Creating A Positive First Impression On Hotel Guests Training Ppt

Slide 3

This slide highlights that the initial impression of the hotel dramatically influences the perception of the guest and the overall experience.

Slide 4

This slide highlights the importance of delivering a first great impression as it conveys professionalism, positive online brand image, and demonstrates openness, and provide referrals.

Instructor's Notes:

The impact of great first-impressions on hotel’s guests is:

• Conveys Professionalism: Professional behavior puts a great first-impression on guests and makes them want to revisit. Hotel staff can exhibit professionalism while communicating with guests with the maintenance of direct eye contact, smiling faces, and wearing business apparel
• Positive Online Brand Image: Great first-impressions lead to happy guests. Guests make use of social media to convey their experiences in the form of reviews, which thousands of viewers see online, creating a positive hotel image
• Demonstrates Openness: A great first-impression can be achieved through sincere demonstration of an openness to build rapport with new guests. The hotel staff must be open to fulfill guests' needs and must incorporate their suggestions. It indicates that the hotel is more concerned with satisfying their guests than protecting its own profit
• Referrals to Other Guests: A first-impression is one that guests remember for a long time and convey to their friends and relatives too. Creating a good first-impression, thus, makes big impact on the customer base for the hotel in an indirect way

Slide 5

This slide lists factors that are important for creating a hotel’s first-impression. These are: the hotel’s website, lobby area, food service, the housekeeping, and staff.

Instructor’s Notes:

Hotel’s first-impression is created at/in:

• Hotel’s Website: A hotel can improve the guest's experience during the booking journey, follow up after booking via emails, etc. which will, in turn, impact the hotel's image. Review sites like Trip Advisor, Booking.com, etc., are a great factor affecting the hotel's impressions
• Hotel’s Exterior and Lobby Area: The next point of a good impression is the hotel lobby and front desk area . Welcoming and greeting your guests with a warm smile and positive attitude encourages them to give good reviews and referrals. It is also important to have a loyalty program for returning guests to help with customer retention
• Delicious Food at Hotel Restaurant: Another critical aspect that solidifies a guest's first-impression is the food service at the hotel. There needs to be a seamless experience for the guest, which can be provided with quick offering of food items based on their tastes and preferences
• Impeccable Housekeeping: The housekeeping department has to ensure that everything is sorted, swept, and arranged in a systematic manner in the guest's room. Add little things like laying out slippers by the bed, keeping a water bottle on the nightstand, etc., to delight the guests
• With Courteous Hotel Staff: The behavior and attitude of hotel staff should be friendly and sympathetic toward guests. Also, the staff should be in proper uniforms, have a professional look, and should be knowledgeable about hotel layout and amenities

Slide 6

This slide lists recommendations to deliver a great first-impression to hotel guests. These are: Optimize hotel’s website, manage online reviews, create a welcoming atmosphere, personalize communication, ensure smooth check-in, ensure cleanliness, and engage guests digitally.

Slide 7

This slide showcases steps that should be taken to optimize hotel’s website for delivering a great first-impression to guests. These are: Simple design, high-quality visual elements, multilingual content, create a call-to-action, integrate with booking engines, showcase promos and special offers, use SEOs well, social media linkage, and making the website mobile-friendly.

Instructor’s Notes:

Recommendations to optimize hotel’s website are:

• Simple Design: An unorganized and complex website will drive away guests. This can be avoided by making the website easy to use, understand and navigate through. A hotel website should have a sitemap to help guests find specific information, white spaces to declutter information, and contrasting elements and themes to deliver great first-impression on users
• High-quality Visual Elements: High-quality pictures enhance guests' visual stimulus instead of reading lengthy descriptions when they surf the hotel's website. Hotels can upload videos of safety precautions regarding cleanliness and sanitation being adopted
• Multilingual Content: To gain international visibility, a hotel must translate its website into languages of targeted countries. Not only would this lead to a higher ranking on search engines, but it will also offer great convenience to potential guests leading to direct bookings
• Create a Call-To-Action: Call-to-actions refer to the messages or prompts for site visitors to allow them to take quick action (like Book Now! or Subscribe Today!) The website needs to have a clear Call-to-action and only one such action per page to avoid confusing guests with multiple messages
• Integrate with Booking Engines: When a guest is interested in booking at the hotel's property and is unable to find a 'book now' widget, they will eventually visit any OTA (online travel agency) and book a room from there. This leads to a loss of revenue and poor impression on guests
• Showcase Promos and Special Offers: Special offers and promos on the hotel's website act as ways to convince potential guests to book a room at the hotel since every guest is looking for a great deal. Aside from these featured promos, a page dedicated only to special offers also serves the purpose
  • Use SEOs: Local SEO is essential in the competitive hospitality industry, as many people are looking for an accommodation only by typing in search phrases consisting of the name of the location and the word ‘hotel’. Optimizing the website for long-tail keywords enhances the chances of reaching the interested audience
  • Social Media Linkage: Social media is an important factor in Google’s search ranking algorithm. The hotel must link its website to its social media assets, which would help it rank better in search engines like Google 
  • Make it Mobile Friendly: To keep the bounce rate (the rate of visitors leaving the hotel's website, after viewing only one page) low, ensure that the page has a responsive web design, fast loading, and can be browsed conveniently on smartphone and other devices

