We all know how important great hotel reviews can be for your business.

“According to hospitality and resource tools.com, a one star increase on your average rating online can increase your hotel’s income by 9%. 360E-commerce found that revenue rose by 56% for hotels that consistently generated good online reviews.”

In fact, Forrester found that over 50% of travelers would not book a hotel that didn’t have online reviews.

That’s why it’s so important to put your best foot forward. Guests are twice as likely to take to the review sites and complain if they have found bathrooms, service and location to be lacking, or less than what they imagined your hotel would be, based on your website and/or other guests’ reviews.

 

Read More About Reviews, Revenue and the Role of Baths:

• From Around the Web: Hotel Capital Expenditures – Is Your Hotel Reinvesting Yet?
• Why Are Bathrooms SO Important to Your Guests?
• The Relationship between Online Reviews, Hotel Baths and Increasing Hotel Revenue

Imagine this: You’ve been traveling all day. Your plane has landed… and thank goodness the airline didn’t lose your luggage. After waiting in line for what felt like forever, you’ve picked up your car, gotten to your hotel and parked. The nice hotel staff takes your credit card and ID. After she has registered you, the front desk clerk hands you a lovely brass key, announces that “you’ll be in room 433 tonight,” and directs a bell boy to carry your luggage – because there’s no elevator in the hotel.

You get into your room and you find that that’s not the end of the surprises:

 

There’s no TV.

Where are the wi-fi directions?

And what do you mean there’s a bathroom down the hall?

 

Take a Gut Check

While the above description might feel like a nightmare or an adventure from the Twilight Zone, take a moment and really think about how you (might have) felt during the hypothetical situation:

Disappointed?

Frustrated?

Angry?

Ready to go find another hotel (that is, if you can get bars for your cell phone in this place so you can start searching)?

That’s how customers feel when they check into a hotel that isn’t “current” or “modern” – at least according to what their definition is of what their kind of hotel is or should be.

Who’s Your Customer?

Of course each hotel has a target market – an ideal customer segment their hotel is best designed to serve. Those customer segments then have different ideas about what they want in a hotel: from the prices they’re willing to pay, to the amenities that “should” be included in the room rates, to the types of services available in the hotel (ie: full service restaurant, room service, mini bar).

“Guests overall strongly agree that they would be willing to pay much more for significantly improved services such as Internet connectivity, comfortable beds, and responsive employees,” a Gallup poll suggests.

“Luxury and upper upscale customers consider the look and feel of the hotel as one of the most important factors for first and repeat visits. They tend to rely on their own observations about a hotel, rather than others’ recommendations, when booking a stay.”

Once a hotel has met the minimal requirements of a “nice, clean, quiet hotel room” though, guests do pay attention to what’s readily available to them. Ok, yes, in the nightmare scenario above, you had a bed and a clean room… So what was the problem?

What DO Hotel Guests Really Want?

The problem is that when people check into your hotel, they don’t just expect a bed.

They are replacing their lodging needs. Normally, they “lodge” at home.

Your guests are accustomed to what they have at home. They aren’t at home right now – they’re someplace else – and staying at your hotel. But what they are accustomed to having still stands.

They likely have a TV at home.

They likely have a phone (or cell signal) at home.

They have a bathroom that they don’t have to share with 10, 15 or 20+ strangers at home.

What people typically have at home is your real, bare minimum threshold of what customers expect or want.

For example:

• Average single family home: 2600 sq feet/ 2.54 average family size or appx. 1023 sq. ft. per person.
• Average number of baths in home: 2.56 baths or 1.05 people per bath.
• The average hotel room size is 325 sq. ft.,  but some hotels are experimenting with rooms as small as 200.

But where hotels can really connect with customers are in terms of what do their customers “aspire to?” What do they wish they had at home?

So for example, take a look at what your customers are reading. Are they seeing headlines like “10 Ways to Make Your Bathroom More Spa-like”? or “How to Make Your Bedroom Your Sanctuary?” If so – these are strong cues as to what they’re leaning toward: the types of baths and bedrooms that they may not have right now – but they’d sure like to have.

And a spa-like bath or a sanctuary-esque sort of hotel room would have been awfully nice after the long travel day described at the beginning of this article, wouldn’t it?

If your guests are surrounded by images of spa-like baths, and they are aspiring to have (in the not so distant future) is a bath that has a spa feel – then your spa-like baths in your guest rooms will only reaffirm that this is a place they want to be – because it already speaks to what they’re already starting to aspire to.

So don’t let your rooms become an episode of the Twilight Zone for your customers: take some time to invest in really understanding who your customers are, what they really aspire to or appreciate. Take time to get a fresh perspective on your rooms from someone who’s never been there.

• Do the furnishings seem creaky?
• Have the surfaces and bath fixtures lost their luster?
• Does the bedding or window dressings seem dated?

Their room has to feel like a place that they would want to be: because if the customer doesn’t get that feeling during their stay, they certainly won’t voluntarily stay there a second time.

With the recovering economy, guests are starting to venture back out and travel again. That’s good news for hotels. But those same guests are pickier than ever about where they spend their lodging dollars — and many are turning to hotel review sites and photos to ensure the hotel they choose is actually one they’d like to stay at and enjoy.  So hotels are starting to renovate their properties.  “The expenditures in 2015 still reflect some deferred items from 2009 to 2014 as well as meeting new brand standards, ranging from new or enhanced in-room equipment to redesigned lobbies,” the report states.

“In addition to brand standards influencing capital expenditures, social media postings are resulting in additional capital expenditures as owners become more aware of and respond to criticisms and unfavorable comments. This effect became significant starting around 2012 and continues to increase.”

Are you making plans to renovate? In the middle of a renovation?

 

Read More!

• The Relationship between Online Reviews, Hotel Baths and Increasing Hotel Revenue
• Hotels: Create Spa-Like Get-a-ways… Just Don’t Unplug Too Much 
• Hotels: It’s Not Just a Stay – It’s an “Experience”