As a hotel owner or manager, you have one key priority: delivering exceptional guest experiences. The hospitality industry is more competitive than ever, and with hotel guests’ expectations at an all-time high, comfortable beds or a great breakfast spread are no longer enough. Today, hotels that truly excel are those that understand the entire guest experience.
This is where a customer journey map comes into play.
A hotel customer journey map looks at every stage of the guest’s experience, from pre-booking to post-stay. It identifies pain points and opportunities for improvement, allowing hotels to enhance key interactions and deliver exceptional service.
In this blog post, we will show you how a well-designed customer journey map can help you deliver experiences that wow your guests and keep them coming back.
At Think Wow, we specialise in helping businesses improve customer experience (CX). Find out more about our CX consultancy services here, or get in touch to chat about your needs.
What does a customer journey map look like?
A customer journey map is a visual representation, often a flowchart or timeline, that shows every touchpoint where a guest interacts with your brand.
It tracks the emotions, goals, and pain points across the whole journey, from research to booking, check-in to post-service. This helps hotel businesses to visualise the whole customer experience and find ways to improve and simplify their service.
Why map the hotel guest journey?
So, why invest time and effort in mapping out the hotel guest journey? For one, your competitors are! Success in today’s hospitality industry relies on an end-to-end approach. While the stay is the key part of the customer journey, if you don’t optimise the experience at either end, you are likely to be outshone.
Success relies on understanding every part of the guests’ journey and how it makes them feel. Guesswork won’t cut it—it’s essential to do the research and document the journey visually to ensure no stone is left unturned.
You will be amazed at what you might find. In our experience, there is almost always a “Why have we always done it that way?” moment. If nobody knows, it goes!
Some will be quick fixes; others might require time and investment in bricks-and-mortar changes and less tangible changes like processes, systems, and employee culture.
The outcome is a consistent, intuitive customer journey that evokes delight from the first website visit to the glowing review.
Benefits of mapping the hotel guest journey
Here’s how truly understanding the guest’s journey can make a difference:
Enhance the guest experience
One of the biggest advantages of customer journey mapping is that it puts you in your guests’ shoes. By understanding how they feel at each touchpoint—from the booking process to check-out—you can empathise and come up with solutions that surprise and delight.
Identify pain points
Even the best hotels have areas where things could run more smoothly, but you can’t fix a problem if you don’t know it exists. A journey map helps identify potential pain points that may frustrate your guests, like a complicated booking engine or slow room service delivery.
Improve your service delivery
Mapping the hotel guest experience journey shines a light on your processes. The goal is to improve and streamline procedures to become more efficient, which results in happier staff as well as guests. Not to mention, it can uncover valuable cost savings.
Create loyal brand advocates
Positive reviews on sites like Google, Trip Advisor, booking.com, and glowing social media posts are everything these days. Delivering memorable experiences is rewarded with loyal customers who not only rebook but are happy to recommend your hotel.
Key stages of the hotel guest journey
Let’s break down the key stages of the hotel customer journey to highlight where you might make improvements to enhance guest satisfaction.
Pre-booking stage
The all-important inspiration and research stage! This is where potential guests first encounter your brand, whether through online research, reviews, social media, or word of mouth. Make sure your hotel website is engaging and easy to navigate, with all the information needed to make a decision.
Highlight your hotel’s services and USPs, like family-friendly amenities or entertainment systems, to influence their choice and compel them to book. And don’t forget to optimise your website for mobiles.
Booking process
This is the point where a potential guest decides if your hotel is worth their investment, so minimise any barriers to booking. At this stage, only three things matter to your future guests: simplicity, security, and speed.
If they’re booking directly through your website, make sure your booking engine is seamless and show other ways to book or get in touch. If your hotel is bookable through online travel agents, make sure your branding is consistent and test the booking process thoroughly to ensure it works.
