Customers acquisition, retention or development

How do you define the term customers?

Customers are a person or an organization that consumes or purchases goods and services from another organization or business.  It is important to identify and understand the needs and wants of the customers to be able to enhance the customers relationship in the short term and long-term periods.

In the sales world of hotel industry, there are different types of customers. Some of them are loyal customers, existing customers, new customers, prospected customers, value-for-money customers, one-off customers, ghosted customers and bargain customers. Each type of customers will have different preferences and different priorities.

How to capture different type of customers? I will elaborate on the customers cycle to talk about the importance as well as the strategies that can be implemented to target the diversity of customers.

Customers cycle will consist of acquisition, retention and development. I call it a cycle because the proses will relate one to another.

Let’s talk about the definition first.

Customer Acquisition can be defined as the proses of targeting and acquiring new customers to purchase the product and services of your hotel.  These customers have no history of staying in your hotel and therefore, they have no information and background about how good your hotel is.  Some of these customers might have stayed in your hotel, perhaps, a few years ago but the experience memories may already have vanished.

How about Customer Retention? Customer Retention is the process of engaging customers to continue using and buying the product and services of your hotel.  Their initial experiences must be good and memorable to drive them back to choose your hotel for their next trip.  These existing customers can become your hotel’s loyal customers as long as their staying experiences can be maintained to be satisfied.

The next one is Customer Development.  Customer Development is the process of identifying the potential of existing customers and see the opportunity to grow their productions.  You can find out the travelling pattern of the customers and their background, such as, if they relate to certain project, if they also currently stay in another hotel, if they link to big companies with several subsidiaries, etc.

How about tapping into different type of customers to target and how to capture them?

Spend enough time to understand and recognize the needs and wants of different type of market so you can strategically target them with the right strategies.  For example, if you know that a customer is a one-off customer meaning he or she will only stay in your hotel for one time only because there is no requirement for him or her to return, then you can store the information as an inactive database for you to look back later on when necessary.

There is also a situation when a customer will appreciate your hotel’s product and services quality in which the hotel pricing or package offered will be considered reasonable and acceptable.  This customer might have done some checking on different hotels and star rating which provide him or her sufficient information to compare between value to pay versus product and services to buy.

• Do some research via online through different search engine to find out, such as, on new project coming into the city, any upcoming conferences, on any city activities and event, on any new companies.
• Identify which customers are staying in other hotels and what are their preferences and needs.
• Work with 3d party partners to expand your network.
• Understand the existing customer’s like and dislike, habits, special request to see the opportunity to retain and develop.
• Show care and empathy on the unhappy guests and find solution to encourage them to continue staying at your hotel.
• Maintain regular contact to create good relationship. Although, one customer might only stay one time in your hotel, but you will never know if he or she can become your loyal customer in the future.
• Create a clean database with details information about each customer and store it in the system accessible by several department concerned.
• Find out the method of communication preferred by the customers. For example, if a customer does not like to be contacted via WhatsApp’s, then change with other communication tools, such as, telephone or email.
• If your hotel has a loyalty program, you can then use this program to recognize existing customers to become loyal customers.
• Target the right and suitable market audiences when blasting your hotel promotion or special offer. This is not only to capture new customers but also to increase the market share of existing customers.

The customers cycle of acquisition, retention and development will continue and become part of your sales processes and strategies.

A proper balance of the contribution of each cycle must be determined to support the continuous hotel revenue to generate.  If your hotel has a large portion of new customers being acquired, is this a good strategy? What percentage share of each cycle is ideally applied for your hotel to generate the targeted revenue?  How does your hotel be able to continue retaining your loyal customers while there are several new hotels within proximity soon to be opened?  Does your hotel be able to spare several room allotments to create volume business?

The list of questions will continue to support the customers cycle on how to acquire, how to retain and how to develop your customers.

You can also check my writing about ‘The importance of a quantifiable market segment contribution’ which highlight more details on room market segments and their contribution.

Have a fruitful and production discussion.