From First Stay to Welcome Back
The psychology and practice of hotel loyalty
Consider return-stay opportunities, remembered preferences, direct-booking value, seasonal relevance, and the practical economics of repeat guests at independent hotels and inns.
Building a stronger reason to return
Consider return-stay opportunities, remembered preferences, direct-booking value, seasonal relevance, and the practical economics of repeat guests at independent hotels and inns.
Make welcome back more than a friendly phrase. The book works through decisions about the customer experience, communications, operations and program measurement rather than prescribing a single reward formula.
Examples are illustrative unless they are expressly presented in the manuscript as documented client cases; reported research does not guarantee an outcome for any business.
- Second-stay opportunities
- Guest experience and recognition
- Direct booking considerations
- Seasonal return timing
Written for operators and marketers who want usable retention approaches.
From the introduction
By eleven on Sunday morning, the lobby at Juniper House had become quiet. The last departing couple had returned their keys, complimented the breakfast, and promised to visit again. Elena, the inn's general manager, watched their car disappear beyond the garden. Upstairs, housekeeping was preparing the room for someone new. Downstairs, the relationship with the people who had just left was much less clearly assigned.
Their reservation would remain in the property system. Their bill had been settled. Someone might send a newsletter next month. Yet no one had considered what would make a second visit possible, what the couple would remember, or how the inn could remain useful until another trip began to take shape. The stay had a complete operating procedure. The period after it did not.
This book begins in that quiet interval. Independent hotels and inns invest considerable effort in attracting guests and caring for them on property. Retention connects that work to a future decision. It asks how the experience, the invitation, the benefit, and the timing can make choosing the property again feel natural.
Inside the book
The complete edition includes an introduction, 13 chapters and sources for further reading.
- The reason to return
- A stay worth remembering
- Give the first stay a future
- Why progress feels different
- Design a promise you can keep
- The value of an additional stay
- Recognition without assumptions
- Stay relevant between stays
- More reasons to choose the property
- When a familiar guest goes quiet
- Make the welcome survive the handoff
- Know what the program changed
- The next welcome
Research sources discussed in this book
These are examples from the publication's own source list. Their findings inform the discussion but do not establish a guaranteed retention or revenue result.
- Daniel Kahneman, Barbara L. Fredrickson, Charles A. Schreiber, and Donald A. Redelmeier (1993). When More Pain Is Preferred to Less: Adding a Better End.
- Ran Kivetz, Oleg Urminsky, and Yuhuang Zheng (2006). The Goal-Gradient Hypothesis Resurrected: Purchase Acceleration, Illusionary Goal Progress, and Customer Retention.
- Joseph C. Nunes and Xavier Drèze (2006). The Endowed Progress Effect: How Artificial Advancement Increases Effort.
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