by Steve Short | Jul 12, 2018 | Frictionless Innkeeper Posts
A brand promise is simple yet it influences everything from how B&B guests experience their stay to how they describe it to their friends and colleagues to how they comment about it on social media review sites.
Although many innkeepers don’t think of themselves as having brands that are on par with the Marriotts of the world, guests do identify your property in a certain way. It’s not a slogan or a mission statement … it’s an impression, a personality, and an emotion that connects with the guest
The key is being able to identify and maximize this brand promise. The components of a brand promise are simple to construct, but it does require thinking about the following:
It must be easy and memorable: Your brand promise should be very simple, and describe the experience you deliver in a memorable way.
You must be able to measure it: Whether it’s through increased bookings or positive Yelp reviews that align with the brand promise, you should be able to measure the impact of the brand promise.
It should include a future state: Guests are always buying a future emotion of how they will feel — anticipating a delightful stay — when they come to your property.
Here are examples of brand promises for a B&B:
· To provide a delightful and memorable experience for each guest.
· Delighting guests with the most memorable experiences.
· Memorable travel experiences that last a lifetime.
As you read the examples above, they are simple, easy to remember, and place the guest in a future state. With this in mind, it’s critical for every employee to fully understand the brand promise, and work hard everyday to bring it to life for guests.
By reinforcing the guest experience, a B&B’s brand promise can have a strong impact on business results. Knowing what your brand stands for, and delivering on that promise can help enhance overall guest loyalty and increase bookings.
Photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash
by Steve Short | May 24, 2018 | Frictionless Innkeeper Posts
Guest trust has always been one of the most important intangibles for Innkeepers. It’s not always easy to determine what factors into a guest’s trust equation, since it’s a totally individual assessment — one that is in the so-called “eyes of the beholder.”
A somewhat unique quality of trust may be that it is easier to determine when you have gained it than when it has been lost. Using the example of a car purchase … when a potential buyer walks out of a dealership because they lack trust, how likely are they to explain that is the reason they have decided to go elsewhere?
To continue with this example … a car buyer may lose trust if the dealership’s showroom isn’t clean and welcoming, or if a buyer doesn’t feel they can trust the salesperson giving them information about the cars they may be interested in purchasing.
Now, let’s shift this analogy to the Innkeeper. Guests tend to book their stays based on sound recommendations from friends and family, a previous enjoyable stay, or an intuitive sense of trust when researching and booking their rooms. So, when a guest books their stay, the Innkeeper already has a certain level of trust that has been established. What is essential from that point forward is how the Innkeeper will enhance and nurture the initial trust given to them by the guest.
It’s at this point that the car buyer analogy has meaning, though the goal for Innkeepers is not to sell, but to build guest trust — and ultimately, loyalty — by providing the best possible experience for all aspects of their stay, with the result being future bookings, recommendations to friends and family, and/or positive reviews.
With this goal comes the elusive question of what is important for an Innkeeper to gain guest trust and loyalty. And while our assumption is that every guest has their own unique way of assessing this during their stay experience, let’s attempt to identify some parameters by first breaking them down into two distinct parts — the On-Property and the Off-Property Experience.
For the On-Property Experience, some tangible parameters that play into the feeling of comfort and ultimately trust are the cleanliness of your rooms, quality of your property’s furnishings, and the details you provide such as soaps, towels, and linens. The more intangible parameters revolve around the personable interaction and service you provide throughout your guest’s stay. Both are essential to building guest trust, fully within the control of the Innkeeper, and core to their mission.
For the Off-Property Experience, the Innkeeper has less control. However, this needs to be a core focus, because guests inherently rely upon an Innkeeper’s indispensable knowledge to recommend the best local experiences, thereby making their stay so memorable that they return or recommend them among their social circle. Because no matter how delightful a guest’s On-Property Experience is, their Off-Property Experience is likely to resonate heavily with their overall stay.
Prior to the existence of the Internet, independent Innkeepers had an advantage over larger providers because they were the only source of local information guests could get, through word-of-mouth. This has changed, with the advent of sites like Yelp and Google, and larger hospitality providers offering guests mobile applications that recommend local experiences.
The reality is that Innkeepers still have the best knowledge of Off-Property Experiences for their guests, but how can they communicate them? Listing recommendations on their website isn’t sufficient, because guests need a mobile app that helps them easily choose and navigate to these places. Yet most Innkeepers don’t have the resources to build their own mobile app to compete with the larger players in today’s digital landscape.
Our solution is the Frictionless Guest App, to provide Innkeepers with a way that their guests can easily find the best local experiences and thereby gain their trust. Our hope is that Innkeepers share our vision that they are the best source for this information and want to improve the Off-Property Experience of their guests.
by Steve Short | Apr 26, 2018 | Frictionless Innkeeper Posts
One of the goals of running an Inn or an independent hotel is to make guests fall in love with the region, recommend your property to others within their social circle, and keep coming back to the area.
