What is a guest profile?
A guest profile is essentially a way of keeping track of your guests so that you can better optimize your operations and marketing activities. A profile records all the contact information and historical information of your different types of guests, their actions, and their preferences in order to better tailor the guest experience for future stays.
A profile allows you to get insights into your guest’s behavior by giving you a historical overview of their transactions, previous reservations, other comments and notes about the guest behavior, as well as revenue generated, booking behavior (cancellations and no-shows), and a range of other useful data.
Especially in a smaller hotel, it should be a daily practice of your front desk staff to familiarize themselves with the profiles of the guests that are staying at your facilities, and for sales and marketing staff it is a powerful tool to unlock trends and analyze the type of clients they should target.
Learn more about marketing strategies to increase your bookings.
What are the different types of hotel guest profiles?
Since each target segment is different, it’s important to have different types of profiles set up so you can better use the information to your advantage when it comes time to analyze the success of your marketing initiatives. Let’s take a look one by one at each of the possible types.
Guest profile
The standard guest profile should include personal details like name and last name, address, email, payment details, nationality and ID. You will also want to include marketing information like whether they want to subscribe to your newsletter or not and if they opted in for other types of communication like promotions and special deals.
You will also want to include special notes, preferences, booking information from past or future bookings, invoices, revenue generated and the communications that have been sent (pre-arrival email, post-departure email, etc.). Having this information on hand is incredibly useful for providing personalized service and staying one step ahead of the competition.
Company profile
Business travel represents an important target to help increase occupancy rates, seeing as business travelers often travel during the week when occupancy is low. It’s important to have the company details on file like the company name, the person in charge of bookings, negotiated room rates and package deals, as well as past and future booking details.
Because of the importance of this target, you want to be sure to make these clients feel special with better group rates, special promotions and added services. This extra attention will help set you apart from the competition and make them choose to stay at your hotel on a regular basis. This special attention may also inspire corporate travel managers to trust your brand for their corporate events and meetings.
Travel agent profile
A travel agent profile contains all the information about the travel agents who do business with your hotel. This will contain the contact information, communication details, commissions, the marketing account manager, daily agreed room allocation, invoice information and any other distinguishing details you will need to keep the client on file and facilitate smoother operations.
Just like with companies, travel agents who you do regular business with should have a complete profile so that you can use it as a reference. You can consult the profile to look at the total revenue generated, cancellation rate, and upcoming bookings to decide whether to make special arrangements for them like giving them better rates, holding a room beyond the regular release data, or giving a better commission.
Group profile
This profile is similar to travel agent and company profiles, and normally will be linked to one or both of these. You’ll want to include the name of the group, tour, or conference, so it is easily traceable, along with the leader’s contact information. Invoice details, upcoming bookings or past bookings, details of special agreements and prices, as well as invoices and revenue should be included.
Source profile
The source refers to the name of the OTA or third party site where the booking came from, as well as promotional rates. Putting in a special profile for a promotion helps track the success of that campaign, so it is easily replicable and traceable if it’s successful. In this type of listing you would want to include the name of the online travel agent or promotion, the contact person, and the commission rate.
Here you would also want to include the upcoming or past bookings for this source, the revenue generated, the details of no-shows or cancellations, the marketing or sales manager’s name, and any special notes that will help facilitate a smoother operations process.
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How to create your ideal guest profile
To create your ideal guest profile, you can rely on front desk software that will allow you to keep a history of guest actions and preferences on hand, whether that be before they arrive, during their stay or after check-out.
Profiling gives your front desk the tools to better understand your guests and create personalized experiences. Knowing who is staying with you or booking with you is key to delivering a tailored experience throughout the customer’s lifecycle.
Conclusion
In this article we’ve looked at what a guest profile is, the various types of profiles and how to create your ideal profile using hospitality software. Customer profiling allows your hotel to better understand your guests, including their behavior and characteristics so that you can maintain optimal communication with each type of guest throughout their interaction with your brand.
Having all this information on hand will not only help you to customize your service when guests stay with you by knowing their preferences, but also help you to offer more targeted communications throughout the customer journey. This will ultimately make your marketing efforts more successful, increasing your conversion rate and helping to drive revenue.
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