Introduction
A hotel guest’s stay should be personalized, convenient, and timely in all respects. Guests should have the ability to receive relevant messaging at the right time, fulfill simple needs without having to contact the hotel front desk, and know that they were heard, but not seen.
A significant number of hotel apps either accomplish this or fail at delivering this kind of balance.
The hotel guest experience application must help the property to provide relevant recommendations, superior service, and greater loyalty; however, personalization will only work when the guest has confidence in the application. If an application appears to be intrusive (too much information), ambiguous (not clear about its purpose), or intimidating (pushing the guest to do something), it may create a negative experience for the guest, even though the features themselves may be well-designed.
Appricotsoft believes that software should put the needs of the guest first and should enhance the guest’s experience through practical, useful, and straightforward solutions for both the guest and the staff. This client-centered, quality-oriented approach is how we operate and how we create superior hospitality products.
In this article, we will discuss what features make hotel guest experience applications successful at enhancing guest satisfaction; how personalization should function; and how to design consent and transparency in the user experience that builds instead of undermining trust. The information will be pertinent to the practicality-based pragmatism that Appricotsoft provides to founders and hotel decision makers: expert information delivered in a business-oriented manner.
The Importance of Personalization in Hotel Apps
The hospitality industry is all about relationships, and has always been that way. Long before mobile applications came along, great hotels operated under the principle of being personal and remembering room preferences and recognizing repeat guests, adjusting their service to meet the timing of the guest, and anticipating needs before a complaint was ever made.
So, simply put, when we build a hotel app, we take that same hotel where they have been providing that level of service and provide an added, scalable digital layer that adds more convenience to the guest.
When used properly, personalization provides several key benefits to the guest experience, including:
- Reducing friction during the stay;
- Increasing the relevance of the recommendations made to the guest;
- Helping the guest find services that meet their needs;
- Reducing the pressure on hotel staff to handle basic requests by having the guest make those requests through the app; and
- Creating a seamless experience throughout the entire guest experience, including pre-arrival, during the stay, and post-stay.
The keyword in the above list is “properly”.
Not every personalization idea will be beneficial to the guest experience. Hotels do not need to collect as much as they can. In fact, privacy by design best practices state that product teams should have a clear understanding of their personal data needs at the beginning of the concept phase and may design their product to protect personal information at all phases of the product life cycle.
For leaders of hospitality, the best practice is as follows:
Collect less, explain more, and only personalize if it clearly provides a better experience for a guest.
Data Sources for the Best Personalization
When you have a guest experience app for hotels, the most effective forms of personalization typically come from three common sources:
1. Reservation Data
The most useful source of marketing will always be reservation data because it already represents how a guest will behave overall at the time of their arrival. Here are just some of the things we can learn from a guest’s reservation data:
- check-in and check-out times
- room type booked
- How many guests are with them
- how the reservation was made (website, OTA)
- the type of package or rate they booked
- business vs leisure
- What property are they going to
- If they have loyalty or are a repeat guest
By using reservation data, hotels can provide relevant services to the guest, as opposed to having to guess what service a guest may want when they arrive at the property.
Examples of how using reservation data to provide personalization to guests include:
- Guests who are arriving late can receive info on how to do a simplified check-in and what restaurants are open to get dinner.
- Families who are traveling together will receive info on the location of child-friendly amenities or when breakfast will be served.
- Business travelers can find out about high-speed internet access, how to get their invoice, and how to do an express checkout.
- Repeat guests can have a smoother and more familiar experience, instead of having to learn everything about the hotel every time.
Providing a guest with personalizations based on reservation data is helpful to both parties because it is already an operationally sound way of servicing a guest’s expectations.
2. Preference-based/customization
Preference-based customization is more secure and trustworthy than inferred customization since the guest actively provides the signal.
Some examples of types of preference are as follows:
- Preference for the type of pillow
- Timing of housekeeping
- The temperature in the room
- Preferred language
- Accessibility requirements
- Dietary requirements
- Interest in spa, dining, transportation, or upgrades
- Preferred method of communicating (email versus push notification)
When a guest directly communicates with you, it should be apparent to both sides that they have provided their preferences so that you can provide them with the best customer service possible (for example, “by telling us this, you are giving us the information we need to make your stay at our hotel as enjoyable as possible.”)
