Once you have a guest in a property, what are you doing to make sure they come back… either to that same home or another in your portfolio?  What is your repeat guest strategy?

The importance of guest retention can’t be overestimated.  Loyal guests are likely to stay more often, upgrade to higher value properties and cost you way less than all that marketing trying to find new ones.

In the book “I’ll Be Back – How To Get Customers To Come Back Again and Again”, author Shep Hyken explores how we can turn our one-time customers (guests) into repeat customers and subsequently turn them into loyal customers.

He talks about moments of truth that can be broken down into 3 separate and distinct experiences – Moments of Misery, Moments of Mediocrity, and Moments of Magic. One of the biggest takeaways is that a Moment of Magic doesn’t have to be mind-blowing.  It can be simply an above-average experience and that just going 10% better than average at every touch point with your guest can produce enough magic moments to create that loyalty.

We know from standard customer service statistics that acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than retaining an existing customer, and the success rate of selling to a customer you already have is 60-70%, while the success rate of selling to a new customer is 5-20%. It makes sense therefore to spend time looking at ways to increase guest retention and foster more loyalty.

In this episode I delve into Hyken’s book and translate many of his suggestions and recommendations to what we can do in our businesses.

You’ll hear:

• Why people go back to the same place over and over
• How to move the needle on Moments of Mediocrity
• What you can do to make your property more memorable
• The importance of familiarity and predictability
• How to create moments to treasure (causing a desire to repeat them)
• The most simple action to increase loyalty everyone can do, at no cost
• How to use micro data to personalize a stay
• What makes guests go back to Airbnb over and over and how to emulate this
• Why you must identify your points of friction and create breakthroughs in friction reduction
• What you can do to ensure a human touch in every guest experience

Links mentioned:

Why People Return To The Same Place – Huffington Post

I’ll Be Back – How To Get Customers To Come Back Again And Again – Shep Hyken