After the COVID-19 pandemic hit, more and more businesses started working on the customer experience and business value improvement.
In the hospitality industry, various brands, companies, and services can see the real results from loyalty program development in only a few months: up to 10% of sales and to 15% of transaction boosting, and around 20% of average spendings lift, according to PwC recent research.
The customer loyalty app refers to the most effective and efficient method of enhancing the UX in hospitality.
However, developing a mobile app loyalty program for hotels is not easy: they should contain the basic app features, all the range of services, and high-rated user engagement. In this article, we’ll cover the main things you should be aware of before starting creating a loyalty app project.
What Is a Customer Loyalty App?
In the hospitality industry, a customer loyalty program app refers to the software that increases client engagement and makes your guests more motivated to interact with the hotel and its services, consequently resulting in higher conversions and better revenue.
Usually, this type of loyalty apps creates incentives through rewarding points, special offers, discounts, and membership cards. For hotels, it can include the restaurant menu, tourism services, range of sports and leisure facilities, etc.
A customer loyalty mobile app is also a form of marketing strategy, designed to encourage using various hotel services via their smartphone so that you can get in touch with the reception and order any of the services available within a click.
The Potential of Loyalty Reward Apps
The importance of the loyalty program development for hotels cannot be underestimated, as it is one of the most effective communication and sales channels for the hospitality industry.
With the customer loyalty apps, it becomes much easier to interact with your customers, understand their needs and preferences, inform them about the latest news and events nearby, and offer the additional services the hotel can easily benefit from.
Additionally, mobile loyalty applications are a great option to increase brand awareness and improve customers’ loyalty as well. Thus, hotel units will get higher conversion rates with fewer investments into advertising because of having more loyal clients!
And the guests can benefit from the loyalty program app as well: they can easily stay in touch with the hotel staff and order any services they need for a comfortable stay. Also, they can enjoy the personalized offers and promotions offered depending on their personal interests, and even in different languages.
The reminders and notifications will help to keep your guests always updated about anything they might need during their journey.
With the mobile app loyalty program, they no longer need to take a plastic card to use the services or open their apartments, complete the check-ins and check-outs — everything can be done in a few taps on their smartphone.
Such a well-planned strategy of loyalty program development can not only improve the client experience but also increase the overall ROI as well.
Benefits of a Loyalty Management System for a Hotel
Before we start analyzing the main features of a loyalty program app for hospitality, it’s critical to understand whether your business needs it. Knowing the core advantages of loyalty apps can help you to estimate the basic features to pay attention to during the loyalty program development.
#1 Better Client Experience
According to Forbes, More than 80% of millennials and around two-thirds of baby boomers are interested in getting rewards not just for purchases but also for engagement with brands.
With a mobile loyalty app, your business will have more loyal clients who come to stay exactly in your hotel. As a result, their preferences and guest behavior analysis can help you to define the right service strategies to develop for the higher UX.
#2 Increased Bookings
Having implemented the loyalty program app into your hotel business and provided your guests with a certain reward program, you are more likely to get the undecided travelers over the line.
In this case, a loyalty program development can become an important criterion of why visitors should use your hospitality services instead of your competitors.
#3 Saving Investments
SEMRush has reported that the average American company can lose 23% to 30% of its customers each year due to a lack of customer loyalty. By focusing on your loyal clients and enlarging their number, you’ll spend fewer costs for the marketing and sales efforts.
Additionally, loyal repeat guests can have much better conversion rates than the average one-time visitors, which makes them more valuable for your business as well.
#4 Boosted Revenue
The loyal customers who have had a great experience with your hotel once are more likely to use the additional services offered in your mobile loyalty app. If offered, they can spend more money on traveling, sports and leisure, catching events, and other services organized by your hotel management team.
#5 Useful Insights
By analyzing the guests’ profiles created in your loyalty app, you can also get a lot of insights about further loyalty program development.
For instance, with the mobile app loyalty program, it becomes much easier to collect important data like clients’ interests, preferences, and behavior to improve the existing strategy for attracting more guests to your hotel and defining the right targets for your guests’ experience improvement.
Main Features of Loyalty Applications for the Hospitality Industry
To make the most of your loyalty program development, it’s also important to understand the basic features it should cover for the right client engagement. That is why we have created the list of the most effective features you must include in a loyalty program app:
- Add push notifications and reminders to keep your clients updated about the events, planned activities, and other important information.
- Consider the loyalty program ideas like guests points, special occasion bonuses, and time-limited promotions.
- Include different programs for various areas including hotel service, hotel restaurants, bars and events, leisure facilities, local guides, and city events.
- Try to personalize your rewards system to offer different options depending on individual preferences.
- Provide easy access for your customer loyalty mobile app: online and offline performance, easy registration, and sign-in.
- Offer extra rewards for using the loyalty program app.
- Cover multiple languages for a mobile loyalty app for comfortable utilization.
- Make your app available for different operating systems: iOS and Android
These are the basic functions to know for the successful loyalty program development, but the hospitality units also can add the other features they need or want to include into their customer loyalty apps.
Conclusion
To sum up, loyalty program development is a powerful and effective method of UX empowering and boosting the business performance as well.
For the hospitality industry, customer loyalty app sare one of the best options to start with for understanding the clients’ needs and preferences, and also to build a successful strategy for visitor engagement as well.
Setting up the custom software development for travel and hospitality can help the hospitality units to cover all the features they need in their applications, and save up more resources on their launching and implementation.
Additionally, that’s a perfect investment for the hotels that need the best solution for improving the clients’ engagement and getting the additional source of the service advertising.
At Intellectsoft, we have extensive experience creating innovative technological solutions for hospitality. Are you ready to take your business to the next level, then don’t hesitate to contact us.
