Today mastering the guest experience is the only way to keep your guests’ loyalty. You may even have the very best structural building, perfect track record of accuracy and service with a smile and yet your guests won’t necessarily be loyal to you.

That’s because we’ve moved from an era of customer service to today’s guest experience era, where it’s truly the quality of the experience that matters most to your guests. Beyond good service, your guests want to be wowed; they want to feel engaged and valued every time they do business with you. Creating the wow is all about creating a memorable emotional connection; it’s about how it made them feel.

The element of surprise and novelty are what jolt the attention of today’s guests and create an experience that’s memorable; because it is so different from the expectation.

The secret is being able to intuitively understand guests’ needs & surpass their expectations consistently. That’s the challenge.

You have to deliver a consistent, distinctive and memorable guest experience, as an effective means of differentiating your business from the competition. Driving guest loyalty by simply providing solid levels of customer service, no longer works as it is expected by your guests. You have to identify how to turn ordinary into extraordinary and provide unique and memorable guest experiences that will drive retention, loyalty and ultimately advocacy from your guests.

Things like taking the time to make a strong first impression, genuinely inquiring about guests’ needs, delivering on those needs, and mastering the subtle details. These all play a role in differentiating between acceptable and memorable experiences. The actions will stand out to your guests and communicates to them just how much they are appreciated and valued.

The amenity that matters most to guests is not the fancy chocolate on the pillow but the gratifying human interaction. This is the connection; when emotions are evoked and the guest experience is measured against intuitive moments of contact.

In order to be remembered by your guests and create their loyalty, you have to earn a lasting position in their mind. When great service is the sole area of serious competition, then it is the guest experience that will differentiate you from the others!