Acquiring a new guest costs between 5 and 25 times more than retaining one who already knows you, according to Bain & Company. And increasing retention by just 5% can boost profits by between 25% and 95% (Bain & Company / Frederick Reichheld). For an independent hotel, this means that loyalty is not an extra, it is probably the most profitable lever you have available, and the one that gets the least attention.
A typical example of how that profitability gets lost: the review was 5 stars, the stay was impeccable, the guest even shared a photo on their social media. Six months later, they book again, but through the same OTA they used the first time.
It is not that they prefer that OTA. It is that, without their contact details, you never had a way to remind them you exist when the time came to decide where to stay. So they did the easiest thing: booked through the same channel as always.
This article is a preview of what you will find in our new guide: "From check-out to the next check-in".
We will cover the following topics:
- What data you really need to be able to contact a previous guest
- How to write a message that gives them a reason to come back directly
- What to do if you don't have time to manage any of this
Let's get into it:
1. What Data Do I Need from a Guest to Be Able to Contact Them?
Just three things, and the first is the one that gets the least attention:
- Their contact details: first name, last name and a way to write to them, email or phone. This is not always guaranteed: if the guest booked through an OTA, you may never have had direct access to their contact.
- When that guest is likely to return (it is enough to know which season they stayed).
- A real detail from their stay that you can mention without sounding like a template.
2. How Do I Write a Message That Gets a Guest to Book Directly?
The best time to write to a previous guest is not when you have an empty room to fill. It is a little before the season when they are likely to return, with something that only makes sense for them:
"Hi Marc, the time of year when you usually escape to the coast is coming up. The room with the balcony you liked is still here, and if you book directly with us before the end of the month, we will hold it for you at 10% better than on any other platform."
This does not work if you try to do it for the 200 guests of the season. It works if you do it for the 10 or 15 you would genuinely like to see return.
In the guide we give you ready-prepared instructions so that AI writes this message for you in seconds, personalised with each guest's details.
3. What Do I Do If I Don't Have Time to Manage All of This?
You are right not to have time. Someone running an independent hotel cannot add a full database on top of everything else they are already managing.
The starting point is not a system. It is a note on the phone, with 10 or 15 names, 15 minutes at the end of the season. Scaling this beyond those 10 or 15 names does require automation, not as a luxury, but because it is the only realistic way to do this for hundreds of guests without taking up the time you don't have.
Final Thoughts on Guest Loyalty
Saving three pieces of data and writing to 10 or 15 guests at the end of the season takes less than an hour. That is all that separates a hotel from turning its best guests into repeated direct bookings, rather than losing them again to an OTA.
In the full guide you have the rest of the system: how to keep those 5-star reviews coming in, how to make the stay memorable before the guest even arrives, and how to turn that into content that attracts more guests just like them.
[Download the free guide "From check-out to the next check-in"]
