Maintaining a distinct brand identity is more challenging than ever in today’s highly competitive hospitality landscape. Differentiation becomes crucial with new hotel brands constantly launching, consolidating, and diversifying. How do you stand out and preserve your unique brand image when managing a boutique hotel or part of a large chain?
Over time, brands that consistently deliver on expectations across their portfolio will carve out an increasingly higher market share. Chris K. Anderson
Key Takeaways
Consistency is Key: Consistent guest experiences build trust and encourage repeat bookings.
Leverage Happy Guests: Encourage guests to share positive reviews online to strengthen your brand’s reputation.
Use Reputation Management Software: This is essential for hotels to monitor and respond to reviews, identify improvement areas, and maintain a positive online presence.
Respond to Negative Feedback: Don’t ignore negative reviews. Responding to guest complaints shows that you care about improving and can actually enhance your reputation.
Improve Based on Guest Feedback: Constantly monitor guest feedback to identify areas for operational improvements and actively address complaints to foster loyalty.
Why travellers stay loyal
Travellers are increasingly loyal to hotels that offer a consistent guest experience. This consistency is the bedrock of brand trust. When guests book with a well-known brand, they expect the same level of service and quality, whether staying in Brisbane, New York, or Paris. This is why branded hotels tend to attract repeat guests. Consistency is equally essential for independent hotels; they must deliver on guest expectations to build loyalty and trust. A single negative experience can lead to bad reviews, tarnishing the hotel’s reputation.
One key element to maintaining guest trust is ensuring your hotel delivers on the promises made through marketing and branding efforts. Negative guest experiences are often the result of a gap between the expectations set by your marketing and the reality at your property. Managing this expectation-reality gap is vital for maintaining a solid reputation.
The power of brand in hospitality
The significance of a strong brand cannot be overstated. A 2018 Cornell University study found that a hotel’s brand is more influential in shaping its online reputation than its star classification or chain scale. Over time, hotels that consistently deliver on their brand promises gain a competitive advantage, securing higher market share and a loyal customer base.
Professor Chris K. Anderson of Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration said, Over time, brands that consistently deliver on expectations across their portfolio will carve out an increasingly higher market share.
A positive and consistent brand image ensures long-term success in a competitive market where guests have numerous choices.
Aligning guest experience with expectations
For a brand to thrive, the guest experience must align with the expectations set by the hotel’s marketing. When a guest’s experience falls short of expectations, it can damage the hotel’s reputation and decrease the likelihood of future bookings. Conversely, exceeding guest expectations can lead to positive reviews, guest loyalty, and brand advocacy.
The Hans Brinker Hostels in Amsterdam and Lisbon are excellent examples of effective management of expectations. Their marketing campaign cleverly highlights the property’s limitations, aligning guest expectations with the actual experience. This transparency fosters trust, ensuring guests know what to expect before arriving. Hotels should follow suit by being clear about what they offer to prevent disappointment.
Leveraging brand advocates
The Library Hotel Collection stands out at the other end of the spectrum for a different reason. Their properties have become legendary for their high rankings on TripAdvisor, with all four of their New York City hotels consistently holding top spots. Their secret? Prioritising guest happiness and encouraging brand advocacy.
Library Hotel Collection believes its best marketers are its guests. It naturally encourages guests to share their experiences online by offering exceptional service, providing the brand with invaluable ‘earned’ content. Positive online reviews, social media posts, and even blogs from travel influencers all contribute to building the brand’s reputation. Library Hotel Collection also fosters relationships with travel influencers to spread the word about its special offers and news.
Even for hotels not ready to dive into influencer marketing, the principle remains the same: happy guests are your most powerful marketing tool. Encouraging positive feedback and reviews builds brand credibility. Implementing a structured review collection program, often facilitated by Reputation Management Software, further drives this. According to research by TripAdvisor, hotels that prompt guests to leave reviews see an increase in both the volume and positivity of those reviews. Guests prompted to leave reviews rated their stays 4-6% higher than those who left unprompted reviews.
Online reviews matter – managing negative feedback
Negative feedback offers valuable insights and is an opportunity for improvement. How hotels respond to these reviews can significantly impact guest perceptions. A swift, professional reply to complaints shows commitment to guest satisfaction and can turn a negative review into a display of excellent service recovery.
Reputation Management Software helps hotels track and respond to feedback in real time, ensuring hotels manage their online reputation effectively. Prompt responses address current issues and reassure prospective guests, building trust and confidence in the hotel’s service.
Online reviews heavily influence bookings. Hotels with more positive reviews rank higher in search results and attract more guests. By consistently collecting reviews, hotels can stay relevant in a competitive marketplace.
Creating a strong brand presence through guest satisfaction
A hotel’s brand strength is closely tied to guest satisfaction. By aligning marketing efforts with actual guest experiences, hotels can create a brand that is trusted and admired. Incorporating guest feedback into your brand messaging ensures that your marketing is grounded in the real experiences of your guests. This approach builds a sense of authenticity and transparency that resonates with modern travellers.
By continually improving your services based on guest feedback, you can position your hotel as a leader in guest satisfaction. Over time, this will contribute to increased loyalty, higher online ratings, and better profitability.
Conclusion
Your hotel’s brand goes far beyond logos and marketing. It reflects the guest experiences you provide and is maintained through consistent delivery of promises. Align guest feedback with service to create a strong brand presence. Maintaining this reputation not only fosters loyalty but also boosts profitability and ensures long-term success in a competitive industry.
About Shiji Group
Shiji is a multi-national technology company that provides software solutions and services for enterprise companies in the hospitality, food service, retail and entertainment industries, ranging from hospitality technology platform, hotel property management solutions, food and beverage and retail systems, payment gateways, data management, online distribution and more. Founded in 1998 as a network solutions provider for hotels, Shiji Group today comprises over 5,000 employees in 80+ subsidiaries and brands in over 31 countries, serving more than 91,000 hotels, 200,000 restaurants and 600,000 retail outlets. For more information, visit www.shijigroup.com.
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