In our blog posts designed to help modern hoteliers increase the effectiveness of their hotel’s offering, we frequently mention two guiding principles to ensure success across the entire hospitality industry:
- Get to know your guests in as granular detail as possible
- There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution for guests
Understanding guest types helps you create more personalized, meaningful stays, and makes your marketing and operations more effective. So, what does that actually look like in practice.
Recognising different guest types
If you know who your guests are and what drives them then it is easier to meet their expectations and find improved ways of attracting your target audience. A hotel predicated on luxury is probably not so interested in backpackers, and digital nomads will likely be looking for high speed connections that retirees might find less crucial to their stay. This is why it’s useful to examine guests as types or even as personas which are representative of a target group.
Personas help you paint a vivid picture: What does this guest typically want? How do they behave? What motivates them? While no two Gen Z travellers or business guests are identical, there are patterns. The more you understand those, the better you can serve them.
From insight to action: How to create guest personas
Understanding your guests isn’t guesswork, it’s strategy. And with today’s tech solutions, building guest personas is more straightforward than ever. Using a modern Property Management System alongside apps such as SabeeApp’s GuestAdvisor, you can turn data into actionable insights. Here’s a step-by-step guide to creating guest personas that improve both guest satisfaction and your bottom line.
Step 1: Gather the data
Before you define who your guests are, you need to dig into what they do and say. Effective personas are built on solid, multi-source data.
- Internal Data: Collect information from your PMS, plus guest surveys. GuestAdvisor is a useful tool for this as it offers an automatic survey that the hotelier can send out which collects feedback.
- External Data: Look beyond your system. Social media metrics, website behavior analytics, OTA reviews, and booking engine data all provide critical signals. What pages do people visit? What offers attract the most clicks?
- Qualitative Data: Evaluate and incorporate feedback from guest reviews, staff observations, and questionnaires to understand the motivations of guests, and their pain points.
Step 2: Identify key attributes
Once you’ve gathered your data, it’s time to analyse and organise it into patterns that help define clear guest segments. You're looking for both surface-level traits and deeper behavioral and motivational indicators.
- Demographics: Age, gender, nationality, travel group (solo, couple, family, etc.)
- Booking Behavior: Preferred booking channels, average length of stay
- Psychographics: Interests, lifestyle habits, reasons for travel (business, relaxation, culture, events, etc.)
- Pain Points: What causes frustration during their stay or booking experience? Where do they struggle or disengage when booking, or during their stay.
Step 3: Develop guest personas
Now it’s time to transform your insights into guest personas:
- Give each persona a name and a backstory.
- Map their guest journey: What’s their motivation to book? What channels do they use to find you? What other services do they want?
- Refine your messaging: Consider how each persona might interact with your hotel and what kind of messaging would resonate best with them.
Step 4: Utilise the personas
Now that you’ve created your personas, put them to use across all areas of your operation. This is where the real value starts to show.
- Marketing & Sales: Personalise your email campaigns, tailor website content, and create targeted social media ads that speak directly to each persona’s preferences and values. Highlight different packages or services depending on who you're trying to reach.
- Operations & Guest experience: Adapt services and amenities to align with persona-specific needs. That could mean offering late checkout for digital nomads, or kids' entertainment options for families.
- Staff training: Equip your team to recognise and cater to different guest types. When personas are embedded into your training, your staff can respond more intuitively and personally.
- Automation with a personal touch: Tools like GuestAdvisor allow you to automate messaging that still feels customised. For example, you can include information of sightseeing attractions and local happenings.
Hotel guest types and what's important for them
- Families: What does a ‘typical’ family look like and what do they need from their stay? They'll likely want a relaxed atmosphere with plenty of opportunities to burn energy, so sporting and exercise facilities will be high priorities. Food options are probably unfussy and set meals or buffet service will be appreciated - families tend not to turn their stays into gastronomic adventures! Pricing is often crucial in determining the choice of hotel, so deals and special discounts for children can play a significant part in attracting bookings. And don’t forget about couples - they often travel to celebrate special anniversaries or their honeymoon, and they look for places to enjoy a perfect and relaxing time together.
- Bleisure: Business and Leisure travellers want good work and meeting spaces, and excellent internet and wifi connections. Any meeting rooms used must be properly equipped, and scheduled snack and beverage breaks are appreciated. Good health and fitness facilities are also a big draw. Frequent Business and Leisure travellers are often loyal to a particular hotel or chain, and once they have established a connection tend to keep with it, so loyalty programs are appreciated.
- Event attendees: An event can be anything from a business conference, through to one-off programs such as health and fitness weekends or art courses, the scale of which depends on the size and facilities offered by the hotel. Generally speaking, attendees are not there primarily because of the hotel, but because of the event. As individuals they are therefore looking for a good flow of services within the hotel - such as at mealtimes, and at check in and check out, which allow full and undistracted engagement with their conference or event.
- Health and Wellness: This type of guest is related to conferences and events where their purpose in coming to a hotel is focussed on a particular activity happening there, be it a yoga weekend, dance classes or other physical activities. As with events and conferences in general, health and wellness meetings tend to be organised by outside agencies or companies that then market to their clients, therefore the focus of the hotel will usually be on the agencies, rather than necessarily the end users. Understanding the needs of organisers for great processes and good pricing policies are key to success for these types of activity.
- Digital nomads & Slow travellers: Digital Nomads have become ‘a thing’ in recent years as many people find they can work from anywhere that has good internet connection to the rest of the world. Estimates suggest that there are now between 45 to 80 million Digital Nomads worldwide. The guest type of Digital Nomads has now expanded to include other ‘Slow Travellers’ who have the time and inclination to explore the world at their own speed, and who once they find a suitable hotel are happy to settle there for a while. Many of these guests are solo travellers, looking for relaxed environments, often with communal workspaces, and always-available food and beverages.
The types of hotel guests are many and varied. Some will exactly fit the persona profile of what your hotel can offer, others not so much. By creating as clear a picture as possible of the personas of the guests you wish to target, your hotel can more accurately attract them and fulfil their needs.
Personalisation, not just profiling
This isn’t about labeling your guests, it’s about understanding them. By following these steps, you will be able to identify which types of guests usually book your place and create your own personas. By leveraging platforms like SabeeApp’s PMS and GuestAdvisor, you’re not just collecting data, you’re making it actionable. And when your entire operation is aligned around who your guests are and what they want, guest satisfaction rises, loyalty deepens, and your brand value grows.