Impactful guest gifting practices
Purpose built gifts go a long way. They build relationships with your guests who you may never interact with.
Yes they add a true personalized touch, but don’t fall into the trap of a generic gift (that’s not worth your budget or time.) Curated gifts strengthen your brand affinity and leave a lasting impression of your above and beyond hospitality. Here are a few ways to create a thoughtful gifting program.
1. Leverage data to get more personal
There is plenty of data at your fingertips, it’s just finding the sources that are already available to you and tapping into those effectively. Use your reservation data from your PMS to understand some basic info about your guests. Consider using your local DMO (destination marketing organization) to get more insights into the tourist demographics visiting. Last but not least, knowing where your guests are traveling from is helpful to know if they are driving or flying.
2. Build guest personas
Leverage the data you’ve gathered on the types of stays that are being booked in your properties and from there, you can build guest personas that match these trends. For example, you notice the majority of your bookings include a large group of adults and children, that would become your “Family” persona. The remainder of data shows two adults coming for a weekend, the assumption would be to build a “Couples Getaway” persona from those learnings.
3. Develop curated gifts
Create a mood board on Pinterest or Canva to brainstorm the types of gifts that match these guest personas. After that, do some recon and start sourcing! At sojo, we automate this for you but if you decide to do this on your own, there are resources to tap into whether those include building local relationships, or outsourcing to sites like swag.com or clove and twine.
4. Proactive v. reactive gifting
There are a couple of ways to think about gifting - so let’s talk about them. Proactive gifting is when you’re leaving something in the home for the guests to be surprised and delighted by upon check-in. But there’s also reactive gifting to use when a guest experiences an inconvenience like a delayed check-in or a broken appliance in the home. These are great recovery tools to use when needed, and another great reason to establish local relationships to create the “help us fix this” gift.
Gifting feels fluffy but it can be a sharp tool your team can utilize moving forward and include in your marketing strategy. Being thoughtful when you have the time to do so will pay off in the long run.
sojo is an Amenity Automation Platform for Vacation Rentals. With more than 20k properties on our integrated platform, we’re able to support property managers and their staff to keep turn days automated and the products a welcome surprise to their guests.
Want to see what all the hospitality hype is about? Claim your free sample kit here.