Images by BookBoost
Engagement is important for every industry. It means you are actively connecting with your target instead of being ignored by them. According to Salesforce, 80% of customers agree that the experiences provided by brands are as meaningful as their services.
In hospitality, we refer to guest engagement as actively involving and connecting with guests to enhance their overall experience during the entire guest journey.
Some misconceptions assume guest engagement only has to do with social media. However, it includes building relationships, providing personalised services, and creating meaningful interactions before, during, and after their stay.
5 ways guest engagement impacts your hospitality brand
Why is guest engagement essential for you in the hospitality industry? Because having a high level of guest engagement means reducing the possibility of being ghosted.
But not only that, it also means decreasing the number of guests abandoning their booking before completing, and increasing the number of loyal guests because they enjoyed the experience and built a relationship with the brand.
Overall, guest engagement enhances the guest experience, making guests feel valued and cared for during their stay. It leads to positive word of mouth since engaged guests are more likely to share their positive experiences with others online and offline, which can attract new guests and boost your hotel’s reputation.
And, it can help you stay ahead of the competition. With the advent of online travel agencies and an increasingly competitive market, you need to differentiate yourself and provide unique experiences to stand out.
How to foster guest engagement?
First things first. To enable guest engagement, you need to have a 360 view of your guests. Why? Because it will enable you to extract insights about them, understand their preferences and create a better experience and fruitful interactions.
Using a hospitality CRM, you can not only take a look at your guest data in an organised way but also understand what marketing campaigns are the best performing ones, which channels work best, among other things.
Guest Engagement as a Continuous Journey
One way of thinking about guest engagement is as a continuous journey of the user and your brand. This means you don’t focus on a series of touchpoints alone, but in the complete experience you offer to guests.
How does this look in reality? Instead of focusing on separate touchpoints like booking confirmation or check-in reminder, map the entire journey to see if you are engaging with guests in the right way. Moving from individual interactions to a continuous, relationship-focused engagement strategy.
This will vary depending on your brand but it might imply:
sending a “thank you” note after the booking confirmation, offering to help with any extra questions the guest might have.
Including links to your social media channels and inviting them to follow you there and leave any questions they have.
Sharing a video that highlights the amenities of the hotel in case they want some extra information.
Instead of focusing on only one touchpoint and moving to the next, you map how each interaction is related to the other.
Leverage Proactive Guest Engagement
While reactive engagement (responding to guest needs as they arise) is important, proactive engagement takes it a step further. This means anticipating guest needs and desires before they even articulate them, creating an almost ‘magical’ experience.
Gambino, a hotel group located in Germany, took a very particular approach to this. They used Bookboost to enable messages a few moments after check-in, asking guests if everything was okay or if they needed something from the hotel.
This message was received positively by guests and helped Gambino to stand out against competition, since not all brands take that approach of caring for guests.
You can read more about their story here.
Focus on a value-led communication strategy
According to McKinsey, 71% of customers expect a brand to deliver personalised interactions. If you only talk to guests to sell them something, like a room upgrade or to buy breakfast, no engagement will come out of that.
On the contrary, when you create a value-led conversation, it means you are reaching out to guests with information they might actually find interesting and align to their profile. This creates a positive impression and experience, leading to higher engagement and satisfaction.
There are so many brands out there sending one big general message or offer to everyone that when your property sends out a more personalised touchpoint, it will stand out.
Now, what to send and to who? It depends on your data and your guests. Look into this article to understand more of how to do it: 9 audiences for better hotel marketing campaigns
Use a multi-channel approach
If you want guests to interact with you in more ways, you need to be available for them in more than one channel.
Instead of sticking to only email to send out and receive messages, open up to channels like WhatsApp and SMS. There is a lot of people that nowadays prefer to chat on an app and get instant answers to their questions that wait for a contact email.
This applies to sending messages and also to receive them.
Why is multi-channel communication a game-changer? Here we tell you more about it.
Make it easy to ask a question
Don’t just tell them to send you an email for more information and then wait a couple of days until you answer. If you want to foster engagement you need to be quick to answer and also offer the right channels for two-way communication.
One big example is your website. If you have a web messenger or a chatbot in your website, you will be able to communicate with your visitors without adding any effort to their experience. Then they will receive an answer 24/7, no matter if your team is online or not.
It’s a fierce market, don’t take engagement for granted
Hospitality is a jungle of competition, where every guest’s experience can make or break a hotel’s reputation. This means taking guest engagement seriously is no longer optional—it’s essential.
Engaged guests are not just more likely to book directly, spend more, and return; they are also your best marketers, sharing their positive experiences with others and building a powerful word-of-mouth network that no ad spend can replicate.
Remember, engaging guests at every stage—from pre-arrival to post-departure—ensures that they feel valued, understood, and connected to your brand. This kind of thoughtful, consistent engagement drives loyalty, boosts revenue, and secures a competitive edge.
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