How to Improve Guest Experience

ICYMI: From NAVIGATE 2022 – Nailed it! 

We recently met up in South Carolina for our annual users’ conference, NAVIGATE 2022. During this two-day educational and interactive time, we featured a panel of our customers who discussed how Revinate’s solutions impacted their business. 

Our panelists, Lana Venter, Director of Reservations at Auberge Mauna Lani, Amber Reuss, Regional Director of Digital Marketing at SCP Hotels, and Scott Quigley, Manager of Brand Programs & Innovations at Cambria Hotels, shared how they utilize Revinate to improve their guest experience through communication and engagement.

What You Will See Here

The Importance of the Digital Guest Journey

Sharpening Pre-Arrival and Guest Experience Markets

Guest Text Messaging to Build Brand Loyalty

See a demo of Revinate products featured at NAVIGATE 2022.

The Importance of the Digital Guest Journey

Soul Community Planet (SCP) Hotels was born out of a vision to help make the world a better place by serving those who value personal wellness, social good and the environment. With hotels in California, Colorado and Hawaii, they drive positive change through their Every Stay Does Good program, SCP Fit, SCP Commons and Fair Trade Pricing. 

SCP focuses on the digital guest journey to grow their business. They send relevant content to guests to continuously grow their database, drive direct bookings and earn customer loyalty. They also track their performance on a regular basis with the help of customer feedback. With a small marketing team at the corporate level and little agency support. Most of their ad spend was digital and managed in-house, which required them to leverage their partnership with Revinate.

The Solution

“Revinate has become a key player in our digital guest journey,” said Amanda Reuss, Regional Director of Digital Marketing. They worked with Revinate to formulate a 3 point strategy:

• Discover & Plan: Utilize a multi-channel email acquisition effort through their paid social, check-in, website login portal, etc.
• Book & Stay: Create consistent branding for transactional emails with a visual approach to on-property and local area offerings. Personalize email confirmations by adding reservation details to the top of the confirmation.
• Return & Reflect: Leverage automated emails for post-stay reviews to monitor promoters and detractors across the portfolio. Meanwhile leadership monitors NPS for the SCP portfolio ad public rankings. 

Results

By employing Revinate’s solutions, SCP saved thousands each month by bringing email marketing in-house per hotel. Additionally, their email health averages approximately 62% across the hotel portfolio and they conducted 5,600 surveys of their guests in 2021. By focusing on guest email acquisitions and communications, SCP was able to clean up its guest data and make the most of its value. 

Sharpening Pre-Arrival and Guest Experience Markets

Lana Venter, Director of Reservations at Auberge Mauna Lani faced the challenge of maintaining a positive guest experience as they were navigated through the PBX operations. The front desk teams were blindly transferring calls to Reservations where the guests would be met with a recording and a set of options to select from. Of course, this resulted in guest frustrations and an increase in reservation abandonment due to a negative guest experience. 

The Solution

• Revinate created a dedicated campaign telephone number for pre-arrivals and one for the reservations team. With visibility into the HUB, the PBX operators could see which agents were already assisting guests and no longer blindly transferred calls.  

Results

Auberge Mauna Lani saw 100% improvement in the guest experience and lowered their abandonment rates. This also reduced the miscommunication between the teams creating a more harmonious, efficient staff.

Guest Text Messaging to Build Brand Loyalty 

Cambria Hotels which has hotels in both urban and destination locations  focuses on seamless service to help guests maximize their time. 

Scott Quigley, Manager of Brand Programs & Innovations at Cambria Hotels wanted to “improve guest communications and engagement, as well as streamline operations”, but was faced with significant challenges.

• Choice Privileges Enrollments: Cambria wanted the arrival experience to be less process-driven and more experience-led. They also struggled to reach monthly enrollment targets.
• Elite Member Recognition: Recognition at check-in was lost in the mix of “hotel info download”. They were failing to recognize guests for their specific “Elite Member” level, so these scores were declining.
• Housekeeping Upon Request: Guests weren’t aware of the new processes for housekeeping. They faced challenges resulting from a lack of communication and guest understanding. Additionally, last-minute requests added stress to the housekeeping team.

The Solution

Cambria implemented an Automated Messaging assistant (CAM, a sibling to Ivy), that could now send scheduled campaign messages, group messaging, and smart responses to Base, Elite and Non-Member guests.

Scheduled campaign messages delivered important information like Housekeeping Upon Request, Choice Privilege Enrollment, and Elite Member Recognition. 

Group messaging is customizable for each hotel, allowing for personalized welcome messages, event and meeting updates as well as promotions such as bar and restaurant specials. 

Smart responses could be tailored to each hotel, saving guests time. No more waiting in line or being put on hold! The team could now focus on assisting guests. 

The Results

By the end of 2021, 100% of Cambria’s hotels were active on CAM’s messages. In October alone CAM automatically responded to 45,201 messages in an average of under10 seconds.  

Not only did this save Cambria staff time, but it proved guests were using the platform as well. 

Giving guests the option to confirm their enrollment in Choice Privileges via text increased average enrollment. In October a total of 56,537 messages were received resulting in 5,359 new guests enrollments..

To learn more about Revinate and Hotel CRM, Guest Feedback, Marketing, Reservations Sales, and the Revinate Ivy Experience Suite, please reach out to your Customer Success Manager or click here to request a demo.