Slide 8

This slide highlights the importance of online reviews for creating positive impression on guests with related facts.

Slide 9

This slide highlights techniques for managing online reviews to deliver a great first-impression on hotel guests. The methods are: Actively seek online reviews, opting for reviews in multiple languages, responding reasonably to negative reviews, and not overlooking positive reviews. 

Instructor’s Notes:

Techniques to manage online reviews for delivering a first great impression on guests are:

• Actively Seek Online Reviews: An essential part of managing reviews include actively encouraging your guests to leave online reviews in the first place. A gentle reminder or a polite request during or post check-out can help boost the number of reviews the hotel achieves and make it seem more in demand
• Opt for Reviews in Multiple Languages: Most hotels have guests from many locations, and it is vital to communicate with them in their native language. While writing a review, if the hotel doesn't provide language options to choose from, it will miss out on reviews from a large number of guests 
• Respond Reasonably to Negative Reviews: Even for the best hotels, the occasional negative review is unavoidable. A negative impression on potential guests can be avoided by responding to negative reviews in an appropriate manner by being friendly, addressing the issue calmly, and avoiding being argumentative
• Don’t Overlook Positive Reviews: Often hotels focus on responding to negative comments and overlook positive comments, which should not be the case. The hotel must respond to positive reviews also, as the guests will be more likely to share positive reviews knowing that their words will be read and appreciated

Slide 10

This slide contains information about creating a warm atmosphere for delivering a great first-impression. The hotel can create a great impression through: Strategic lighting, biophilic elements, amount of open floor space, and the type of furniture used.

Instructor’s Notes:

The hotel can create a welcoming atmosphere to create a positive impression on guests with:

• Strategic Lighting: Hotels should opt for warm, soft lighting that is yellowish in color to present a welcoming atmosphere. The types of lighting that adorn a hotel lobby is dependent on the overall shape and design, where a combination of lamps, chandeliers, or footlights might be used
• Biophilic Elements: Biophilic design surrounds one with natural elements such as plants, water elements, and natural light. These fulfill the inherent need of humans to bond with nature, even in the modern environment. This puts guests in a calmer, healthier mindset as soon as they arrive at hotel
• Amount of Open Floor Space: The amount of open floor space in the hotel lobby is a balance between design and practicality. Too little floor space will be uncomfortable, and too much of it will create a void for the guests. Floor space should be between 10-15 percent of the hotel's guest capacity.
• Type of Furniture: Hotel furniture includes coffee tables, ottomans, couches, etc., that need to be carefully chosen according to the hotel's architecture. It is, however best to keep things simple, as the ultimate purpose is to accommodate guests and make them feel comfortable

Slide 11

This slide provides information about personalizing communication as a tool for delivering a wonderful first-impression by sending personalizing welcome emails, being responsive and available, being proactive, and build guest portfolio.

