The Hidden Side of Hospitality: 3 Ways Hotels Fail Overnight Guests
The vast majority of guests arrive at your hotel when the sun is shining, your staffing levels are at their peak, and your lobby looks fantastic. They probably arrive in sun-warmed rooms and call down for room service that’s still fully available.
But skip forward a few hours, and do the same rules apply? Or, do things start to slip? Because all too often, hotel owners are guilty of overlooking the essential elements of overnight comfort. And no amount of daytime prowess can override that problem.
After all, your guests don’t come to your hotel for a lovely day – they want a comfortable overnight stay. If they’re not getting that, then bad reviews and a lack of follow-up bookings become inevitable. But where does your hotel go wrong after dark right now, and what can you do about it?
# 1 - The Ghost Town Effect
Naturally, you don’t need daytime staffing levels while your guests are tucked up in bed, but that doesn’t mean that you should entirely desert the premises, either. Aside from being disconcerting, an entirely staffless reception desk after hours can leave guest issues unresolved. And that’ll never do.
Hence, you should keep at least one or two staff on your reception desk at all times. It’s also important to ensure that your phones don’t ring unanswered into the night. This can be difficult to guarantee when you’re running on a skeleton crew, so it’s also worth considering outsourcing a hospitality call center as offered by https://www.realvoice.com/. This ensures real phone responses by a team that’s versed in your brand voice and messaging, 24/7.
# 2 - The Cost of Unwanted Noise
Nothing’s worse for a hotel’s reputation than things that go bump in the night. Aside from scaring your guests, unwanted noises after dark will keep them awake. And they’ll never leave a good review if they don’t actually sleep during their stay!
But how exactly can you control late-night noises that tend to happen of their own accord? Admittedly, you can’t eliminate every sound, but you can still reduce this risk. For instance, placing mechanical additions like the elevators you’ll find at www.tkelevator.com well away from guests will work wonders. Smart room allocations that include keeping large groups away from single rooms, can also be useful. And, of course, silencing measures like acoustic panels and thick carpeting can also help to keep things quiet.
# 3 - Consistency Conundrums
A lack of consistency is our last nighttime hidden danger, and it most often relates to sudden temperature drops at night. If this happens, guests will feel unsettled, uncomfortable, and probably unhappy.
So how can you overcome this? Ultimately, you should aim to keep temperatures at a steady warm level both in the day and at night, as this ensures a consistent, comfortable sleeping temperature. You certainly won’t want to turn off that heat altogether and leave your night time guests out in the cold!
Does your hotel run well overnight? If not, then you might want to fix these three essentials.
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