Pre-arrival
Here’s your chance to wow them before they even arrive. You could send a personalised email confirming their stay, offering extra services (like airport transfers or spa bookings), and giving them useful tips and local info for their trip. This shows you care about their experience, which goes a long way to increasing guest satisfaction.
Check-in
This is a chance to shine. Whether guests check in at the front desk or via the hotel app, the process needs to be smooth, quick, and friendly. A great first impression sets the tone for the rest of their stay, so make sure all customer-facing staff give a warm welcome.
Stay
Your booking stage is seamless, and check-in is a dream. Now, it’s all about the guest’s stay. Customer journey mapping empowers your staff to deliver amazing service at every touchpoint.
From room service to the hotel restaurant, the more you personalise the experience, the better. It’s not just about meeting expectations; it’s anticipating guest preferences and adding little touches to truly knock their socks off. It’s amazing how something small, like a handwritten note, can make a guest feel special and valued.
Check-out
The check-out process is often overlooked, but it’s a critical point in the guest journey. A friendly, hassle-free, fast check-out experience can leave guests with a positive final impression. Offering options like mobile check-out or easy payment methods can make this step even smoother.
Post-Stay
Don’t forget about the post-stay phase! Engage with guests post-stay by sending a follow-up email thanking them for their stay and encouraging them to leave a review. This is also a great time to ask for feedback and offer loyalty rewards for future stays, which can encourage repeat business and build guest loyalty.
This is also the sharing phase, where guests reflect on their stay, talk to others and post on social media – if you’ve nailed your customer journey, they will have a great story to tell!
For more valuable guidance on identifying the stages of the hotel guest journey, read our blog, “What are the key stages of a customer journey?”
Common mistakes in hotel guest journey mapping
When making a customer journey map, hotel managers should avoid these common pitfalls.
Overlooking mobile users
A huge percentage of guests research, book, and check in on their phones, so hotel websites must be fully optimised for mobile. Ignoring the mobile experience creates a barrier and could cost you bookings.
Ignoring post-stay engagement
Many hotels focus on getting guests in the door, but the relationship doesn’t end after check-out. Keep engaging with guests by sending follow-up emails, offering future discounts, and asking for guest reviews. If you ignore this phase, you could miss out on repeat business.
Forgetting about staff input
Ask about your staff’s experiences, and you will undoubtedly find gold. After all, they are the ones who interact with your guests every day! Getting hotel staff involved will also make them more engaged, happy employees – key to delivering exceptional service.
Steps to create a hotel guest journey map
Ready to create your own hotel guest journey map? Here’s how to get started:
Create guest personas
Start by defining a simple guest persona for each of your target audiences, e.g., business travellers, families, and couples. Each group will have very different needs and ideas about customer satisfaction.
Map the key touchpoints
Break down each stage of the guest experience—from the booking stage to post-stay engagement. Be sure to include both online and in-person interactions.
Look for pain points
Using guest feedback, complaints, online reviews, and anecdotal guest encounters, identify areas that are a potential source of frustration or dissatisfaction, e.g., no bedside power outlets.
Talk to your people
Get feedback from everyone who has regular guest interactions, including the front desk team, housekeeping staff, and room service employees. They can offer invaluable insights into guest expectations and preferences. Use their feedback to refine your map.
Test and Adjust
Once your map is in place, test it! Gather feedback, complaints, and customer data and make regular adjustments to ensure continuous improvement. Measure CX performance with metrics such as net promoter score and key performance indicators (KPIs) to keep track of your success.
How can we improve your hotel customer journey?
Customer experience (CX) is now a key brand differentiator, almost overshadowing price and product. So, there’s never been a better time to review your hotel’s CX strategy and make sure it’s the best it can be.
At Think Wow, we help businesses in the hotel industry to create personalised, detailed customer journey maps that improve guest satisfaction and deliver exceptional guest experiences.
Get in touch today to learn how we can help your hotel stand out in the crowded hospitality industry.
