What are Customer Referral Programs for Hotels? BuzzyBooth Follow Jan 14 · 3 min read

Most of the time, relying on word-of-mouth marketing can leave your business vulnerable to stagnant growth.

However, with the right hotel referral program in place, talk of your business can spread like wildfire! This is because customer referral programs for hotels reward everyone involved! From the person booking the room getting a special discount to you as the hotel owner seeing your marketing campaigns take flight, you can see the success taking place, which only leads to process improvements and better initiatives for the future.

Your ultimate goal is to increase referrals for hotels you manage, but first, you need to know what a customer referral program for hotels is and how you can launch one.

Keep reading to learn more!

Customer Referral Program for Hotels — Explained

Essentially, a customer referral program for hotels is any kind of system set up to reward people for referring your business to someone else.

There are primarily referral incentives that get your current hotel customer interested in the first place, too, like hefty discounts on rooms or even a free night’s stay. Overall, you want hotel customers to support your brand and sing its praises to as many people as they know. