The hospitality industry covers a vast range of fields, from hotels to travel and tourism services, as well as restaurants and bars. Customer satisfaction plays a key role within every business and even more so within the hospitality industry due to its nature being about the customers welfare. This sector can particularly utilise mobile marketing effectively in multiple ways, from booking reminders to promoting particular offers and events that may be upcoming. Below we have created a detail list of the various ways in which you can improve and sustain customer satisfaction within your business…
Check In / Check Out
Once a hotel room reservation is confirmed, offer the option of a text message reminder of check in details required, and the time check in is available from. This way your guests can have this to hand when checking in, especially handy if they are going to be checking in late. On the night before or morning of check out, you could send a reminder to guests letting them know what time they need to check out by, as well as offering the option of a late check out.
Seasonal Offers
If you run seasonal offers throughout the year then you could promote these through bulk SMS to your past and present customers, as well as promoting to new customers. These messages can be scheduled in advance, as well as having the ability to receive in-bound messages too. If customers reply to your messages, you could add them to your database.
Hotel Facilities
As the date nears for your guests’ arrival, you could remind them of the facilities that are available during their stay, in case they need to remember to pack anything specific. This could include anything from an in-house gym and spa, to WiFi and a dry-cleaning service.
Corporate Facilities
Many businesses use hotels and other venues for corporate functions, such as meetings, seminars and training. If you know you’ve got an upcoming event that has been booked for corporate use, why not send a text to the main contact to confirm any particular requirements, such as projectors, or teas and coffees on arrival.
Dinner Reservations
Once a booking is confirmed for your restaurant, you could send a text message reminder to your customer a few days before their reservation, enabling them to have the details to hand on arrival. You could also send a reminder of any deals or voucher codes that they could use at your restaurant.
Partner Venues
Many hotels and restaurants venues affiliate with other venues, either as a chain or a partnership. You could promote your partner venues through SMS. If you know a guest has enjoyed their time at your venue, let them know about other hotels or restaurants they may be interested in, increasing the chances of them using your services again.
Travel Arrangements
Using our reminders service, you could send a text message to your customers reminding them to make travel arrangements, or even remind them that you are able to make those arrangements for them. Similarly, if your venue is hard to find, perhaps you could remind them how to get to your venue, such as sending them the postcode for the SatNav.
Local Area
While guests are using your services, whether for business or pleasure, let them know what’s in the local area before they arrive. You could even include a shortened URL link to your blog or website where you’ve got more detailed information on the local area.
Events at your Venue
While guests are staying at your hotel, they may be interested some of the events that are on during their stay. If they have been to your previous events, or shown an interest in any of your events, why not send a text message letting them know that you’re running another similar event that you think they’ll be interested in.
Last Minute Events
If your restaurant or bar has special events running throughout the year, why not remind past customers that tickets are on sale. If they’ve visited your establishment for previous events, there’s a high chance they’ll be interested in coming again. Remind them when tickets are available and make them feel special.
Test and measure
A key aspect when adopting a new strategy is being able to test and measure the ROI. It is crucial to know the changes you are making to your business whether its adopting a new marketing strategy or making changes to your service/product are being well received by your customers. Sending an SMS survey can give you rich and valuable data. Research shows that 95% of customers say they would rather respond to an SMS survey request compared to any other method (IPSOS MORI) and 500% more people complete a SMS survey rather than an email survey! Businesses can send a survey asking clients about their thoughts on recent changes or ideas in the pipe line. With 90% of text-messages read within 3 minutes businesses can almost instantaneously receive client feedback and with TextAnywhere’s unique reporting system data is displayed clearly.
These are just a few ways that the hospitality industry can improve customer satisfaction through SMS marketing. For more information on how your venue or organisation can utilise SMS marketing, contact us on 0845 122 1302 or email [email protected].