Windows of opportunity - optimizing receptiveness in a scattered guest journey

A full year of dipping in and out of lockdown measures has passed and travelers have grown accustomed to waiting, wondering and staying put. For many of them, the idea of a holiday now seems like a distant, joyful memory.

For travel enthusiasts, a fixation on leaving the country is becoming harder and harder to avoid. Reminiscing about past trips summons back feelings of freedom and excitement that seem like the perfect remedies to locked down life. But are these remembered feelings attached exclusively to the trip itself? Or does the positive experience of the trip actually begin long before the plane takes off?

Interestingly, a Cornell University study by Kumar, Killingsworth and Gilovich demonstrated that, along with the physical experience of travel, anticipating a trip also has a significant impact on mood. The results of four combined studies in this report suggested that "waiting for an experience tends to be more pleasurable and exciting than waiting to receive a material good."

It's common knowledge that a large part of the travel experience happens before the trip even begins. Aside from the extensive research, planning and booking that goes into preparing for a trip in the active anticipation stage, a good deal of people book their trips several weeks to months in advance, adding a considerable period of passive anticipation into the mix. In light of this, the results of this study would suggest two things:

• Planning a trip can benefit mental health in extended high-stress periods like this one.
• Traveler mood is positively affected throughout the pre-arrival (or anticipation) stages of a trip.

In this article, we'll explore these findings in greater detail, examining how we can look to emotional states to plan for the paths of hotel and guest to cross at favorable times. We'll do this by looking into key trip planning activities and how they are distributed along the chronological guest journey.

In this tense period for the hospitality industry, every little bit of revenue counts – but every impression a hotel makes on their guests does too. Using this approach, we hope to popularise the idea that going with the grain instead of against it is possible for hotels – it’s all just a matter of timing.

The scattered guest journey

Before we delve into specific stages, it might be useful to consider how perspectives are shifting in the travel industry. In The Visitor Cycle , a report by The Digital Tourism Think Tank, Nick Hall and Michela Gusso challenge the idea of a linear customer journey for travelers, outlining three major shifts in the digital tourism landscape:

• The traditional visitor cycle has been disrupted, shifting from a linear model to a scattered one.
• Travel consumers are more connected and empowered than ever before.
• New technology and data are changing the status quo, giving hospitality professionals new ways to approach old problems.

According to Hall and Gusso: "The online space today is one of a scattered web, a mesh of more than 400 different touchpoints for a visitor before they actually take a decision to travel."

While Hall and Gusso's report focuses on transforming strategies for destination marketing organizations, similar thinking can be applied on a more targeted level to hospitality. When referencing the journey of hotel guests, a linear model will have been commonly referenced as recently as a few years ago, while the scattered model is, especially due to Covid-related technological advances, certainly the more appropriate model now.

Travel micro-moments

Think with Google , the tech giant's data insight arm, further defines the scattered guest journey with travel micro-moments , which they describe as moments 'when people turn to a device with intent to answer an immediate need.' These micro-moments have been isolated as key decision-making points for travelers.

They outline them as follows:

• Inspiration, or I-want-to-get-away moments, when the traveler is dreaming of their holiday and exploring without firm plans.
• Planning, or Time-to-make-a-plan moments, when the traveler is looking for the right dates, the right flight, the right place to stay and any extra activities or services.
• Booking, or Let's-book-it-moments, when research is done, the traveler is satisfied with the information gathered and ready to book rooms, travel and extras.
• Experiencing, or Can't-wait-to-explore moments, when the traveler has arrived and is ready to experience the trip and share it with others.

In line with a scattered guest journey, this thinking asserts that the first three of these moments can take place at any chronological stage of the guest journey. According to Think with Google, ‘Travel micro-moments start when people begin dreaming of a trip and they continue all the way through the long-awaited trip itself’.

Old and new perspectives on the guest journey

In the diagrams below, you'll find depictions of a linear guest journey and a scattered guest journey.

In each you can see how travel micro-moments (orange icons) are distributed along the chronological guest journey. While the linear model plots micro-moments in the traditional order, the scattered model allows micro-moments (besides Experiencing) to occur across the journey and more than once.

