This document discusses how to design an effective digital guest experience strategy. It recommends researching guest behaviors and needs through various methods like surveys, analytics, and social listening. The next steps are to create user personas and map out typical guest journeys. Finally, identify opportunities to enhance each touchpoint in the guest journey using appropriate digital tools like content marketing, personalized experiences, mobile interactions, and A/B testing. The overall message is that hotels should understand guest pain points and develop a holistic strategy to deliver value at each stage, rather than just creating a mobile app in isolation.

1. Digital guest experience
How UX can make or break you

2. Agenda
1 Keep swimming!
2 Does this hurt?
3 You don’t need an app!

3. 1 Keep swimming

4. Prof Noriaki Kano

5. Kano model axes

6. Kano model overview

7. Kano model Basic expectations

8. Basic expectations

9. Kano model Performance payoff

10. Performance payoff
…
…

11. Kano model Excitement
generators

12. Surprise!

13. Nokia = great design style

14. Innocent juice = humour

15. Hay-Adams panda = quirk

16. Story time

17. Excitement generators = delight moments

18. Meet Joshie

19. Binder with holiday
memories

20. Huffington Post writer

21. Social sharing

22. Story time

23. Gaylord Opryland

24. Tweets

25. Clock radio in room

26. Happy guest

27. Of course she’s a blogger

28. But…

29. Fish swimming upstream

30. Kano model overview

31. Example
Free Wifi

32. 1 Keep swimming – take aways
Basic expectations = hygiene factors. Perform poorly
on these and you suffer.
Performance payoffs = standard factors. The more you
do, the more guests appreciate it.
Excitement generators = wow factors. This is what will
make you memorable.
Over time, all factors deteriorate as they become
commonplace. You have to keep raising the bar.

33. 2 Does this hurt?

34. Emotional journey

35. Booking

36. Story time

37. Contact form with 11
fields

38. Contact form with 4 fields

39. +150% conversion rate
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
Original form Reduced form

40. Story time

41. The $300m button

42. Story time

43. Expedia

44. The $12m form field
Name*
Company
Address*
City*
Country*
Card number*
Name on card*
John Doe
Citibank Singapore
8 Marina View Tower 1
Singapore

45. The $12m form field - article

46. Checkin queue

47. Why do I have to fill out a paper form?

48. Why is my credit card not my room key?

49. Why is my phone not my room key?

50. Arrived knackered

51. Just let me get dinner and set
my wake-up call

52. Where’s the iron?

53. Check-out queue

54. Minibar

55. Waiting for the minibar review

56. 2 Does this hurt? – take aways
Understand the emotional journey of your guests
Map emotional highs and lows
Improve the lows
Times of stress and discontent are the perfect
opportunity to generate excitement

57. 3 You don’t need an app!

58. Everyone needs an app, no?

59. Accor app

60. App ratings

61. Roosevelt app

62. Roosevelt ratings

63. “A mobile app”
may be the answer.
But first you need to find out
what the question is

64. You need a digital experience strategy

65. But how do we go about creating one?
Image credits: cavstheblog.com

66. 3 Steps to a digital engagement strategy
1 Research
2 Personas and storyboards
3 Find digital solutions to improve each
touchpoint

67. Step 1: Research

68. You could ask guests what they want

69. Henry Ford
Image credits: Joe Shlabotnik (Flickr)

70. Faster horse
Image credits: andy101 (Worth1000)

71. People’s imagination is bound what they
already know

72. Or they may ask for something that’s
impossible
Image credits: Jeff Gothelf

73. Yes we do ask people, but we don’t ask them
what they want, we find out what their emotional
journey is
Image credits: GfK Group

74. We observe them
Image credits: OakleyOriginals (Flickr)

75. We track analytics

76. We listen to social media conversations

77. CMSs
provide
tracking
Behavioural tracking

78. Behavioural data is always preferable to
attitudinal data

79. Step 2: Personas and storyboards

80. Use insights for storyboarding

81. Step 3: Find digital solutions to each
touchpoint
Image credits: Kalsau (Flickr)

82. Content marketing:
Give them something to share

83. Online booking and tracking:
Make it easy for them

84. Personalisation:
You know them well. Use it.

85. Community management:
Show them you care

86. A/B testing:
Refine your content, messaging and design

87. Mobile interactions:
Give them what they need, when they need it

88. 3 You don’t need an app! – take aways
Plan a digital strategy
Do your research
Set up conversion goals in Google Analytics
Map the user journey
Find out what digital tools can improve the experience
at each touchpoint
A/B test your content, messaging and design

89. Tom Voirol
tom@readingroom.com
http://linkedin.com/in/voirol
@voirol