For Oscar’s Bed & Breakfast in Buffalo, NY, this is a major part of its business plan, which is to promote the city’s reputation for being “an underrated gem for travelers.” As such, the property celebrates the city of Buffalo by naming each room after famous architects from the area – aiming to give guests a real sense of the local culture and lifestyle.
Their goal is to create raving fans of the property and the area, which is also the approach for another local Inn – the Inn Buffalo off Elmwood.
“My mission is to make ambassadors out of our guests,” said Joseph Lettieri, who owns and operates Inn Buffalo off Elmwood, in this recent Buffalo News article. “If you stay with us, my goal is that when you leave you tell your friends, family and colleagues, ‘What a time we had — this might be the best kept secret.’”
As most Innkeepers know, running a B&B comes with a world of both joys and challenges. It’s very easy to get tied up in the day-to-day management, which can take up any innkeeper’s time 24/7. However, taking the time to empower guests to become ambassadors for your region can pay major dividends in the long-run.
By providing unique experiences for travelers, it’s possible for them to leave your Inn with a strong sense of community, and a desire to promote your property (and region) to their friends and family.
This will ultimately translate into further bookings, and it will help your region prosper … where everyone wins in the end.
by Steve Short | Mar 22, 2018 | Frictionless Innkeeper Posts
Many large hotel brands have been embracing the concept of training their staff to have a more personalized touch with guests through increased knowledge of their locale, as noted in this New York Times article. An integral part of this trend is the recognition that a hospitality provider and its workers can become an important part of the “local tourism landscape.”
While this strategy seems worthwhile – creating a more personalized experience by connecting guests with local offerings – it may prove to be a bit more challenging for larger hotel brands than independent innkeepers. For aside from the need to train and shift the cultural mindset, which is no easy task for a larger organization, a bigger problem is likely to arise with having staff learn and maintain their knowledge of the truly best local offerings.
For most independent hotels, Inns and Bed and Breakfasts, the challenge is much less one of knowledge – they are typically very aware of the local restaurants, events and other attractions that will delight their guests because they live in the community – than the ability to provide guests with the means to easily connect them to these local places. They often offer disparate online destinations where they make recommendations, such as their website and social media outlets like Facebook. Or they provide brochures, maps, and other printed materials once the guest has arrived for their stay.
Unfortunately, this approach will increasingly remove independent innkeepers from being a go-to source of knowledge when their guests want to find trusted local experiences during their stay. That’s because guests are shifting more and more toward the use of web and mobile sources of information for everything – especially when planning their travel or in the midst of it – yet smaller providers lack the resources to create a single mobile/web solution they can provide to their guests that makes it easy for them to find local experiences in their moment of need, regardless of time or place.
In the meantime, while larger brands may not have the inside knowledge of the local landscape, they have the resources to build mobile/web solutions that can connect guests to experiences. So, the inability of independent innkeepers to give their guests a useful mobile/web solution that communicates their recommendations heavily threatens one of the valuable services they have traditionally provided and used to build guest trust, community cohesion, and to differentiate their offering.
The Frictionless Guest App is a solution to this challenge. It’s a way for independent innkeepers to provide their guests with a mobile/web app that only shows the local places recommended by the innkeeper. It enables them to differentiate their offering by making their guests’ stay more memorable and also play a larger role in the local tourism landscape. The result is to build long-term loyalty with guests as well as with local businesses in the community.
by Steve Short | Feb 20, 2018 | Frictionless Innkeeper Posts
For any innkeeper or bed and breakfast owner, your network of local places to eat, play, shop, etc. can provide immense value, which is passed on to your guests and your local community. But that value can also be realized by you in an indirect, less obvious way.
Most travelers come to stay at your inn, B&B or hotel to gain experiences they typically would not have in their hometowns. This includes taking advantage of area attractions, restaurants, cultural events, and the overall natural surroundings.
By having a direct connection with other local businesses, it’s possible to build a network within your community that provides a wide range of great eating and entertainment options you can recommend to your guests. And, once the word spreads throughout your network, you are likely to see more guests coming through your door, as those within your network reciprocates.
This can be achieved by creating relationships with local businesses, historic sites, universities, festival organizers, non-profit groups, summer camps, and even property owners associations. Once you’ve done so, the Frictionless Guest App makes it easy to recommend the best places to your guests which you trust to make their stay more memorable.
What will ultimately happen is that happy guests will refer your property to their friends and families, and local businesses will also help funnel new guests your way. It’s a win for everyone, especially since you are pointing travelers to the best local places in your area. In the end, the rising tide lifts all boats, which will help your property and your local community prosper in the long term.
