Hotels for millennials
The generation of digital natives that choose their hotels based on technology, social media presence and crowd-sourced reviews is quickly becoming the dominant market segment. For forward-looking hotels this is a highly sought-after demographic that needs a special strategy to win over.
WiFi, mobile payments, keyless locks
According to a survey conducted by Knightsbridge and Viga, 70% of the surveyed are more likely to book a hotel room with ample technological amenities, such as Smart TVs, device charging stations and powerful WiFi. Other fairly important amenities include video streaming services and game consoles. These findings indicate great shifts in guests' mentalities. Guests are no longer satisfied with just a room. They want the full experience. If a guest is always used to having all their technology with them, it is no wonder that they expect the hotel to offer the same.
Millennials trust social media, not travel magazines
Over 80% of the surveyed admitted to being more prone to booking a hotel room if they saw an enticing picture of it on social media. This is a huge possibility for gaining an advantage as a generation that is used to sharing every facet of their lives also wants the room to look good. Pay attention to furniture! It will not go to waste, as almost 75% of the surveyed will take pictures of themselves in hotels.
Travel advertising and destination marketing are not what they used to be. Instead of trying to make enticing ads, a hotel should focus on making their spaces suitable for those perfect Instagram shots. After all, those are the ones this generation really looks to for travel tips.
TripAdvisor and the like are another one that hotels should really pay attention to. A social media on its own, it provides people with very reliable information on what to do and where to stay in their destination. Millennials tend to trust these a lot more than any marketing efforts made by hotels. So, in this sense a really great marketing campaign is to just cater to the people who make the reviews. (Hint: it's the millennials).
If your website sucks, you will lose a huge chunk of potential guests
It is not enough to merely offer all these quality-of-life-improving services for hotels to keep up. Over 80% of millennials use Google to find their hotels. If you are nowhere to be found there, you can say your goodbyes to the huge customer base you lost that way.
Googling your hotel's name makes you pop up? Great! How about your website?
According to the same survey, more than half of millennials will put off booking if the hotel's website is too difficult to use.
And, as we have previously stated, an average number of pages a customer visits during room search and booking is a whopping 51! There is a lot of room for error in website design there. So, is there an easier approach to combat this instead of redesigning your whole website?
The Chat
MILLENNIALS LOVE EASY! They do not want to download and register things in order to ask random question from one or two hotels. They want to start typing (or speaking) their question right away. Luckily for any tech-struggling hoteliers out there, we are offering to alleviate these problems professionally, easily and affordably. Chatting has been a consistent winner when customers are asked about their preferred methods of communication with hotels. Chatting also removes the need to surf on a website - they can just ask away!
Every hotelier knows that personal guest care is hugely important for hotels, and they might be afraid that a chat on their website generates way too much traffic for their staff to handle. That is why the smart thing to do is to let us handle it. Ease the strain on your staff - without compromising your great standards for guest care.