There should be transparency in this value exchange.
3. Behavioral Data
Behavioral data can also enhance the customer experience; however, it does require substantial additional care.
Some examples of behavioral data include:
- Which services have the guest browsed/seen
- Which offers has the guest passed on
- What time the guest has opened the application
- The manner in which the guest has utilized the application (chat, room service, mobile key, local recommendations)
- If the guest completed the spa or dining reservations
Behavioral data can be used to develop menus, provide useful shortcuts, and increase the bookings of hotel services. The downside is that many applications will cross the line into over-aggressive behavioral profiling, creating the perception in the mind of the guest that every time they tap an application, they are being monitored.
Features That Enhance Guest Experience
When creating a digital concierge or hotel guest application, it’s most effective to focus on a few features to improve the guest experience meaningfully.
Such as:
1. Providing a Personalized Pre-Arrival Experience
The pre-arrival stage tends to be the greatest opportunity to improve guest satisfaction because it alleviates guests’ uncertainty before they arrive at your hotel.
These can be achieved through useful features such as:
- Check-In Preparation
- Transfer/Parking Details
- Room Readiness Updates
- Early Check-in Requests
- Upsell Offers Based on Context of Booking
- Destination Recommendations
- Weather Recommendations
- Arrival FAQ’s based on Property Rules.
Personalizing the communication during pre-arrival should feel calm and relevant to your guests. For example, someone arriving late at night would prefer to receive instructions on how to access their room versus information regarding a spa promotion, while someone coming to your hotel for a leisure weekend would likely prefer information about dining options, local attractions, and/or late check-out.
2. Stay Dashboard With Contextual Shortcuts
As soon as a guest checks in, the app should turn into an actual functional control panel for the hotel.
The functionalities of these types of modules could include:
- room service ordering
- housekeeping requests
- concierge/chat
- dining reservations
- spa bookings
- maintenance reporting
- transportation requests
- billable review
- checkout assistance
- locale recommendations
These three areas exemplify many similar patterns of hotel room service ordering applications, the logic for upselling hotels, and the overall guest experience in general,l with how one would build out an app for a hotel. However, just putting features in an application is not the goal; rather, the objective is to be contextually aware when presenting them.
For example
- When I am done with dinner for the evening, breakfast and dinner options should be displayed first
- If it is the day the guest is checking out, transport/checking-out should be the only options presented to them
- After the guest has been through a failure of service, they should be able to see shortcuts for assistance
- If none of the above apply, local recommendations for restaurants should be displayed only after the core of their stay has been completed.
3. A Preference Center that Guests Understand & Can Use to Their Advantage
Most applications ask for guests’ preferences in a way that is either hard to comprehend or biased in the manner in which they gather their preferences. A better approach would be to have a preference center that is easy to find, easy to use, and clear about how useful it is to the guest.
A good preference center will allow guests to:
- See their stored preferences
- easily change their stored preferences
- understand how the changes they make to their preference will help them
- have access to multiple communication channels
- adjust their notifications
- adjust their stored preferences
Good UX = good trust design.
4. Service recommendations that are timely, not spammy
A hotel app can absolutely support revenue growth, but only if recommendation logic respects timing and guest intent.
Examples of good recommendations:
- breakfast reminder after late arrival
- spa suggestion when availability is high and guest profile fits
- transfer offer before checkout
- dinner reservation prompt near decision time
- local activity recommendation based on family or leisure context
Examples of bad recommendations:
- Too many push notifications sent
- Generic upsells sent to all guests
- Guests receive recommendations, but there is no clarity on how the hotel provides that information to the guests
- Offers sent to the guest that are distracting from their completing their task.
Volume is not as important as relevance within the hospitality industry.
5. Transparency of support and issue resolution
Satisfaction is derived not only from ideal customer service flows, but also from how quickly an issue is resolved.
To provide the guest with a human touch and to show that you support them, a hotel application should provide ways for the guest to:
- Quickly report their issue
- Receive status updates on their issue
- Speak with a person if they need to
- Clarify what will happen next with their reported issue
- Avoid repeating the same information multiple times to your staff.
