The value of digital experience in the hospitality landscape post COVID-19
The hospitality industry has experienced a bleak summer in 2020 for apparent reasons. Hotels worldwide are at their lowest occupancy rate, compared with the same period in 2019. With one eye on the horizon for advanced travelers to return to their usual routine, small and medium hotel owners hope to resolve at least some of the recent pain points in guest experience.
Inevitable renovation of hotel websites
So, how will you adapt your digital asset to these current needs? Well, this is actually an exciting question for your UX studio to answer.
If you hope to update your assets and eventually pull your business out of this dilemma, understanding potential travelers’ mindset is the main thing to start with, which means you should be performing several research methodologies.
Digging up your evolving client segments (business, leisure, or a bucket-list crowd) and their specific needs hold the key to this venture. However, agility remains more crucial than ever. Thus, my personal favorite would be a combination of a quick poll (preferably HotJar since it is easy to use) integrated into critical stages of your website, followed by several to-the-point remote interviews. This way, you can reveal valuable and up-to-date insights while ensuring minimum waste of time before actually starting to change your digital assets.
Valuable UX opportunities are hidden in anxiety points
While anxiety points vary by the destination, there are still some fundamental issues potential travelers would love to see resolved while making their plans. This reveals many opportunities regarding the experience design of any digital asset that belongs to an accommodation establishment. So, let’s take a look.
The toll of COVID-19 to the traveler experience
Before COVID-19, making memories was the initial motivation behind many vacations. Building relationships, checking off our bucket list, seeing the sights, meeting new people, learning new languages, trying local delicacies, and experiencing things we could never back home.
According to a recent article on McKinsey, after experiencing such a traumatizing period(for months now), travelers feel anxious while ‘staying in a room’ and ‘overall exposure to other guests’ drive most of the anxiety.
While it is evident that your potential guests would love to see your cleaning procedures in extensive detail (like they never did before), the expectations are not limited to the hotel hygiene. What they need right now is to be well informed so that they can start making data-driven decisions regarding their vacations.
Several recent research pieces show that the feasibility of the experience travelers plan to take on has a significant impact on purchasing decisions. Thus, they wish to be informed about your establishment’s rules and regulations beforehand so that they can decide whether or not it suits them and how they would like to spend their vacation.
For instance, enjoying a spectacular view during breakfast from your room is now considered ‘safer’ and, therefore, more enjoyable than dining with the rest of the guests in a well-decorated breakfast hall. Outdoor activities became more famous since keeping a social distance from everyone, but our travel partner is considered a must nowadays.
Potential renovation areas for your digital asset
So, in this extreme anxiety environment that can elevate unexpectedly, what can you do to improve your hotel’s digital assets?
Informing for COVID-19
First thing first. Make sure your cleaning procedures, rules, and regulations are visible on your website. Don’t just pile all of the information into a very long static text area but make sure to integrate relevant details into your visitors’ journey across your digital platforms.
In the end, your social accounts, websites, and apps must all communicate one thing. You will be communicating severe matters here, so make sure you use a copy that can relax your potential guests rather than panicking or overwhelming them even more. Pay attention to your micro-copy to create consistent TOV (tone-of-voice) across the navigation journey.
Spice up digital operations
Hospitality has always been about smiling faces, smooth interactions, and face-to-face communication. Although people are longing for those more than ever, you should be aware that they might not feel completely ready. Luckily, there are several ready-to-use tools for almost anything you might need these days, and it is enabling operational digital transformations relatively easy and affordable for most establishments.
You may try offering several digital journey options on your website or mobile application for activities and amenities around the hotel to minimize obligatory face-to-face interactions. Making a reservation for an in-house gastronomy club, booking a PT session or a massage, ordering car service, or even chat with hotel staff can be done after checking-in on the hotel’s mobile application. There is even one very inspirational article on this subject if you wish to dream about endless possibilities.
Shine a light on your USPs
You may have many activities and amenities at your establishment that can differentiate you from others. However, buried deep into your website, they might not be as visible as you imagine to convince travelers to move down the conversion funnel.
To fix this issue, try to make sure all your services, activities, and amenities complement each other throughout your digital assets while helping potential guests decide whether or not to stay at your establishment. If you offer specific services such as in-room training sessions, sterilized airport transfer, or online events, implement them to their journey.
Next Steps
Of course, all these can become overwhelming for many small and medium businesses. If you feel the same, please check out talented UX studios for your business around the world to help you take the necessary steps professionally.
Get to Know Spectailor
Spectailor is an experience design studio committed to problem-solving.
Feel free to drop a line at info@spectailor.co or check out our UX Solutions here. You can always schedule a 30 min strategy call with our team from here.
