide insightful feedback, enable you to mitigate negative reviews, and when leveraged correctly can build stronger relationships that lead to return guests.
With that, in order to help your brand craft effective post-stay messages, here are our 5 best practices:
Be Timely
Stay top of mind by sending your guests a message within a reasonable timeframe. Send a message a few hours after their visit inviting them back or wait a day to send your message wishing them good luck at their conference. Use your discretion when following up to ensure they have a positive response.
With Loop Messenger™ you can automate the sending of these messages, making for more efficient operations. With it, you can pre-plan and cue your post-stay messages according to guest check-out time. It streamlines the process for team members by not making them wait and manually send a message after each guest departure.
Use Surveys
Understand how your business is being perceived by your guests and where improvements are needed by utilizing insightful surveys. Sending surveys are a great way to garner feedback after a guest’s stay by showcasing what they thought of team performance, hotel efficiency, hotel cleanliness and so on – to consistently improve performance.
With Loop Messenger™ and our Trip Advisor Integration you can prompt your guests with a survey to understand their experience and see where you may need to improve – all while increasing the number of reviews overall. This provides guests who messaged with the hotel during their stay an easier gateway to provide feedback in a timely fashion. Integrating it into your post-stay message is an unobtrusive way for hotels to generate more high-quality reviews.
Show Appreciation
It’s important when crafting your post-stay messages to always show appreciation and thank the guest for staying. Guests who feel appreciated by a hotel are more likely to book at the same location, or at least with the same brand the next time they travel.
With Loop Messenger™ you can directly send or cue a guest’s post-stay message. A quick follow-up email thanking them for their stay can cement the hotel in the guest’s mind as a place to return to next time they travel.
Get Personal
In a sea of competitors, personalization is an effective marketing strategy that helps businesses build closer brand relationships with their guests, and in turn, foster greater loyalty. Especially with post-stay messages it is a great opportunity to win them over.
With Loop Messenger™, you can customize your post-stay message to complement their stay. Mention how great it was having them indulge at your spa, or ask them if their valet service was up to their standards. Showing your guests that you pay attention to the details and care about making changes to better their experience will promote loyalty with your brand.
Invite them back
After all is said and done, use post-stay messages to invite the guest back for another visit. Showcase how much it meant to you and your brand that they chose your hotel, and invite them back for another stay. The guest will appreciate your gesture.
Sending post-stay emails is a great way to stay connected to your guests and to ensure the last impression they have with your brand is a positive one.
What are some examples of post-stay messages you would send? Let us know in the comments, or on social media: LinkedIn | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram.
