What are the guests' main booking criteria ?

Article

HRS lead a survey about the criteria that will make a guest book a hotel. And contrary to what is mainly expected, the price is not always the first thing taken into acount !

For 78%, the possibility to find pictures of the hotel room is one of the main criteria. Guests need to know what the hotel and their room look like: they want to be able to see if the place seems welcoming, if the rooms are nice, and well maintained,... Pictures are one of the elements that makes the guests feel secure about the place they will stay. Pictures enable them to know exaclty how the hotel and the rooms are, if it matches their tastes, what is the atmosphere... In addition, it satisfies the guests' curiosity and make them feel like they want to come and stay in your hotel!

The second criteria, with 66,7%, is the comments about the place. Obviously, people are less and less willing to have a bad surprise when arriving to the hotel. They don't know the place they would like to stay ? They have a look at the comments that will help them be conforted in their choice or not. This is also the reason why it is very important for us, as hoteliers, to answer our guests on trip advisors, or other websites where they can let public comments. Even before their arrival, it shows your future guests that you really care about what they thinbk of your hotel and people, and that you want to improve thanks to their experience.

For 59%, the number of star of the hotel. The star rating system is a reference point for the guests : it reveals the quality of the hotel, which services you can expect to find, which range of price the hotelier can decently offer for the rooms and services... without this criterion, guests would be lost when they have to look for a hotel in a place they don't know. They also feel secure because with the stars, the hoteliers is compelled to respect many quality criteria, and they won't be defraud.

Now that you know about the top three, you will find below other criteria that are important in the guests' decision process:
- For 45%, the hotel should be equipped with a restaurant
- it also depends on the type of trip : private care more about comments
- 1/5 care about video presentations of the hotel
- 1 man out of 2 care about wireless conection, while it's 1 woman out of 3
- the older people are, the more the size of the room is important

I believe it is crucial to know about our guests' decision making process. With the time, technology evolves, and so do marketing tools. The decision criteria evolves in the same rythme, and we have to enquire about it regularly, in order not to be lost and to stay aware of clients' expectation. By knowing your audience well, you can directly target them. The more you are aware about it, the more you can adapt are offer the guest what they expect, and guests finally choose you !