In a multi-property or highly operational environment, resolving issues promptly is just as important as having the features provided by the hotel application. A recently published article by Appricotsoft states that the most successful hotel product is intuitively designed to reflect how the hotel currently operates (i.e., physically and mechanically) and how all components will work (i.e., integrations and installations) as well as how they will be implemented (i.e., rollout plans), not just a “pretty” end-user interface.
Privacy is part of satisfaction, not a separate topic
Many product teams incorrectly split the discussion of privacy as separate from guest satisfaction, viewing personalisation as the fun part, and privacy as only a legal requirement.
In actuality, the privacy of guests has a direct effect on guest satisfaction.
When guests are given equal consideration and insight into what an application (app) will do and why it does it, they are overall:
- More likely to complete their onboarding process.
- More likely to provide meaningful information about their preferences.
- More likely to enable notifications for the app.
- More likely to trust the app’s recommendations.
- More likely to use the app on subsequent visits.
However, if the guests do not have insight into what the app is doing and why it is doing it, they hesitate to continue with their interaction with the product. Hesitation results in a decrease in product acceptance and, therefore, also decreases the value of the service provided to the guest.
The UK ICO’s guidance on product design demonstrates that privacy clearly must be incorporated into the product design process from the beginning stages of the product life cycle and not tacked onto the end of the design process as an afterthought. The same guidance issued in relation to products specific to the hospitality industry supports the principles of privacy, particularly in the areas of transparency, consent, and guest rights when appropriately handling reservations and any other type of service-related data.
How consent should work with hotel apps
Hotels should structure consent in the app with specificity, contextual relevance, and ease of change.
Examples/What not to provide:
- Vague wording surrounding consent
- Group consent for items that may not pertain to each other
- Unclear reasoning for requesting consent
- Not providing simple ways to change consent settings
- Causing friction with the opting-out process
Here is a better example:
- Ask your guests for consent in the right context.
- Request consent when the need is clear.
Examples:
- Get permission for notifications when the guest desires updates about a stay.
- Request location permission only when a location-based item has been requested.
- Ask the guest for their preferences during either the “checking-in” process or the service configuration process.
- When you request consent in the appropriate context, you are providing a middle layer of improved quality of opt-ins because you have associated the request for consent with actual use.
- Next, use plain language to explain the reasons for needing consent.
- Instead of stating: “Your data will help us provide a better experience.”
Say to the guest: “Using your stay information and preference information will provide appropriate, relevant services, faster service responses, and provide better recommendations while you are staying with us.”
Using specific wording to explain consent creates an atmosphere of trust.
Lastly, remember to differentiate between the operational necessities of using data, from the personal data collected to provide personalisation, and the personal information for marketing communications.
The guest should understand the difference between:
- operational necessity for fulfilling a booked stay or providing service
- personalisation consent
- marketing communications consent
This differentiation is important both from a legal perspective
UX patterns of transparency
Transparency should not just be a legal text you see in one place on a screen, but should be shown to the user throughout their whole interaction with your product. There are several patterns that we recommend to help you achieve this.
1. Use microcopy to explain “Why am I seeing this?”
When you recommend something to a user, providing them with a brief explanation of why they’re receiving that recommendation can help tremendously.
Here are some examples:
- “Suggested because you booked a family room”
- “Based on your preferred dining styles”
- “Helpful for you before checkout tomorrow”
- By providing the user a simple reason why they are receiving a recommendation, you help eliminate the “How did they know that?” feeling.
2. Provide progressive data privacy notices.
Don’t make all of the disclosures at the beginning of the user’s experience. Instead, provide them with disclosures when they matter most:
- When you are collecting preference data
- When you are asking if the user wants to receive notifications
- When you are providing access to connected service modules
- When you are saving the user’s preferred stay settings
Providing Users with disclosures at the point in time they are making their decision will make it much easier for them to understand.
3. Provide a privacy summary within the app in addition to links to the full privacy policy.
Providing links to your privacy policy is good, but it is also important that you provide your users with a simple summary within your application of:
- What you will be collecting
- Why will you be collecting the information
- What information is voluntary/optional
- How long will you retain the information
- How the user can change their information
You should ensure that your privacy summary is easily accessible to your users.
4. Use permission labels that accurately describe the consequences of the user granting permission for use of their information.
For example:
- “Allow stay notifications from our company” instead of “Enable push notifications.”
- “Save room preferences for future stays with us” instead of “Personalize your hotel experience.”
