What’s the most important element for travelers during the Covid pandemic? Fast, easy, and insightful way of communication. With this discovery in mind, here are 8 tips on how to get more bookings for spa hotels and resorts.
Our customer – Imatra Spa in Finland, has implemented all these 8 tips along with our modern chat tools. As a result, they were able to get amazing results that were more than 12,000 € revenue generated per month, +2,100 website visitors who engaged in conversation by using the chat tools, and +100 staff hours saved.
Find out how they did it by reading through our small guide!
Is it true that all spa hotels in Finland do not still have a chat service like this?
Why? It is crucial for survival.
– Ari Aspia, CEO of Imatra Spa.
1. The winner of 2021
It seems, that domestic travel has been the winner in 2021 and looks like it will continue still. The other winners have been hotels and resorts with spas.
The best winners, however, are hotels and resorts with fast and easy means to provide information for busy travelers. They are the ones who’ll get the best results and the happiest customers.
It is fairly easy to find accommodation from Trivago, hotels.com, and other OTA channels, but comparing good spa offers, is another matter. Hotels have created different packages and for an ordinary person, it is a jungle of information. Hotel and Spa marketing is finding ways to make it easy for the customers.
2. Cut out the noise
Comparing offers is difficult if you don’t visit each hotel’s webpage and once you are on the webpage, it is not easy to even find the best package of all the packages the hotel offers.
Usually, you end up calling the hotel information to understand your options better. Or then you just click yourself away and to the next place.
Travel and other restrictions are also a nightmare for the people. The governmental regulations & recommendations change all the time and it is hard to keep yourself updated. If you need to put all these extra efforts to find out the information you need to have a relaxing vacation… not good.
3. Make it fast and easy with instant chat
Despite the pandemic and tough times, Hotelway has been able to help hotels with their spa marketing and guest service.
One of our customers recently asked at an event during lunch: “Is it true that all spa hotels in Finland do not still have a chat service like this? Why? It is crucial for survival.” (Ari Aspia, CEO of Imatra Spa). Yes, why indeed?
Chat is a communication channel, just as email or phone. It is just rarely used in hospitality, but very common elsewhere.
A Chatbot is an AI-based ‘robot’, using automation and ready-made answers for the questions your guests want to know. You can also use live chat (human agents) to give the answers, but you must reply within 2 minutes – something hotels usually never can do. (Hotelway offers also call center service, by the way.)
8 tips to get more bookings for spa hotels and resorts
This is the takeaway for getting more revenue and improving your guest service, while you may even be short-staffed. It is based on our experience and some recent studies.
1. Make sure, your current spa offers are clearly visible on your front page.
2. Promote your key offers on your webpage.
Use something to catch the attention of the visitors. Pop-ups will work the best as it encourages conversation.
3. Provide additional information in an easy way.
Extra information like what’s included in your spa package or important timetables might seem trivial, but it’s actually very important for your customers. Having all the information will give them a seamless and stress-free experience because they have all the information they need to know. Do not make it difficult for your potential customers to search or dig for the information!
4. Obtain and use a chat as a channel (not too many people want to call or email anymore)
5. Fast and responsive live chat service
If you answer the chat yourself with your team, answer every question in 2 minutes.
6. Use a chatbot to provide the fast answers to the most questions.
Use also a hospitality-specific chatbot, so it can really answer the questions and does not consume your resources. Utilize automation.
7. Promote your upselling potential.
Attract people to book tables at your restaurants or spa treatments. Make a natural (booking) process flow.
8. Provide relevant additional info with the packages.
E.g., if you have a somewhat sporty spa offer, make sure the gym info or tips for the nearby running tracks are close by.
Amazing results that our customers have received per month in 2021
Besides the outstanding results that Imatra Spa has been receiving (12,000€ per month!), we have also calculated the average numbers that our spa hotels customers got when implementing our 8 tips.
- 3.122 € generated money through our service
- 1.434 travelers have engaged in conversation via the chat tools (chatbot and live chat).
- 60,5 hours saved time from the staff
- 647 have asked something, usually multiple questions.
Here are the TOP 10 topics that were asked by customers:
- Offers (and questions related to them)
- Price and availability – and also booking
- Price of the spa (and discounts and combos)
- Check-in times ja opening hours of the spa (and how to use spa)
- Different other activities (e.g., gym, skiing, running, tickets to 3rd party services)
- Pets
- Breakfast
- Dinner and Table reservation. Especially special times, like Mother’s Day or Christmas.
- Treatments and booking treatments
- Parking
This is how they did it
- By using Hotelway chatbot and live chat tools, our spa hotel customers receive many questions per month.
- Answers directly and fast to the customer questions
- Help customers find the best package with the help of interactive chatbot
- No need to call or email to hotel to get information – many guests do not want that despite the fact, that many hoteliers ‘want to give personal service’.
- Save time from the staff (many hotels seem to be short staffed even)
One more tip for all this
Get a service, which is easy to set up and operate. Do not try to do things on your own, since it will consume too much of your resources in the end. And do not get the cheapest either; it tends to be quite expensive at the end when the customers see the poor level of service & functionality and leave.
Hotelway has broad knowledge and experience from hospitality and especially Spa hotels and resorts. As our name indicates, we work only in hospitality and travel. When you get any of these services from us, it will only take an hour or two of your time to implement everything. Our products have also high operational efficiency, so you need only a few minutes per week to ensure a smooth operation.
We hope you will implement these to get more bookings for your spa hotels and resorts. It works for many of our customers who are in the hospitality industry and it will work for you too.
If you want to learn more about our chat tools and how they have helped our other customers have gained thousands in bookings and revenue, book a meeting with us.