TL;DR: No time to read the whole blog? We’re making it easier to:
- Boost revenue pre-arrival
- Save your front of house staff time by checking in guests 25% faster
- Give guests a way to order and pay for food without the need for staff
- Give you more ways to let your brand shine through in every guest email
The guest experience doesn’t just start and end when they walk through the door to your hotel. It kicks off with the booking process and doesn’t end until… well, ever. What you may not think about is the impact your hospitality cloud can have on the guest experience – as well as staff efficiency – at every single touchpoint, all of which has a knock-on effect on your revenue and profit.
The experience a guest has with your property and your staff doesn’t just start and end when they walk through the door.
At Mews, we’re always looking for innovative ways to improve the guest journey and since the start of this year, we’ve rolled out some big product enhancements to Mews Guest Journey to improve experiences and efficiencies.
Boost revenue and guest experience pre-arrival
Whatever the guest’s reason for traveling and staying with you, the pre-arrival phase is your time to build excitement and trust – and even help guests solidify their plans. And it can also be a chance to add incremental revenue.
Starting with the booking process, any hotelier who relies on OTAs for bookings knows that OTAs are great for occupancy but not so great for profit thanks to their fees. That's why we've improved our booking engine to drive even more direct bookings. Now, instead of seeing no availability for a date selection, guests will be shown either alternative date options or a note about a minimum length of stay, making it easier for them to finish booking with you direct.
One of the biggest trends being adopted by hoteliers is giving guests more control over their check-in experience. This includes offering online check-in ahead of arrival and kiosk check-in onsite. Clearly these are not wasted efforts. Our recent report, Mews Data Dive: 2022 H1, found that from 2021 to 2022, the number of online check-ins went up by 20%.
By offering self-check-in options to your guests, you’re sparing them the time and frustration of waiting in line while also saving staff time spent processing check-ins. While a few minutes may not seem like a big deal, Hotel Tech Report recently reported that guest satisfaction scores drop by 50% when there’s a five-minute wait at check-in.
At Mews, we’ve gone one step further with online check-in, allowing guests to book a parking space for the length of their stay or purchase products like a bottle of wine or breakfast during the online check-in flow.
In addition to taking stress off the guests, it also takes the pressure off staff to manage parking spots and push cross-sells while also eliminating the risk of overselling spots. And while efficiency is great, so is incremental revenue. Customers offering products during online check-in have realized nearly 7% revenue increase.
Customers offering products during online check-in have realized nearly 7% revenue increase.
Coming soon: the ability to book parking spaces at the same time as a room and improved messaging tools that will make it easy for guests to DM you – and for staff to respond – even before they’re at the hotel.
Save front of house staff 25% more time
Your guests have finally arrived. Now comes the part that’s traditionally less fun: waiting to check-in. That’s why we’re excited to share what we’re doing to make it easier for you and your guests to speed up the onsite check-in process, even giving guests total control.
Mews Kiosk is a self-service option (available on iOS and Android) that allows guests to find their reservation, check themselves in, add products, scan their IDs, cut their own keys, and even pay for their rooms. Soon, it will also be able to handle pre-authorization. The experience is totally contactless and saves significant time for both guests and staff.
Because we know how valuable everyone’s time is, we’ve rolled out another way to save even more time at check-in. We call it the Smart Simple Detail screen. By showing front of house staff the most vital reservation information in one screen on the timeline, they can check in guests in about 23 seconds! That’s more than 25% less time than before – time guests can spend enjoying your services.
Smart simple detail screen lets you check in guests in about 23 seconds.
Seamless F&B solution
This may not be a new product enhancement, per se, but we couldn’t leave it out of this article. You may have heard that we acquired a complete and fully integrated POS platform, Bizzon, earlier this year. In addition to being an all-round great platform that streamlines your hotel’s operations, it also offers an impressive guest-facing feature: digital ordering.
You can learn more about Mews POS powered by Bizzon here, but, to fill you in on digital ordering, it lets you put QR codes anywhere on your property and all a guest needs to do is scan, order and pay. No chasing down staff. No need for staff to spend time taking orders and paying. Digital ordering takes food and beverage operations to a whole new level.
Position your brand at all touch points
When you send guests an email, it should look and sound like it comes from you. Right? Now it can. We’re beta testing the option for you to improve the guest email functionality so that you can customize your email design and the copy of the email to better reflect your brand.
And coming later in 2022, watch out for another rollout that will update the domain for communications to be custom branded too.
Ready to see first-hand how Mews can create remarkable experiences for your guests and your staff?
.webp)