Who’s hot this winter? Start ups kindling that crucial guest relationship

Last week we talked about the rise of Airbnb and that crucial personal guest experience that makes it so popular. This got us back to thinking about one of our favourite questions: how best to ignite that relationship? We’ve broken this down into the 3 key stages – and are giving you the scoop on the start ups that will help you through them:

Pre stay

Know your Website Visitor with SnapShot Analytics

At Triptease we know fast-growing when we see it: Snapshot analytics has tripled its team since receiving $25million funding from Shiji Networks in July and continue to grow.

Their success lies in their attitude: SnapShot take time to research hotel’s pain points, to ask them what’s useful and what’s confusing in the current world of hotel tech solutions and what they can do to compliment and support their everyday operations. We love this approach. Check out the webinar they led on big data to see what they’ve discovered.

They found that hotels have never had so much data, yet used so little. Snapshot Analytics are governed by three principles: Glanceable, Actionable, Effortless. Adi Zellner, head of Wix Hotels, lists having all your data in one place in his top five ways to push direct bookings. SnapShot’s single dashboard achieves this, making live data and analytics accessible and showcasing all the information needed to analyse the hotel's demand channels in one place.

SnapShot DMA, the first in depth prototype is already popular among Revenue Managers, GMs and hoteliers and they’re now offering 300 hotels the opportunity to trial the refined version.

In stay

Your concierge a click away with Alice

At the core of a really great relationship lies a really great holiday. Every guest should be treated like royalty, so be on hand answer their every click of a button. Alice gained popularity as a consumer-facing app which allowed guests to access a hotel’s concierge with 21^st century ease.

Provide simple solutions for guests with a tool like Alice; your staff can track requests of any kind with its increasingly savvy back-end system. As the continual extensions of the Marriott Chat function for guests evidences, speed and efficient organisation is the key to flawless service. This is the tool to manage that.

Post stay

Maintaining loyalty with Voyat

Voyat highlights two ways to build up relationships with your guest:

• Your returning guest is the most valuable.

Voyat’s tools allow you to welcome returning guests back to your website with a personal greeting, helping you to remind them of the direct relationship you already share, just as you would at the reception desk.

• Loyalty schemes work.

Major brands like Marriott, Starwood and Best Western compete to offer the best loyalty schemes. Why? The numbers speak for themselves: according to a study by the Centre for Hospitality research, guests signed up to the loyalty program are 49% more likely to return – accounting for over half of bedroom revenue. In a digital age of bargain-hunting, it is unsurprising that the desirability of a hotel’s loyalty program is ranked fourth in the top deciding factors that influence guests when booking a hotel. Voyat’s individual invitations show off these scheme to guests and keep them personal.

A good relationship with your guest has to be long burning. This is achieved by smoothing their experience at every stage in the process. SnapShot Analytics, Alice and Voyat help you to maintain the same top level of customer care throughout and beyond, building a lasting guest relationship.

They’re successful because they listen to hotel and guest pain points and focus on tackling them directly. At Triptease we believe in supporting the guest-hotel relationship by offering transparency to the guest and thus showing off the benefits of booking direct. Find out more about how we set your guest relationships on fire or tell us about other hot start ups you know in the comments.