What Is the Customer Journey in the Hospitality Industry?

Date
April 22, 2024
Read Time
4-5 minutes
Category
Customer Experience

The hospitality industry is a competitive landscape and understanding the guest journey – the customer roadmap – is an important key to your success. This journey encompasses every touchpoint a guest has with your establishment, from the initial spark of inspiration to post-stay interactions and many want to know – what is the customer journey in the hospitality industry?

By meticulously crafting each stage of the customer journey and paying attention to customer feedback along the way, you can cultivate a memorable experience that fosters guest satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy. boostCX is a comprehensive customer experience management solution that empowers hoteliers and others in the hospitality industry to map, analyze, and optimize the guest journey at every turn. Dive deeper into the various phases of the guest roadmap and explore how boostCX gives you the ability to elevate the hospitality experience at each touchpoint.

What Are the Stages of the Customer Roadmap in the Hospitality Industry?

When you are on the road to success as a business in the hospitality industry – hotel, resort, restaurant, casino, etcetera – it is important to understand your customers and how each step they take impacts their choices. When you understand your customers, past and present, you can analyze the feedback and personalize the customer experience to make your establishment stand apart from competitors.

Here is a closer look at the stages of the customer journey in the hospitality industry and how boostCX customer experience management solutions may be able to help drive your success.

1. Dreaming Stage

The Dreaming Stage marks the beginning of the customer journey in the hospitality industry, where inspiration takes hold. Potential guests and customers ignite their wanderlust, begin browsing travel sites and dreaming about their ideal getaway. boostCX can help at this stage by making your business a part of that dream through omnichannel engagement and brand recognition that is established by a quality customer experience with past customers.

2. Planning Stage

The Planning Stage is where the dream starts to become reality. Potential guests and customers meticulously research destinations and hotels, comparing options and scrutinizing online reviews. Positive reviews highlighting exceptional service and amenities can be a powerful differentiator, influencing guests to choose your hotel over the competition.

3. Selection Stage

The Selection Stage finds guests narrowing down their options. Armed with research and reviews, they compare hotels based on factors like location, price point, and amenities offered by each property. This is where a user-friendly hotel website showcasing your unique offerings and leveraging boostCX Text Analytics to optimize online descriptions can help you seal the deal.

4. Booking Stage

In the crucial Booking Stage, potential guests and customers make their final decision. A streamlined and secure booking process offered by your hotel website, potentially enhanced by boostCX features like special promotions or loyalty program benefits, can nudge them towards booking their stay with you. boostCX also helps you identify any potential pain points that customers may encounter at this stage.

5. Preparation Stage

The Preparation Stage finds guests getting ready for their stay. At this stage, boostCX can give you the information you need to personalize the experience by providing pre-arrival emails with local recommendations, activity booking options, or room upgrade promotions.

6. Experience Stage

The Experience Stage is the primary focus of the guest journey, where expectations are met, exceeded, or not. This is where exceptional service, comfortable accommodations, and seamless guest interactions – all aspects that boostCX can help optimize – leave a lasting impression on your guests that can have a significant impact on future success.

7. Sharing Stage

The Sharing Stage goes beyond the physical stay. Guests share their experiences online through reviews, social media posts, and word-of-mouth recommendations. boostCX empowers you to monitor this feedback, proactively engage with guests on social media platforms to address any concerns, and showcase positive experiences. The customer experience to this point – the good, the bad, and how you address any issues – is what encourages or discourages guests to become brand advocates.

8. Return Stage

The Return Stage focuses on nurturing and promoting brand loyalty. boostCX empowers you to  re-engage past guests with personalized email campaigns featuring special offers or exclusive deals, enticing them to return for another memorable stay.

Understanding the key stages of the customer journey in the hospitality industry empowers hoteliers and others in the industry to craft an exceptional experience that fosters loyalty and drives success. From the initial spark of inspiration to post-stay interactions, each touchpoint presents an opportunity to impress. boostCX equips you with the tools to map, analyze, and optimize every stage of the guest journey.