Hotel referral programs are meant to reward customers for maintaining their loyalty to your business.
When done the right way, it can lead to a large network of dedicated customers that result in steady bookings. However, if your hotel referral program lacks any kind of real value, then it can wind up doing the complete opposite — turning customers away.
To help give you an idea of what a bad hotel referral program looks like, here are 3 reasons why hotel referral programs fail:
1. There’s No Initial Incentive for the Customer
The first reason why hotel referral programs fall flat is that there’s no initial incentive for the customer to receive.
For instance, telling a customer to sign up for your hotel referral program just because you have one available isn’t enough. You need to offer them some kind of bonus upfront that entices them to apply. This may include…
- A discount on their booking
- A free breakfast in the morning
- Free access to various hotel ammenities
- A discount on a future booking
- Additional points on their membership
- A discount for a friend that they refer the hotel to
Give the customer something they can walk away with that inspires them to get involved with your hotel and come back again to cash in the reward.
2. Points are Too Hard to Earn and Cash In
Which leads to the next reason why hotel referral programs fail — the points earned are too hard to accumulate and cash in.
Imagine being at an arcade where you can only earn so many tickets per game, and the big prize you want costs thousands of tickets to win. Suddenly, the idea of participating loses its luster. That said, you have to keep your hotel rewards realistic. So for 5 referrals who successfully use a customer’s code or books through their unique link, the original customer gets a free night’s stay. If you’re using a point a system, then allow the first redeemable prize to be for a low amount of points, then after that, make the next prize at a higher amount, but make it something worthwhile.
Remember, you have to keep people invested in your hotel rewards program to ensure their interest over time. If you make things too hard off the bat, no one will want to play.
3. It’s Not Easy to Share with Others
Lastly, hotel referral programs fail because they’re not easy to share with others.
This speaks directly to a hotel’s presence with social media. Once a customer signs up for a hotel referral program, they need to be able to share it with their friends and family. Obviously, they can’t bring their network to the hotel itself, but that’s why using social media and making hotel referral programs shareable online is such a huge benefit.
For instance, once a customer signs up for your hotel referral program, they should be able to instantly share it on social media — Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. That way, they can tag their friends, while also promoting your hotel in the process.
A robust hotel marketing strategy helps bolster your hotel referral programs, so partnering with a business that can take your hotel experience to the next level is something you should consider to boost your success.
Hire BuzzyBooth to Improve Your Hotel Referral Program
BuzzyBooth offers you a fun, easy way to improve your hotel referral programs with a hotel photo booth.
Rather than just asking customers to sign up, you can invite them to take a fun selfie in your lobby, enter their contact information, provide them with their image, and then ask if they want to enroll in your hotel referral program at the end. Embedding your hotel referral program sign up process within a photo booth for hotels is a great way to heighten engagement, while also creating a hotel marketing strategy that creates brand advocates for your business.
BuzzyBooth can help your hotel referral program succeed, so click the button below to request your free demo today!
So you are convinced of the value of referrals and you're ready to take the first steps towards building a referral campaign, but where do you start Referrals build a seller's trustworthiness and credibility—two cornerstones of effective selling.
Create a formal referral campaign to share referrals
Learn how you can implement ROI boosting referral marketing strategies for your crowdfunding campaign and make it a successful launch.
Click here to know more about us!
Think Dropbox, Google and Uber are a few of them!Finding the right method to attract new customers to your business is not easy.
In the coming years, the ecommerce industry will find that market leaders are turning to personalizing experiences and using machine learning and AI algorithms to serve new consumers.
However, there is another tactic used by web giants such as Amazon, Booking.com, Slack and Airbnb that has been proven to constantly attract customers.
The method they all use is called referral marketing.Referral programs have helped each of these companies grow exponentially by engaging and leveraging their most important asset: customers.
But the real challenge is making sure your marketing efforts are constantly driving referrals.
At the same time, it can also be seen as a sales force based on third-party recommendations.As an ecommerce store owner, you can leverage referral marketing in many different ways.
