The secret to great customer service in the hotel industry

What really sets apart a premium hotel stay against a budget one, or a home stay? 

You might, understandably, list the number of services provided, the size of the rooms, the quality of the food… And while these things are certainly important, nothing has quite the same impact as the relationship between your staff and customers. 

No matter how beautiful or impressive the lodging space is, it can all fall down if your staff are unable to truly connect with their guests. 

So what makes for effective communication in the hotel industry? 

Communication is all about feeling – and that takes a lot more than just saying the right words to convey information. 

When staff can connect with guests, understand their motivations and needs, and have the skills to set their mind at ease in difficult situations, they have mastered the art of communication. 

And from there, memorable customer service follows. 

Why communication is a critical success factor for hotels

In a premium hotel, every interaction with a member of staff will feed into their overall experience, whether it is during check in, room service, cleaning or catering.

High-quality service requires staff to make the client feel like they are a member of a community of guests and staff at the hotel. 

To achieve this in a native language often requires specialist customer-service training. And to do it in English, the global lingua franca, it requires a specialist approach. 

Communication skills and the customer experience: What might this look like in practice?

A guest may be delayed by a late running flight and needs to check in late. In our scenario, they have phoned the front desk during the day to let the hotel know. 

Whoever speaks to them needs to recognize their frustration at the situation. At the same time, they need to assure them that one possible source of stress, making sure that they have a bed to sleep in that night, has been removed. 

Communication must be smooth and reassuring in a way that the guest, probably from a different cultural background to the member of staff, can relate to. Staff should also be aware of difficulties that the customer might have, and deal with them proactively. 

Does the guest need transport from the airport to the hotel to be arranged? Is there anything the hotel can do to help? Compare this with ineffective or unpolished communication. 

The member of staff on the phone might inform the guest that late check in will be fine, but if they can not detect that the guest is under stress, they may not think about ways to solve their problems and they may not be totally convincing. 

On top of dealing with a delayed flight, the guest is now wondering whether the night shift will be told about their late arrival, and whether another part of their journey is about to go wrong. You can guess whether they’ll stay at your hotel again.

An example of personalization in customer service

Another example is when giving a guest a recommendation for activities in the city. A good communicator will be able to either find out what kinds of things would interest the guest, and be able to ask the right questions, so that they can make the right recommendation. 

Consider if the member of staff was a poor communicator. Although they may be able to state the famous tourist attractions in a place, just listing the same things to each customer regardless of what they seem to prefer will seem impersonal and uncaring.

Communication is key to a strong brand

All of these experiences affect a person’s perception of your hotel’s brand. This is one of your key differentiators, especially for a chain. The more consistent the customer experience and communication quality across a hotel’s network, the more likely there will be repeat custom. 

This means training staff consistently in their interactions with customers, both from a linguistic perspective and also in a way that is culturally appropriate for guests. 

Staff should have a good understanding of different levels of formality and be able to adapt their politeness level and tone of voice to the guest and the situation. 

After all, your staff are your ‘brand ambassadors’, and anything they do will reflect back on your business.

Developing a great hotel communication network

Depending on the size of the hotel, staff may come from different parts of the world, or different regions of the same country, and have different accents and preferred phrases.  

It’s important for managers to take this into account when developing an internal communications strategy. The goal is to train team members in English, at scale, and at a consistent quality while adapting the learning program to learners’ individual needs.

ELSA Speak ’s AI voice coach technology offers the scale and efficiency of a digital learning platform with the personalized focus of a private tutor to run the whole English language training program of a single hotel or throughout an entire chain. 

Our world-class linguists will tailor content to your business needs, for all departments in your organization including front office, housekeeping, food production, HR, sales and marketing. 

We will give your employees an advantage by teaching the vocabulary and expressions that are most relevant to their daily work. We cover all key speaking skills, including pronunciation, word stress, and intonation.

With a few minutes a day on their smartphone, staff can learn English through over 200 topics, 5,000 lessons and 26,000 exercises, ranging from business English to casual conversation. We have a variety of topics specially tailored for the hospitality and service industry.

Use ELSA to improve the skills of your staff and empower them to make better decisions for your guests. 

Learn more or request a demo.