The absence of any micro-moments in the passive anticipation stage is important to note in this linear model.

Think with Google's report goes on to offer a straightforward strategy to harness the power of micro-moments, comprising of the following pieces of advice:

• Be there. Be in the right place at the right time
• Be useful. Understand what value you can contribute to the guest

In summary, Think with Google asserts that hotels must learn to identify points in the guest journey to generate revenue and ensure their efforts are relevant to guest needs, either by connecting them to the inspiration they're looking for or by giving them the answers they want.

In Hall and Gusso's report, they establish the core challenge that the hospitality industry faces in this increasingly digital era: "How do we have a relevant voice when there's so many places we can be? (...) We can't be everything and we can't be everywhere, so we need to figure out how to engage with the right people in the right place at the right time."

Taking the scattered guest journey into account, how can we pick the right moment to connect with our guests? In addition to Hall and Gusso's three observed shifts in the digital tourism landscape and Think with Google's strategy for harnessing travel micro-moments, we believe there are two more pieces to this puzzle.

• The hot and cold cognition hypothesis on motivated reasoning
• A qualitative analysis of the chronological trip stages and their associated stress levels and emotions

Let's continue!

The impact of hot and cold cognition on guest receptiveness

Hot and cold cognition refers to the hypothesis that a person’s thinking will be influenced by their emotional state, implying that external stressors and environmental factors have a causal relationship to low-quality, emotion-led decision-making. Hot cognition is thinking that may be biased or led astray by emotions, while cold cognition is thinking that operates independently from emotions.

From personal experience alone, most will recognize that the medium to high stress periods of the chronological guest journey are mostly associated with the presence of more external stressors, such as finances, airports and navigation. Don't take our word for it though, read on for more insight into stress levels for travelers along the chronological guest journey.

Emotional influence along the guest journey

While research suggests that travelers have lifted spirits throughout most, if not all, chronological stages of their trip, this doesn't tell us much about stress levels present throughout the journey. In order to understand how the concept of hot and cold cognition factors into the travel experience, let's first consider where windows of low stress fall throughout the chronological guest journey.

Another study in Tourism Analysis by Crotts and Zehrer shows that although looking forward to a trip may be a mood-booster, the active part of the anticipation stage, including planning and booking, can actually rank higher than transit for stress levels.

Taking the results of this study and known truths about travel-related stress into consideration, we'd argue that the entire trip experience can be split into the following stress level groups.

The diagram above highlights two key opportunities for professionals in the hospitality industry.. For those seeking to generate revenue as efficiently as possible, a focus on creating and/or optimising guest touchpoints in the passive anticipation and stay periods should be a priority.

At the end of this article, we'll explain how to combine these windows of opportunity with Think with Google's micro-moment strategy and apply them to the scattered model for guest journeys.

Key periods in the chronological guest journey

In the new scattered approach to building a trip experience, there is one particularly key, guest-driven change. travelers are engaging with inspiration, planning and booking micro-moments during the waiting stage and throughout their stay, instead of only up until the booking stage.

Taking what we know about hot and cold cognition and stress levels across the guest journey into consideration, let's dig deeper into two windows of opportunity for accessing guests in moments of calm, contentedness and cold cognition.

Whether motivated by a need to generate incremental revenue, or simply to enhance the guest experience, the passive anticipation and stay stages of the chronological guest journey represent vital, largely untapped opportunities for hoteliers.

Passive anticipation stage

The passive anticipation stage follows the active anticipation stage, where guests are consumed by research, planning and booking. Once the stay and travel have been booked, our traveler breathes a sigh of relief and goes about their day with a smile on their face.

The brunt of the work has been done and there’s nothing left to do but look forward to their trip. While the guest is now at ease, the passive anticipation stage is far from idle time for hoteliers. In the scattered guest journey of the modern, connected traveler, the passive anticipation stage holds a wealth of opportunity for hoteliers.

Due to a lack of relevant technology, the passive anticipation stage has not traditionally been given much attention by hospitality.

Many approaches to hospitality give utmost effort to influencing the guest at the planning and booking stages yet see a pause in activity between booking and arrival. But are our guests shelving their thoughts about their trips in the passive anticipation stage? Not at all.