Providing users with accurate permission labels will improve the User’s ability to make quality decisions.
5. Use quiet default settings.
Not every feature needs to be on by default.
In many hospitality contexts, less aggressive defaults improve trust and long-term engagement more than maximum first-day opt-ins.
The Top 5 Missteps that Hotel Mobile Apps Make
Even well-funded apps have made the same common mistakes with personalization as previous generations of products.
Mistake #1: Over-Personalizing Too Early. Don’t make too many inferences about what value a guest will see from your app until they have had an experience with it. Their first several experiences with the app should feel like value-adds versus invasions.
Mistake #2: Collecting Guest Preferences Without a Means to Fulfill Them. If a guest selects a specific time for housekeeping or a special dietary preference and the hotel cannot fulfill that request, your app will create disappointment instead of satisfaction.
Mistake #3: Upselling Throughout the App; Treating Upsells as the Product. While making revenue is important, providing a solution to service friction should be the priority of your app. If the entire app experience feels like a sales environment, the guests’ trust in the hotel will decrease significantly.
Mistake #4: Hiding a guest’s ability to Control Privacy Settings. If guests don’t know how to view or change their privacy settings or are unable to do so easily, it will seem like your app has one-sided control over the guests’ information.
Mistake #5: Creating an App for Marketing Purposes; Not for The Guest’s Stay. The most successful hotel mobile apps create a guest experience that revolves around five stages of a guest’s stay: Arrival, Comfort, Support, Dining, Payment, and Departure. That is where guests will find the highest level of satisfaction with your product.
A practical personalization model for hotel leaders
For founders, operators, and hospitality groups planning a new app, here is the simplest way to think about it:
Layer 1: Essential experience
Use reservation data to reduce friction.
Layer 2: Guest-declared preferences
Let guests choose what improves the stay.
Layer 3: Light behavioral optimization
Improve timing, shortcuts, and recommendations carefully.
Layer 4: Transparent controls
Keep consent, explanations, and settings visible.
That sequence works better than jumping straight into aggressive recommendation engines.
Appricotsoft's philosophy for developing the guest experience app
We believe that good delivery models should make progress visible, risks explicit, and build quality into the everyday workflow.
This is why we built the Unison Framework with these four important pillars in mind: clearly defined stages for project/product development; shared decision-making among multiple stakeholders; visible trade-offs between competing priorities; and weekly demos that allow clients to see working software rather than just relying on documents.
The importance of visibility and risk management cannot be overstated when it comes to hospitality applications because a guest application is much more than “just an application.” It has an impact on how hotels manage their operations, communicate with their guests, provide services, manage data, and train employees. The decisions a hotel makes about how to personalize their guests’ experiences will influence the scope of the product, the time required for legal reviews and approvals, the design of analytics and reports, and the types of customer support that are offered to guests.
When designing a guest experience application for a hotel, we typically consider these questions:
- Which hotel moments are most important to the guest?
- Which data points will most help us create a better experience for the guest
- Which preferences can our operation actually deliver to the guest?
- Which notifications do we want the guest to receive that will actually enhance their stay and not be annoying?
- Are there any consent decisions that have their own user experience associated with them?
- What integrations with backend systems are needed to provide an excellent guest experience?
You may also be interested in reading two of our Appricotsoft blog posts that are related to this topic. One is called “Hotel App Development: A Roadmap from MVP to Rollout,” while the other is entitled “Hospitality Software Development Company: Typical Tech Stack for Modern Hotel Products.“
Conclusion
It stands to reason that personalization does work when it comes to increasing guest satisfaction in hospitality apps. In most cases, it definitely can and should be implemented.
However, the key to success is not in collecting even more information and automating even more notifications.
Rather, the way to go is:
- Use the reservation data wisely.
- Let guests communicate their preferences explicitly.
- Use behavioral cues judiciously.
- Communicate what’s going on.
- Separate processing and customization where necessary.
- Give guests the option to manage the process.
This is the path to establishing trust that an experienced hospitality app development company should choose. In fact, trust is what will transform the convenience offered by a piece of digital software into true service.
At Appricotsoft, our goal is to create hotel software solutions that help guests, staff, and decision-makers to live better. If this is the kind of product you want to develop for your hotel or resort, let’s discuss it!