The guest journey starts long before check-in. It begins the moment a traveler starts thinking about their next trip — scrolling through OTAs, searching Google, or saving hotels on social media.
Once a traveler has found the perfect place, next comes the booking. No matter where a reservation is made, this process needs to be as seamless as possible. For direct bookings, this includes a user-friendly booking engine and integrated payment process.
After booking, confirmation emails and pre-arrival communications containing important property details and upsell opportunities help establish trust and connection ahead of time.
Upon arrival and throughout the stay, lodging businesses have the opportunity to make a significant impact, delivering exceptional service and guest experiences. After a guest has left, the journey isn’t done. Proper follow-up and nurturing are crucial for a continued relationship.
In this article, we explore how to cater to guests throughout the entire journey and deliver positive guest experiences that will keep them coming back (and referring their friends).
What is the hotel guest journey?
The guest experience journey, also called the traveler or hotel customer journey, is the path people follow when planning a trip, from the inspiration stage right through to the post-stay travel experience. While it’s called a journey, it involves much more than travel; it also includes pre-arrival planning, the booking process, and post-trip sharing.
The guest journey can be divided into several key stages or phases, which are often referred to as dreaming, planning, booking, experiencing, and sharing. Each stage presents opportunities, or touchpoints, for hotels to connect with travelers, influence their decisions, and ensure guest expectations are met.
Understanding the guest journey is critical to hoteliers because it helps them build their marketing, distribution, and customer experience plans. This, in turn, drives more bookings, incremental revenue, and higher guest satisfaction.
The guest journey: A funnel or a circle?
Traditionally, marketers have used a purchase funnel model to illustrate the customer journey. In this model, the journey starts at the wide end of the funnel when buyers are just beginning the shopping process and considering a broad array of choices. As buyers move through the process, eliminating some and homing in on others, the funnel narrows. At the end of the funnel, the buyer purchases a product, and the journey ends.
But what happens after the purchase?
Several years ago, McKinsey & Company put forth an alternative, circular model that encompasses the post-purchase stage and the cyclical nature of purchasing and repurchasing over a customer’s lifetime. This model features a “loyalty loop” that is highly applicable to the hotel business. When guests are happy with their accommodation choice, on their next trip they may skip the dreaming and planning stages and go straight to rebooking the same property.
| Stage | What the traveler is doing | Key hotel goal |
| Dreaming | Exploring destinations and gathering inspiration | Build visibility and brand awareness |
| Planning | Comparing hotels, reviews, pricing, and amenities | Stand out and build trust |
| Booking | Choosing where to book and completing the reservation | Reduce friction and drive conversion |
| Experiencing | Staying at the property and interacting with staff | Deliver seamless, memorable hospitality |
| Sharing | Posting reviews, sharing experiences, and deciding whether to return | Drive loyalty, advocacy, and repeat bookings |
Below, we explain what happens at each stage and how hotels can connect with travelers and guide their choices at every touchpoint.
Today, many of these touchpoints take place on digital channels. With the help of hospitality technology, hotels can automate tasks to save time and ensure opportunities aren’t missed.
Stage 1: Dreaming
In this initial research stage, travelers are looking for inspiration. They are open to ideas and exploring a variety of options. They might be considering several destinations and comparing options for transportation, accommodation, and activities in each. In this stage, search activity tends to be broad and destination-oriented, favoring platforms like Google, Tripadvisor, destination marketing organization (DMO) sites, and social media.
Strategies for hotels during the dreaming stage include:
1. Increase visibility where travelers discover destinations
At this stage, visibility matters most. Hotels should ensure their Google Business Profile, Tripadvisor listing, and tourism bureau pages are accurate, complete, and visually compelling. Travelers often discover hotels through Google Search, Google Maps, DMOs, social media, and review platforms long before they visit a hotel website directly.
2. Invest in visual storytelling
Travel planning is emotional. High-quality photography and video help travelers imagine themselves at the property before they ever book. Hotels should consistently share content across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and other channels showcasing the destination, amenities, food and beverage experiences, and local attractions.
The more you build your presence, the higher the likelihood your brand will spread through word-of-mouth.
3. Optimize for AI-powered travel discovery
63% of websites now receive traffic from AI chatbots, and the hospitality industry is no different. In order to be recommended by AI engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Claude, hoteliers need to focus on what works: building an SEO-friendly website, collecting online reviews, and being listed on trusted third-party platforms.
63%
of websites receive traffic from AI chatbots
The rules of travel discovery are being rewritten. Travelers no longer scroll through search results; they ask AI and get one answer.
Stage 2: Planning
In this decision-making stage, potential guests narrow down their options, select the destination, and evaluate options for accommodations and activities. Online travel agencies (OTAs) and review sites are especially popular during this phase for comparing location information, amenities, pricing, and reviews. Travelers also check out hotel websites to find out more.
Strategies for hotels during the planning stage include:
4. Diversify your distribution strategy
Travelers compare properties across OTAs, metasearch engines, Google Hotel Search, review sites, and hotel websites — often switching between channels multiple times before making a decision. Hotels that diversify their distribution across OTAs, the GDS, metasearch platforms, and alternative accommodation sites increase their chances of being discovered and booked.
To successfully manage all of these channels, it’s important to use an integrated channel manager. That way, rates and availability are automatically synced with your PMS so you never encounter overbookings or rate discrepancies (which can significantly impact the hotel guest experience).