In fact, the mood-boosting effects of looking forward to a trip suggest that, especially in a time deprived of regular travel, the passive anticipation stage is one of the periods where the guest is most receptive to suggestions to improve their trip. Rising anticipation and low stress circumstances; paired with the time and space to mull decisions over, conduct research and consult family; result in optimal conditions for selling.

Stay stage

This stage barely needs an explanation, as for many, the very purpose of taking a holiday is to de-stress. Guests that have fully detached themselves from work and surrendered to the bliss of a holiday are unlikely to be plagued by external stressors that affect their receptiveness and ability to make decisions.

In terms of guests' willingness to spend money at this stage, we might all recognize the fact that money flows more freely when on holiday. In fact, some of us are even embracing it, with 33% of millennials planning a spending budget of $5000+ for during their vacations.

Putting spending habits aside, the most important advantage to the scattered guest journey is the ability to access guests when they are in a state of cold cognition. When hotels seamlessly meet guest needs, any associated revenue generation becomes invisible. In a business built on putting guest’s needs first, selling should be transparent, frictionless and complementary to the overall trip experience.

Making the scattered guest journey work in your hotel's favour

At Oaky , we specialise in upselling, a famously tricky practice to pull off well. Our digital upselling platform takes inspiration from the cream of the front desk crop – those talented individuals that read the room while tactfully assessing a given guest's needs.

These members of staff are all the more impressive because they're operating at a considerable disadvantage.

They're upselling to guests at check-in, a suboptimal time for guest receptiveness. While spirits are likely to be high, the guest is nonetheless tired from their journey and anxious to gain access to their room.

In line with the scattered guest journey, Oaky upselling technology was originally developed to offer pre-arrival upselling to guests during the passive anticipation stage – to fill in the gap of communication between guest and hotel and to access the aforementioned optimal conditions for selling.

Our technology has since expanded its horizons to include in-stay upselling, which is another way to access guests during a period of cold cognition.

Guests' needs don't stop at check-in and upselling is a way to meet these needs quickly and efficiently while generating much-needed incremental revenue. And why not? Your guests are not only in a good mood, but they're at ease and ready to consume.

When guests are in their contented "holiday mode" state, the words "Come on, you’re on holiday!" never ring more true.

The power of repeated exposure

According to the advertising industry's rule of three , consumers need to be shown a product or service three times before they actively consider purchase.

In terms of upselling to hotel guests, this idea of repetition also has merit. If a guest is shown an offer for a buffet breakfast pre-arrival and doesn't book, they are primed to book upon check-in as they've had time to passively mull it over.

If the offer is still not taken at check-in, it will be available once more via in-stay upselling touchpoints. As long as the offer remains on the table without being intrusive, the guest is free to opt in whenever they are ready.

Optimizing guest receptiveness at your hotel

No matter how digitally connected guests are and how iterative their inspiration, planning and booking experiences may be, guests will always have to follow a baseline sequence of booking, waiting, traveling, arriving and finally enjoying their trip.

The guest journey will look different from one guest to another, but for the majority of travelers, one thing will remain constant. There will be a period between booking and arrival when their excitement and lifted spirits do not wane, but activity on the hospitality side drops dramatically.

According to the principles of hot and cold cognition, guests will not only be more receptive to adding to their pre-existing booking at times when stress levels are low, but they will also be more likely to make value-based decisions independent of their emotional state.

The responsibility of the hotel is then to offer additional experiences and services to their guests that offer true value, be this through personalization , convenience or competitive pricing .

In addition to low stress levels, the other key elements to optimal receptiveness are time and resources to research alternatives. While the passive anticipation stage has always offered these luxuries, advancements in mobile technology have bestowed the stay stage with just as much access to guests' preferred sources for research.

Consumer trends show that in 2021 people plan to spend more during their trips and particularly on personalized experiences. In the extended absence of travel, developing a plan for your hotel to access these windows of opportunity would be a more than worthwhile project.

By working with periods of low stress, your hotel can shepherd guests through their journeys and create a frictionless ecosystem for meeting their needs. You’ll both be happier for it!