Mr. Wasik

Sales & Marketing

Creating Customer Loyalty Through In-room Offerings

By Michael S. Wasik, Chairman, CEO, Interim CFO, Roomlinx Inc.

LOYALTY: a sense of duty or devoted attachment to something or someone. Most of us can think of at least a couple things and people to which we feel a sense of loyalty. Maybe you love your car and consistently purchase the same brand; you might have a local coffee shop that you support with your daily patronage; we feel loyal to our significant others, family and friends; we see loyalty demonstrated to us by our dogs, hopefully by our children, and by our customers.

Do you question whether your customers are loyal to your brand? Bringing customers back should be a top priority. Your hotel has already won your current guests over your competition for one reason or another. Hotels compete on price, location, amenities, service, and more. You can’t change the location of your hotel, your prices have to stay competitive, your amenities and features are dependent on the demographic you are targeting, and high quality service is a must in the hospitality industry. What can you do to impress your guests and keep them coming back to you?

The Guestroom: An Untapped Source for Differentiation

The majority of your guests, while on-site at your property, spend most of their time in their guestroom. There are several ways you can enhance the guest experience, in a unique way, to make the most of their time in their room and get them to come back to your property the next time.

1. The Television: Take control of the most powerful in-room focal point

The television is the most powerful in-room focal point in the guestroom. 90% of guests turn on the TV throughout their stay, so take control and give guests what they want. Rather than blaring a series of ads and promotional messages, why not greet the guest with nice graphics, a welcome message and peaceful music? If you had complete control of the images the guest first sees when they turn on the TV, what would they be?

Flat-screens are becoming a necessity; without them, the guestroom is instantly outdated. Flat-screens open up possibilities to high-quality, HD images, IPTV and branding of the interface viewed by the guest. With control of the television, you can extend the guest’s positive experience with your hotel after they have left the front desk, reinforce the essence of your brand and provide a pleasant atmosphere to keep your guest in a good mood.

2. Don’t nickel-and-dime your guests, and certainly no surprise fees

After paying a fee for the phone, the internet, movies, and the business center, your guest may start to feel a bit battered and irritated. Something as simple as reducing the frequency your guests have to pull out their wallets will concurrently reduce their irritation level to pay the additional fees. You can do this by bundling pricing and you can even combine these actual features into one product via certain iTV providers. Also, by bundling the pricing of these amenities, you can offer the guest a discount overall.

Another practice that somehow still seems to happen is ‘hidden’ fees that show up at the end of a guest’s stay without any forewarning. This pertains to more than ambiguous ‘Resort Fees.’ Technology makes it easy to do many things, but it can also make it too easy to charge your guest unknowingly.

For example, an in-room music program that provides access to genres of music for you to listen to through the TV can provide your guest a great amenity and bring in incremental revenue. It can also anger the guest if they are not aware of the cost to use it. It is imperative to give the guest control of this charge. If the program offers a free trial, it should also offer a gateway post-trial to ask the guest if they want to continue use of the program for a stated fee. Often times, the trial ends and the program begins and the guest finds the charge on their folio the next day. You may have captured that extra $15 from that guest, but you’ve lost the room rate revenue the next time they are in town, as well as revenue from the friends they shared their story with. Make sure you are aware whether or not your in-room entertainment provider uses these tactics.

Nothing will leave your guest with a worse taste in their mouth when they leave than surprise fees. Why would you want that to be the final impression your customer leaves with? Not exactly an experience that will leave them wanting more.

3. Cater to the shift in methods for communication and entertainment

Many guests don’t want to use phones to communicate with the hotel staff. They would rather simply alert them with an instant message if they need extra towels or need to report a broken hair dryer. Flatscreen televisions are an easy way to integrate a 2-way communication portal to contact various departments.

For entertainment and information, guests are going online with sites like Netflix, Hulu, Google, etc. They are also bringing their own entertainment with them on their mobile devices. Rather than fighting this shift and only providing access to expensive pay per view movies, embrace it and give the guest easy access to the things they want. Devices that allow for connectivity of mobile devices, such as iPods, to the TV will make it easy for the guest to do what they would do at home.

This simple change can make the guest feel more at home and it will make your property more updated and convenient for the guest.

4. Create a customized experience for the guest

We’re more likely to read a personalized letter addressed with our name and it makes us feel good when our preferences are catered to. A simple personalized welcome message to the guest when they enter the room is a great way to make the guest feel good. You can go a few steps farther by utilizing a customer relationship management program to customize their music, room temperature, lighting and more.

You also want to remind the guest that it is you and your brand creating this experience. With the television now in your control, use it as a tool to not only entertain your guests, but stamp that positive experience with your brand. With some Interactive TV systems you can brand the interface to reflect the look and feel of your brand and property.

By making the guest feel important individually and by reinforcing your brand image along with this personalization, your guest will feel more welcome and associate that with your brand.

5. Don’t overwhelm your guests with too much of a good thing

With all the features mentioned above (music control, temperature control, blinds, etc), you don’t want to overwhelm your guest with too many different technologies. By establishing one portal to control all the technology in the room, once they learn how to operate it for one thing, they will be able to operate everything without having to train themselves for each in-room amenity. You can easily combine iPod and MP3 player docks into a media console that serves as the hardware for an Interactive TV system. You can include the in-room controls for temperature, blinds, etc. into an online portal that can be accessed by the same easy-to-use interface the guest uses to watch a movie.

If a guest feels frustrated by new technology or difficult processes, they are going to remember that emotion and it could affect their decision to come back to your property on their next visit.

Your Current Guest is Still in the Sales Cycle

Customer acquisition is very expensive and once you win the battle of getting a new customer in your guestroom door, you have to continue to sell your guest on your property until their stay has come to an end. It should be a no-brainer for that same customer to return to your property the next time they are in town. Maximizing your guests’ experience in the guestroom is an easy way to build the loyalty that will keep heads in your beds, night after night.

Wasik joined the Roomlinx Executive Management team in August of 2005 after executing the merger of his company, SuiteSpeed with Roomlinx. Currently Wasik is responsible for leading Roomlinx, which includes the development and market penetration of Roomlinx’ newest product, Roomlinx Interactive TV. Roomlinx Interactive TV provides HD Hollywood movies, high speed internet, HD specialty content, international and U.S. television programming, music, MP3 player connectivity, business productivity tools, concierge services, games and more via the in-room flat screen television. Mr. Wasik can be contacted at 303-544-1111 ext. 101 or mwasik@roomlinx.com Extended Bio...

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