5. Optimize your OTA presence and reviews
OTA listing quality directly impacts visibility and conversion rates. Complete descriptions, accurate amenities, strong photography, and positive reviews all help improve ranking and traveler confidence. Hotels should actively monitor and respond to reviews while addressing operational issues that repeatedly appear in guest feedback.
6. Turn your website into a conversion tool
Hotel websites should do more than provide information — they should actively support booking decisions. Clear navigation, SEO optimization, compelling visuals, and fast-loading pages all help improve conversion rates. Chatbots and guest messaging tools can also help answer traveler questions quickly before they abandon the booking process.
Your website sets the first impression, so be sure that it represents your hotel well. Provide a seamless checkout process, including available on-site upsells and room upgrade options.
Stage 3: Booking
At the booking stage, travelers are close to making a final decision but are still comparing rates, offers, and booking conditions across channels.
Strategies for hotels during the booking stage include:
7. Maintain a dynamic pricing strategy
Hotels should continuously adjust rates based on demand, occupancy, competitor pricing, seasonality, and market conditions. Revenue management software helps automate pricing decisions and ensures hotels remain competitive without constant manual updates.
8. Invest in advertising
Platforms like Google Hotel Search, Kayak, and Trivago are especially influential during the booking phase because travelers use them to compare pricing across channels instantly. Investing in metasearch marketing helps hotels compete more directly with OTAs and increase direct booking visibility.
Additionally, hotels should run retargeting campaigns to target visitors who visited their site but didn’t book. Together, metasearch and retargeting can generate significant results for hotels.
Hotels that add retargeting to metasearch see 205% more net sales than those who just use metasearch ads alone. It increases the efficiency of that metasearch ad campaign.
9. Remove friction from direct bookings
A slow or outdated booking engine creates friction at the exact moment travelers are ready to convert. Hotels should ensure their booking engine is mobile-friendly, fast, and integrated with secure payment processing. Best-rate guarantees, loyalty perks, packages, and limited-time offers can also help encourage travelers to book directly.
Stage 4: Experiencing
The experiencing stage includes everything from arrival through departure. This is where hotels have the biggest opportunity to deliver memorable hospitality and exceed expectations.
Strategies for hotels during the experiencing stage include:
10. Reimagine the arrival experience
Hotels increasingly use digital check-in, mobile room access, and automated pre-arrival communication to reduce friction during a guest’s stay. Guests can upload identification, sign documents, authorize payments, and access rooms directly from their phones, allowing staff to focus more on hospitality and personalization instead of administrative tasks.
Before completely reinventing your arrival experience, first identify the biggest pain points your guests and staff face and then work to address them through technology. Guest preferences can vary depending on the type of hotel, so be sure to take this into consideration.
11. Keep communication open throughout the stay
Guest messaging platforms allow hotels to communicate with guests through SMS, WhatsApp, Messenger, and other familiar channels. Hotels can proactively share updates, recommendations, and offers while giving guests an easy way to ask questions or make special requests throughout their stay.
12. Use automation to streamline service
Behind the scenes, integrated workflows help hotels respond faster to guest needs. For example, a guest request for extra towels can automatically route to housekeeping without requiring manual follow-up from the front desk. These operational efficiencies help teams deliver more seamless service while reducing workload.
13. Create opportunities for service recovery
Hotels shouldn’t wait until checkout to learn about guest frustrations. In-stay surveys and proactive check-ins allow teams to identify issues early, recover service failures, and turn potentially negative experiences into positive ones before guests leave the property.
Stage 5: Sharing
The guest journey continues after departure through reviews, social media posts, recommendations, and repeat bookings. Here is the point where you can make a lasting impression and foster guest loyalty for years to come.
Strategies for hotels during the sharing stage include:
14. Encourage reviews and guest-generated content
Positive reviews influence future travelers entering the dreaming and planning stages. Hotels should proactively encourage guests to leave reviews and share experiences online through automated post-stay communication and review requests.
15. Build long-term loyalty after checkout
CRM and guest marketing tools help hotels stay connected with past guests through personalized campaigns, loyalty offers, and targeted promotions using guest data. The goal is to move guests into the “loyalty loop,” where they bypass the dreaming and planning stages entirely and return directly to book again.
When hotels consistently deliver strong experiences across every stage of the journey, they create more than satisfied guests — they create long-term advocates who drive repeat business, referrals, and stronger profitability over time.
Connect every stage of the guest journey with Cloudbeds
Managing the modern guest journey requires more than just a booking engine or a messaging tool. Hotels need connected technology that brings marketing, distribution, operations, guest communication, and revenue strategy together in one place.
Cloudbeds helps hotels manage the entire guest journey — from discovery and booking to post-stay loyalty — through one unified hotel management system. Because the platform is natively connected, hotels can manage distribution, pricing, guest messaging, digital check-in, CRM, payments, and operational workflows without relying on disconnected systems or duplicate guest data.
This connected approach helps hotels create more seamless guest experiences across every stage of the journey. Travelers can move from researching and booking to checking in, messaging staff, purchasing upgrades, and receiving personalized follow-up communication without unnecessary friction or inconsistent experiences between systems.
Cloudbeds also helps hotels strengthen direct booking performance through integrated tools like metasearch marketing, retargeting, guest marketing campaigns, and a mobile-friendly booking engine designed to reduce booking friction and improve conversion rates.
By connecting guest data, operational workflows, and communication in one platform, hotels can create more personalized experiences, streamline operations behind the scenes, and build stronger long-term guest relationships that drive repeat business and loyalty.
