The Evolution of Hotel Guest Expectations: Embracing Full-Service Travel Experiences
AUTHOR: Julian Houchin
DATE: 18 March 2024
In this rapidly evolving industry, hotel guests increasingly expect improved services during their stay. Their demand for a personalized and seamless travel experience has led hotels to adapt and provide a full-service approach to cater to these evolving needs. Guests rely on hotels more to help them customize their entire trip, from in-house experiences to local tours and activities. To capture this shift in consumer demand, hotels are amplifying their focus on offering integrated digitized solutions for an enhanced holistic guest experience.
This trend is not new, as the resort industry adapted luxury by providing high levels of ancillary services to their guests for decades. Hotels are fast following suit by extending this level of service to facilitate the guest experience and customer journey more effectively. With the help of new technologies, hotels are able to play a similar role in providing personalized and seamless travel experiences.
As featured in a recent article by JLL (29 Feb. 2024), hotel brands are checking into new verticals as a way to generate new revenue streams from bespoke experiences and strategic partnerships. Two examples highlighted are Marriott Bonvoy’s new partnership with Uber enabling members to earn points for Uber rides and food orders and IHG have co-branded a credit card with Chase enabling their guests to redeem points for free nights.
By partnering with Travel Curious' Hotel Solutions platform, hotels can offer a wide range of services to enhance their guests' stay, from personalized tours to curated in-house and local experiences. The Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel has collaborated with Travel Curious to increase guest engagement and optimize TRevPAR and Revenue Per Available Meter (RevPAM) by seamlessly offering their guests the ability to book, “Top Golf” swing studios, poolside cabanas, lobby meeting studios, local events and much more. These partnerships add value to the guest experience while helping hotels differentiate themselves in this competitive market.
The evolution of guest expectations has paved the way for hotels to provide more integrated, personalized, and digitized travel experiences. With hotels embracing full-service solutions and leveraging new technologies, the growing demand of guests is met and offers a seamless and memorable stay.
Platforms, like Travel Curious’ Hotel Solutions are crucial players in supporting hotels adapting to this changing landscape. Through providing innovative solutions to enhance the overall guest experience, improve guest engagement, generate non-room ancillary revenue and providing a competitive advantage, hotels are stepping up into new industry standards.
