Hotels and travel businesses often experience a bit of volatility throughout the year. There are busy seasons and seasons where business is pretty light, making it difficult to keep a consistent income. This can be alleviated by turning more one-off vacationers into loyal, repeat customers. These customers are more likely to seek out a specific hotel or travel business in the off-season.

Not only that, but it is also far more efficient to retain customers than to acquire new ones. In fact, it is 5-25x more expensive to acquire new customers than it is to keep existing ones. This is why it is so important that business owners learn strategies to increase repeat customers.

To provide the best possible outcomes for hotels and other travel businesses, we suggest the following strategies:

• Prioritize the guest experience
• Offer rewards programs
• Build an email list
• Send abandoned cart emails
• Provide and act on customer surveys
• Offer consumer financing throughout the purchase process

Let’s dive into each strategy, and how to implement the most effective one.

Prioritize the Guest Experience

This one seems obvious, but many travel businesses focus more on their sales process than on their guest experience. This doesn’t just include the quality of the hotel, vehicle, or other accommodation. There are many ways to prioritize the guest experience outside of that, and they include:

• Prompt and friendly customer service.
• Convenient “extras” like quality toiletries, complimentary meals, snacks, or drinks.
• Concierge service from somebody local that can recommend fun activities or good restaurants in the area.

Little things like that make a much larger impression on consumers than one might think, and they are what sets a business apart as one that they would want to come back to. By providing services like these, travel businesses can demonstrate a level of value that may make an off-season return trip more attractive.

Offer Rewards Programs

Another common strategy for encouraging one-time consumers to return is to offer incentives for them to do so. Rewards programs are a great way to do this. Businesses can simply offer a discount, complimentary room upgrade, or another form of reward to give consumers a reason to choose them over their competition. If used in tandem with the previous step, consumers will have plenty of reasons to repeat their positive experience at a lower price than competitors.

Build an Email List

Email marketing is a powerful tool, and any sales-driven business should create a list that includes the contact information of their previous customers. This list can then alert previous customers of promotions, deals, and other marketing materials. These emails will keep the business in their consumers’ minds for the next time they decide to travel.

Send Abandoned Cart Emails

Another way to use email to increase repeat customers is by sending emails to travelers that abandon their cart. These give a gentle reminder to consumers that were interested enough to “build their trip” in the cart but had something keep or distract them from pulling the trigger. This strategy can not only help increase repeat business but also help land first-time customers that may be on the fence.

Provide and Act on Customer Surveys

It is vital that businesses allow their customers to voice their pleasure or displeasure with their service, but it isn’t sufficient on its own. Business owners should send surveys to their clients after their trip and take actionable steps to improve based on the feedback they get.

This can look like:

• Implementing employee training with previous customer concerns.
• Reaching out to those who had negative experiences with offers to remediate the issue.
• Consider investing in issues that come up frequently on surveys.

Offer Consumer Financing Throughout the Purchase Process

The single most effective way to increase repeat customers, individual sales, and average cart size is to offer quality consumer financing. The best option for most consumers, and the fastest-growing financing product of the past few years, is a buy now, pay later (BNPL) payment plan. In fact, companies that offer some form of BNPL see an average 20-30% increase in conversion and a 30-50% increase in average ticket size.

Not only should these options be offered at checkout, but websites that offer them should advertise them throughout the customer journey. This way, it is more likely that consumers will adapt their purchases to their increased buying power. It is harder for them to do this if they aren’t aware of it until they check out.

For business owners looking to offer financing to their consumers, Skeps may be the best option.

Increase Repeat Customers With Skeps

Skeps offers a comprehensive, end-to-end consumer financing program that helps businesses modernize their entire payment process. We go above and beyond one-click payment, also offering a one-click application process for several different types of consumer financing, including:

• BNPL
• Store credit cards
• Consumer loans and leases

If you want to partner with a forward-thinking fintech company that will keep consumers' eyes on the purchase while offering best-in-class financing, Skeps is the perfect fit.