Increasing Customer Referrals for Your Hotel

You may be wondering, aren’t customer reviews and customer referrals the same thing? While, yes, they can be quite similar and complement each other there are distinct ways in which customer referrals are different. Ways in which they are important to your property thriving in the hospitality market. When it comes to a customer choosing where to stay on their next vacation, nothing is more important than a personal recommendation from someone they know and trust.

Even though customer reviews have someone’s name or even image on them, but more often than not your guests don’t personally have a relationship with the reviewer. This is where a strong hotel referral program becomes invaluable to your business.

What is a hotel referral program? In the world of mobile apps and rewards programs this is a pretty straight forward thing. It’s really any program where you’re rewarding guests for referring your property to someone else.

So, what are some ways in which you can increase customer referrals for your hotel? What kind of hotel referral program is the most effective? Let’s explore these with you, now.

Automated Texts/Emails

We’ve all seen the automated text or email follow ups from restaurants or others in the hospitality industry. You know the one where it gives you the option to invite a friend. And by doing so you earn points or rewards for a free stay. These types of referrals can be the most effective in bringing in new and repeat guests.

 

With our BuzzyBooth selfie stations set up in high traffic areas of your hotel, we’re collecting the customers’ email address and phone number for you. They need it so they can get their selfie. This data collection is then used to offer your referral program benefits and promotions to them when BuzzyBooth delivers their selfie. This can be an effective and organic way to create customer referrals for your hotel. And when they tag your hotel in their social media post, all they’re doing is driving more referrals to you through their network of friends.

Exclusive Promotions

Your hotel referral program can offer exclusive discounts or promo codes for new customers. Most of these referral programs rely on first time customers, and only work for first time customers as well, so when a customer sends the code to their friends it benefits your hotel. What true friend doesn’t like helping another friend save a little money? Your hotel referral program can do just that with promo codes and exclusive discounts for new customers.

Rewards points are great ways to drive customer referrals as well. When a frequent traveler stays at your hotel or in your hotel group on a regular basis, they’re able to rack up rewards points. The better your rewards incentives, the more that customer is going to recommend your hotel to their friends.

Your hotel no doubt does email marketing, and tying in your marketing campaign with automated referrals is another really organic and proven way to increase your referrals. BuzzyBooth’s automated referral software is able to tie in a referral promotion to your email marketing campaign and help increase your referrals while also bringing back repeat customers.