Hit the ground running in 2021 with hospitality software to support your business operations, improve guest experience, drive revenue, and set you on a path to success.
New year, new possibilities. The beginning of a new year is always exciting, but 2021 has an especially jubilant feeling to it. Last year was a struggle for the spa, wellness and hospitality sectors, and we’re all so ready to leave it behind. While we realize that the COVID-19 pandemic is not over, we have had time to rethink, reimagine, and restructure. We’ve come up with innovative and creative ideas for keeping our businesses alive and our customers happy, many with the luxury experiences to which they’ve become accustomed.
And now we want to hit the ground running.
Whether you’re an enterprise company with several resorts or hotels, a boutique operation, or an independent, you could probably use some help. Software can help with that. The right spa management software will deliver what you need to improve guest experience, drive revenue, and set you and your business on a clear path to success.
Here are 4 ways hospitality software can help you hit the ground running in 2021.
Save time on intelligence and reporting
Deep insight into your operations, finances, and KPIs is an imperative part of making smart decisions, and making smart decisions is very important right now (and always). But tracking all this yourself takes time, leaves a lot of room for errors, and is generally tedious. Software can save the day.
A real-time intelligence dashboard makes it easy to centrally report on operational efficiency and sales performance, even across multiple locations. Software can help you easily analyze customer buying trends, preferences, retail purchases, and demographics, and appointment booking software integrates with real-time sales reporting to provide insight into location performance (if you have multiple locations), top sellers, technician productivity, and utilization. Software can automatically calculate employee payroll based on commissions earned, clock time, and track attendance. And revenue forecasting can even predict revenues from advance bookings, referral sources, gift card and membership sales, and marketing initiatives – an invaluable capability when all of this is so seemingly uncertain. When reporting is easy, time is freed up to focus on things that won’t take care of themselves
Clean up your inventory & ramp up retail
As the industry recovers, retail sales are going to play a big role. Retail can do a lot to shore up revenue you may be missing from lower occupancy in your spa, but for that to work, you need great inventory management. Can you afford to run out of popular products right now or to order too much of something that isn’t going to sell? Probably not.
Spa software allows you to manage inventory for all of your locations in one secure spot. Track purchase order progress, automatically update on-hand counts, easily record products received, track inter-company transfers, and view balances for all of your locations in one central place. Software can also maintain vendor records, and improve staff productivity by preparing reusable purchase order templates, allowing you to automatically restock retail products. All you have to do is communicate to your customers that they will love your products as much as you do.
Create lasting relationships
You need to build lasting relationships and turn new customers into returning ones. This will be the difference between success and failure in 2021. According to Outbound Engine:
- Acquiring a new customer can cost 5X more than retaining an existing one
- Increasing customer retention by 5% can increase profits from 25-95%
- The success rate of selling to an existing customer is 60-70%, compared with a 5-20% success rate of selling to a new one.
Creating the ultimate guest experience will help build those connections. Loyalty and membership programs keep people coming back and referral incentives drive them to tell their friends. Your spa management software system can centrally track and allow guests to redeem loyalty points, or apply them at checkout, while automatic updates to customer accounts keeps guests informed about their points in real time. Software can also help you manage guest profiles, purchases, and customer activity, and provide automatic alerts that help staff remember important guest information. Central guest profiling and therapist notes provide quick access to insights gathered through various points of contact, including purchase history and preferences across locations, making it easy to personalize guest experience and improve retention.
Integrate your retail sales into your guest experience, loyalty programs, memberships, and promotions to increase revenue and create a holistic business model.
Meet your guests’ changing needs
Your customer’s needs have changed. They don’t have the same comfort levels they once did or the same desire for human interaction. But they do want wellness and support, and to feel that they are caring for themselves and being cared for. There are many ways software can support this. Online and mobile booking, contactless payments, and touchless experiences like mobile check in and check out are clearly the top functionalities here. And let’s not forget your intake forms, which should be filled out virtually to avoid having people hanging around in a waiting room and sharing touchpoints. Software also helps you communicate safety protocols to your guests and gather feedback through NPS surveys. Now, more than ever, you have to gather feedback and show you care what your guests think. Few things will be more important than listening and being receptive to customers’ needs.
We’re optimistic about 2021 and we can’t hide it. The wellness and hospitality industries have a lot of work ahead and you can’t do it alone. Nor should you.
It’s time to look into our crystal balls and predict the future for the year ahead. Subscribe to our newsletter and download our special report on the trends we’ll be watching: Nine spa and wellness trends for 2021. Download here.
Spa Executive is published by Book4Time, the leader in guest management, revenue and mobile solutions for the most exclusive spas, hotels, and resorts around the globe. Learn more at book4time.com.