This time of year, it is quite common to see an influx of international travelers at properties. Making your property more attractive to these guests can open up an entirely new market for your hotel. When these guests are wowed and made to feel at home during their stay, they are far more likely to leave a review emphasizing how “above and beyond” the property went to recognize them and make them comfortable in a foreign environment.
Why is catering to these individuals so important for the success of a hotel? According to the U.S. Travel Association, we are starting to see a massive uptick in international travelers. So much so, in fact, they are expected to outpace domestic travelers rather significantly over the next four years. That being the case, your property needs to ensure that each and every international guest walks out of that property completely satisfied and impressed with their stay.
Recognizing Potential Guests
Before getting started, the marketing and sales teams will need to figure out where most of your international guests are traveling from. This can be done by both reviewing stays as well as checking analytics on visits to the website. For instance, if your property is seeing significant inquiries from the UK but not converting bookings, that is a sign your property is simply not attractive to these travelers.
When looking over the analytics, it is also important to track the behavior of these visits. For instance, are a significant amount of these website visits looking at the hotel spa, its fitness room, meeting room space, or just guest rooms in general. This will be important in developing a targeted ad campaign for areas of interest for these specific travelers.
Customized Experience for International Travelers
Guests are going to be more likely to book at a property where information is available in their own language. This is a website development issue, so the fix may be a bit more difficult if this is not something that is already in place. Most major flags have already addressed this, but boutique hotels and smaller properties may not. As an example, check out Hilton, Marriott, and just about any hotel in Las Vegas. They all offer customized experiences based on county of the website visitor.
The guest should also be able to select his or her preferred language for communications after booking their stay. It would also be a good idea to find out if the stay is related to business or pleasure. This will enable you to create amenity packages more suitable to their trip.
This would also extend to the guest during the stay. While you may not have a translator for every guest, there are translation programs available that would make communication during their stay more convenient for them. For instance, there are text programs guests can use to make room requests, order room service, etc. directly from their phones rather than using the hotel guest phone. When they make their request, it is translated to English and sent to the appropriate department.
Know the Culture of Your Guests
Language and gestures can be quite different from culture to culture. A certain gesture meant in friendship here in the United States may mean something completely different in Japan or the Middle East. There may also be protocols in place to make the guest more comfortable, so do your due diligence to fully comprehend the culture of your international travelers.
When I was attending Widener University, we had to do an onsite research project and I was lucky enough to have the Four Seasons in Philadelphia welcome me on property for my research project. I was amazed at how far they took this idea for their international guests. For instance, they had a high rate of travelers from Japan, so they had several translators on staff to be available to these guests during their stay. The property would customize in-room amenities to reflect their own culture. They also had a specific menu in place for these guests that preferred to eat familiar foods rather than the normal room service and restaurant menu. There was simply no detail overlooked when it came to these guests, which is why they were dominating the market at the time.
International guests may soon dictate whether or not your property is successful, so everyone needs to understand how to make their experience better. If you need executive level managers with the same vision, consider using Joseph David International to find that candidate for you. JDI has been successfully placing managers in the hospitality industry for more than a decade because we don’t just find candidates, we find the ideal candidate for your specific operation. For more information about our hotel recruiting service, click here.
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