Hoteliers : is your customer relationship really ready for 2025 ?

… You see every step of the journey as an opportunity.

Your customer relationship in 2025 will be different if you understand that everything no longer happens at reception. The customer experience is a story that begins during the search and booking phase, continues before arrival, is cemented during the stay, and extends well beyond departure. You have broken down this journey to make every moment enchanting.

The booking and pre-stay phase is no longer a simple static wait. It is the first step in the experience. Your potential customers are welcomed to your site by an intelligent chatbot that answers their questions 24/7, reassuring them about the availability of a cot or parking options. Your booking engine is smooth, fast and perfectly suited to mobile devices, transforming a constraint into a promise of simplicity. The booking notification is not just a receipt, and your pre-stay communications are an invitation to travel, perfectly presenting the services that could enhance the upcoming stay.

During their stay, the experience is proactive. You don’t wait for the customer to come to you. An hour before their arrival, they receive a text message with the easiest route to your establishment. Via the GuestApp, they can order room service without picking up the phone, or book a table at the restaurant while they are still visiting the city. Every interaction is an opportunity to show that you anticipate their needs, which not only translates into increased satisfaction, but also a significant increase in ancillary sales. You no longer sell services, you offer solutions at the right time.

Finally, the post-stay period is the beginning of the next visit. Instead of an impersonal email, you send a personalised thank-you message that mentions a detail of their stay, accompanied by an exclusive benefit for their next direct booking. You understand that retaining a customer costs much less than acquiring a new one, so every departure is treated as a ‘goodbye’ rather than a ‘farewell’. You don’t just manage overnight stays, you manage a complete journey that has a direct impact on your TRevPAR (Total Revenue per Available Room).

… Your customer data has become your most valuable asset.

Your customer relationship will be in 2025 if you have stopped letting your customer data ‘sleep’ at the hotel. You understand that every reservation, every preference expressed, every meal consumed at the restaurant and every review left is a gem that can feed your customer knowledge.

But collecting data is not enough; the key to your success is intelligent segmentation. You no longer communicate with everyone in the same way. You have created dynamic profiles that enable effective personalisation, such as :

• The “Business Traveller” receives offers for early check-in, an ‘express dinner’ package and a suggestion to book a shuttle bus, in order to save time.

• The”Romantic Getaway Couple” package includes the option to add champagne and flowers to your room, as well as late check-out for a well-deserved lie-in.

• A few days before their arrival, the “Adventurous Family” receives a mini-guide to family activities in the surrounding area, as well as a notification about snack options for afternoon tea.

This knowledge goes beyond marketing. It predisposes you to operational efficiency. Reception staff know that Mr Dupont prefers a room away from the lift, and the breakfast team knows that Mrs Martin is gluten intolerant, even before they have to ask. You are not doing mass marketing; you are building individual relationships on a large scale.

… Your “toolbox” is intelligent and centralised.

Your customer relationship will be in 2025 if you rely on a technological ecosystem that communicates and works for you. Your daily life is made easier by :

• A hotel CRM : This is the real brain of your establishment. It centralises all information to create a 360° customer profile that is useful to every department. Marketing uses it for its campaigns, reception uses it to personalise the welcome, the technical manager uses it for feedback on room satisfaction, and management uses it to analyse trends. Quality indicators on customer relations are even integrated into it, such as the Experience Performance Score.

• Intelligent workflows : These scenarios guarantee a seamless experience. A simple workflow might look like this: 7 days before departure, welcome email and upsell offer for an upgrade. On the day of departure, welcome text message. One day after departure, WhatsApp message to check that everything is going well. Day 5 (after departure), satisfaction survey sent. All of this is fully automated, ensuring that no customer is forgotten.

• Modern communication channels : You understand that email is perfect for structured communications, but WhatsApp is the king of immediacy. You use it to confirm a spa reservation, answer a simple question (“What time does the pool close?”) or let someone know that a room is ready earlier than expected. You are where your customers are, in a useful and non-intrusive way.

• A seamless GuestApp : You’ve put the hotel in your guests’ pockets. It’s their digital concierge, their booking platform and their preferred communication channel. It gives them autonomy and reduces your teams’ workload on recurring requests.

• A touch of ubiquitous AI : Artificial Intelligence is no longer an isolated tool; it makes CRM predictive, enables chatbots to understand the nuances of a conversation, and suggests workflow offers based on past customer behaviour.

… You no longer suffer from your e-reputation, but control it.

Your customer relationship will be in 2025 if you have stopped viewing online reviews as inevitable. You have moved from defence to attack, from reaction to proactivity. Thanks to AI-powered semantic analysis tools, you no longer just respond to a few comments. Your system analyses hundreds of reviews across all platforms (Google, OTAs, specialised platforms) to extract underlying trends.