Perhaps many years ago, operating a good hotel business meant greeting guests with a pleasant smile, and providing them a clean simple place to stay while away from home. By today’s standards to own and operate a highly successful Hotel then hotel customer experience has to be the priority.

Although this experience is a necessity at any time it is even more so true when the economy is unstable. The reason being is because money is harder to come by, and customers that are spending it want the very best for their dollar, and are less forgiving of any weaknesses a Hotel may have.

The Hotel business is able to enjoy modern technology, and it certainly makes building a Hotel business by way of marketing much easier, but it also puts a bigger demand on providing a good experience to the customers at a much earlier stage. For example, many customers will now start to build their experience with a particular hotel by starting with the internet. It is very common for potential Hotel guests to start their primary search for their accommodation on the internet, and after finding something that appeals to them they will do their actual booking online.

What this means to the Hotel industry is that they have to give much more thought to hotel customer experience at a much earlier stage, and this is on the virtual level which comes down to the Hotel website. Hotels at this stage would do well to focus on the following areas.

First Impressions are the beginning:
As soon as a potential guest lands on a Hotel’s webpage the first impression is beginning to form. If it is an inferior site you can bet the customer will not separate the website from the Hotel. In other words customers will not form the opinion that the site is really not very good, but that’s okay the Hotel is probably great.

The tone of the content:
What is written on the website portrays the attitude of the Hotel. If the content is cold and calculating with no tone of friendliness to it then it will not form an experience of a warm and inviting place to stay for any length of time.

Poorly laid out and confusing:
Prospective guests that are using a website to gather information about their accommodation want to find everything they need and require quickly and in order to do this the site must be well laid out and flow from one area to another. Ideally it should follow the train of the thought of the guest. For example, it should start with what it has to offer, then the check in times. If the first thing a customer sees when landing on the Hotel site is the checkout time, it is giving the impression that the Hotel can’t wait to see their guests go.

The information in the content:
This is important because the guests want to know what they are going to get for the money they are giving the Hotel. Of course the area and location are important to the guest and there should be some information about this. However, there has to be good, positive specific information about the Hotel itself in order to satisfy the customer’s wants and needs.

So for those Hotels that have websites which really is a necessity by today’s standards, Hotel customer experience begins at the virtual level