Instructor’s Notes:

Following are the tips for personalizing communication with guests to create a lasting impression:

• Personalized Welcome Emails: Sending the guests a personalized welcome email with all the information they need to know before coming keeps the guest excited about their stay. The emails could include any last-minute special arrangements or tips about the hotel's local area. It would help to know guests better and provide them with a tailored experience
• Be Responsive and Available: To create a great first-impression, being available for the guests is necessary. Keeping guests on wait would make them skeptical about the hotel's services and willingness to meet their requirements. They would lose interest quickly, taking away a bad impression of the hotel
• Be Proactive: Being proactive relates to knowing in advance what guests want, and taking things to the next level to exceed their expectations. For example, for guests traveling with children, their room could be stocked with toys or treats, and so on. Activities should also be arranged/streamlined to avoid negative experiences
• Build Guest Portfolio: The hotel staff should build a guest portfolio to remember the guests’ first name and wish them on their birthdays, marriage anniversaries, etc 

Slide 12

This slide highlights the technique of ensuring smooth check-in for delivering a great first-impression to hotel guests. These include providing packing lists to guests, sharing local information packs, pre-checking room status, and avoiding keys mix-up.

Instructor’s Notes:

Following are the tips to ensure smooth check-in at hotel to deliver a great impression on guests:

• Provide Packing Lists to Guests: The hotel knows its area well and so they can guide the guests regarding regionally specific seasonal concerns, bug/mosquito conditions etc. This benefits the guests and hotel as well since it is a great way of showing hotel’s concern towards the guests, and guests too, can come prepared for the conditions.
• Share Local Information Packs: Smooth check-in of guests can be ensured by providing them with an information pack listing details about local restaurants, must-visit places, and recommended local shops and attractions to explore. It acts as a welcome book that is cost-effective and adds value to the hotel's image
• Pre-Check Room Status: Before guests arrive, the reception staff should check the occupancy of booked guests rooms to ensure that they are vacant, clean and not wrongly allocated to someone else. Room availability can also be checked by referring to an occupancy chart to accommodate on the spot guest requirements
• Avoid Keys Mix-Up: Many types of keys are handled by the front desk during their routine tasks. It is important to keep these keys in a systematic manner to avoid a mix-up and embarrassing situations which may dilute the guest’s experience

Slide 13

This slide contains information about ensuring cleanliness to deliver a great first-impression at the hotel. It is of utmost important when it comes to impressing the guests and can be achieved by: spotless floors, regular dusting of lobby area, eliminating odor from furniture and carpet, wiping down touch points, and maintaining hotel exterior.

Instructor’s Notes:

Following are the recommendations to ensure a clean hotel entrance:

• Spotless Floors: The hotel's lobby area sees heavy footfall throughout the day, so sweeping and mopping the floor should be done at least twice a day, which would keep the floor hygienic and presentable at all times
• Regular Dusting of Lobby Area: Dust is something that gets easily deposited on surfaces, and it not only detracts from cleanliness but can also trigger allergies in sensitive guests. Housekeeping staff must ensure that all surfaces remain dust-free as much as possible
• Eliminate Odor from Furniture and Carpet: Any sort of odor or foul smell could get accumulated on soft surfaces like couches, carpets, or curtains, which is unpleasant. This must be eliminated by making use of fabric refreshers, air purifiers, etc.
• Wipe Down Touch Points: Door handles, elevator buttons, kiosk touch screens, and luggage carts are touched very often by guests and staff, which could lead to cross-contamination. These places should be smudge and fingerprint free to assure cleanliness
• Maintain Hotel Exterior: Regular mowing, trimming and edging of lawns on the outskirts of hotel should be done in order to give these a neat look. Debris should be removed, insect and weed control along with building repair should also be performed at regular intervals

Slide 14

This slide contains information about touchpoints to engage hotel guests digitally which are: Hotel’s app, digital screens, and robot concierges.

Instructor’s Notes:

Touchpoints to engage hotel guests digitally are:

• Hotel's App: Building an app will enable a hotel to control the messaging, customize the experience for guests, and provide full content offerings on a single touch
• Digital Screens: Digital screens can be used in the hotel to showcase property photos, promote services, give special offers, and imprint the hotel's brand value
• Robot Concierge: Robot concierges smarten the way guest services are delivered. It enables guests to chat with hotel 24/7 for any sort of queries and frees up the time of human staff for other important tasks like personalizing a guest's stay

Slide 15

This slide highlights the key takeaways from the session on delivering a great first-impression which can be used by the trainer to highlight vital learning for the trainees.

Slide 28 to 43

These slides contain energizer activities to engage the audience of the training session.

Slide 44 to 71

These slides contain a training proposal covering what the company providing corporate training can accomplish for the client.

Slide 72 to 74

These slides include a training evaluation form for instructor, content and course assessment.