It’s rare that a hotel guest simply wants a bed for the night. More often than not, travelers want their accommodations to elevate their traveling experience. They want the hotel they stay in to be a talking point — a positive one — that’s independent of their broader traveling experience.
Do that, and you won’t just enjoy repeated visitors, but you’ll also entice new guests, too. Positive reviews, crucial for all purchasing decisions, are fundamental to the long-term prospects of a hotel.
Incorporating luxury touches into a hotel is a tried-and-tested method for enhancing the visitor’s experience. In this post, we’ll run through a few effective methods for adding a hint of luxury to all components of your hotel, from the reservation and the hotel’s exterior to adding artwork and a coworking space.
Smooth Reservation Process
Luxury doesn’t just mean fancy cocktails and world-class views. Hotels can set a luxurious tone for their visitors’ stay by putting together a well-designed, easy-to-use website that matches the overall feel of the hotel. The entire process, from viewing rooms to making a reservation, should feel natural and straightforward, without any of the headache-inducing elements that you’ll typically find on websites (pop-ups, broken pages, etc). In other words, the process should be entirely hassle-free, ensuring that your guests can quickly make their reservations and simply begin looking forward to their stay.
The exterior part of the hotel sets the tone for the guest’s experience. Even if the interior of the hotel is luxurious, your visitors will have a poor start to their stay if the hotel’s exterior looks outdated, rundown, or just more broadly unimpressive. Hotels can put together an impressive exterior by incorporating ambient lighting, commercial railings, stylish signage, and, if there’s space to do so, investing in landscaping. All of these elements are relatively easy to add to the front of a hotel, yet they can have a huge impact on the guest’s experience.
Happy, Professional Staff
The hotel’s staff do more than just make things work. They also set the tone for the hotel. A happy, committed workforce can help take the guest’s experience to a whole other level. Even if the guest doesn’t necessarily need anything from the staff, they’ll pick up on the positive energy.
Ensuring that your team of staff can elevate the guest’s experience is about more than their training and happiness levels. It’s about giving them the power to make decisions without having to seek approval from higher-ups. This could involve allowing them to give free upgrades, provide free drinks at the bar, or use the company account to pay for additional services (such as ordering tickets).
Easy Check-In
At the end of a long traveling journey, anything can feel like a luxury. All too often, many hotels still fail to read the room by putting together complicated check-in processes that can interrupt the guest’s experience. Investing in self-check-in machines, while still having a manned desk, is a good way to put the guest in control. Streamlining the check-in process so that only the essential information is gathered can also be a nice touch that your guests will appreciate.
Offering early check-in is another tried and tested way to boost guest satisfaction levels. It won’t always be possible to allow check-in at the time the guest wants, but even in that case, working to allow check-in as soon as you can makes a big impression.
Quality Bedding
We mentioned at the beginning of the article that guests aren’t only looking for a bed from the hotel they stay in. But that doesn’t mean that the bed is irrelevant. It’s a fundamental component of the guest’s experience. Indeed, a hotel could have every luxury touch in the world, but if it’s not providing a comfortable, relaxing night’s sleep, then guest satisfaction will not be high.
Quality, comfortable bedding is what guests expect from ambitious hotels. Beyond the bedding itself, look at creating an overall sleep-friendly environment. It’s amazing how often hotels fail to think of the guest’s nighttime experience. Look at asking these questions:
- Can you hear noise from the other rooms?
- What about external light and noise from the street?
- Is the temperature sleep-friendly?
Snacks and Drinks
Offering snacks and drinks is a tried and tested formula for putting a smile on people’s faces. Providing coffee and a few light nibbles can make a world of difference to the guest’s experience, especially the coffee. People need their caffeine fix in the morning, but they also want to enjoy the luxury of spending time in a quality bed. Putting a coffee machine in each bedroom allows them to get their fill without disturbing the peace of the morning.
This is one of those things that sounds small but is actually a big deal. There’s no easier way to disturb someone’s enjoyment of your hotel than by forcing them to figure out how they’ll get a cup of coffee in the morning, all because it hasn’t been provided for by the hotel.
Additional Facilities
Your hotel will likely cater to a wide range of guests. Offering additional facilities, such as ones that have a focus on wellness, is a good way to provide the guests who are looking for an indulging experience the chance to treat themselves. How you do this will depend on the capabilities of your hotel. The best solution would be to add a sauna, steam room, and jacuzzi; those things alone can help to increase bookings. If that’s not possible, then offering paid massages is an effective way to cater to your wellness-seeking guests.
The future of the hotel world will be defined by the integration of smart technology. If you’re looking to bring your hotel into the modern era, then look at adding a few smart technology touches. These could include keyless entry, smart mirrors, smart lighting, and voice assistants. Guests tend to enjoy these modern touches, though be mindful if your hotel offers more of a traditional experience or if you cater to a demographic that may be unfamiliar with how to operate the technology.
Custom Artwork
Luxury can take many forms. If it’s positive, refined, and inspires joy, then it’s luxurious. One way to infuse your hotel with touches of joy is to add custom artwork to the public areas of the hotel as well as in individual rooms. It’s also an easy, effective method for brightening up a room — and on that note, look at matching your artwork with large, leafy plants, which always play a prominent role in luxurious spaces.
Add a Coworking Area
We mentioned above how your hotel will cater to a wide selection of guests. Some will be in town for business purposes, and for those people, having the option to work in an onsite coworking space will be just as luxurious as stepping into a jacuzzi. Most hotels provide a space where guests can work, but the best ones create these spaces with intention. Take inspiration from coworking spaces, and create a working space that your guests genuinely love working in. And if there’s free coffee, or perhaps even a full-blown cafe? Then that’ll be all the better.
Get Creative
Finally, look at thinking outside of the box for ways to enhance the guest experience. Some hotels offer cocktails in the elevator, family games and cookies in rooms, and themed on-site experiences. Look at letting your imagination run wild, and see what fun ideas you can come up with — it’s a great way to boost satisfaction and inject some positive energy into your hotel.