How Can Hotels Engage With Guests While Offering Real Value During COVID-19?

During the coronavirus shutdowns, it’s more important than ever for hotels to keep guests engaged, maintain marketing momentum, and reward guest loyalty. In this article, we’ll cover some great ways hotels can still interact with their guests while keeping their brand momentum going and ready for recovery.

Maximise email marketing to guests during hotel closures

During shutdowns and continued hotel closures due to Covid-19, it’s really important that hotels still keep in touch with past guests. As well as keeping your brand awareness up, it’s an important way to keep your guests feeling valued and loyal – ready to make return bookings when the opening is possible

An email is a great option for this– giving you the tools to flexibly update your guests across your customer segments. These updates can include further information on bookings and cancellations, but also how your hotel is handling the crisis to give guests confidence in your brand. Email is especially powerful because it's direct communication, but can also be tailored by customer group by segmenting your data for extra relevance.

Keep your social media updated and interesting

Now is not the time to ease up on your social media content, especially as everyone is staying at home while increasing their virtual connection opportunities.  Make sure you’re keeping your platforms updated with great posts that encourage interaction from your guests and followers. Use Instagram and Instagram Stories to share quizzes, some ask-me-anything sessions, or share behind-the-scenes looks at how you’re working behind the scenes, including interviews and updates from your staff. It’s all part of keeping guests (and potential future guests) positively interacting with your hotel. You need your hotel to be front of mind for when you’re back open, making it a first choice for new and direct bookings. 

Keep adding value to the guest experience 

While you can’t engage with guests in your hotel at the moment, you can still offer value and create interest – albeit virtually. You can create valuable content to share with guests during shutdowns via email from your WiFi marketing database or on social media, including:

• Asking your hotel chef to create and share a new recipe video
• Getting your bartender involved by coming up with a special drink or cocktail for stay-at-home Zoom or Whatsapp hangouts.
• Putting together some tips for the perfect hotel experience at home. People are seeking new, different experiences to create at home during lockdowns – so make it easy for them.

It’s important to inspire your followers, engage and most importantly, encourage them to share it all on social media. Guests will remember how you’ve continued to entertain and offer them value – an important way to create future loyalty.

Are you giving your guests exactly what they want?

While normal hotel operations are paused, this is a great time to review your usual marketing strategies to ensure you’re giving guests exactly what they want. Review all of your Tripadvisor reviews and guest feedback surveys with in-depth sentiment analysis. 

Ask yourself:

• What are we doing right?
• What trends can we identify from guest feedback? How can we offer these when we reopen?
• Is there anything we’re doing wrong? Analysing this with genuine honesty is really important, and puts you in a great position when the recovery does come.

You can go one step further and up your feedback game by contacting recent guests directly via email or SMS– another really important way to continue to engage while clearly demonstrating how much you value their opinions.

Make sure you’re sharing your hotel’s brand story

How is your hotel responding to this crisis? Make sure you’re letting your guests know. 

Due to the coronavirus shutdowns, your hotel operations will have massively changed, But in most cases, this just gives you another way to keep sharing your story. Make sure you’re telling your guests how you’re responding – how you’re supporting staff, how you’re reacting to community drives and efforts and how this has changed your plans for the future.

Your hotel operation has had a massive shock, but how you respond is really important for future brand momentum.

To wrap up

This is an unprecedented situation for every industry, but the hospitality business has been hit especially hard. But rather than shut down marketing activity entirely, this is a time for hotels to share their brand values, keep sharing engaging stories and ,creating extra value for guests.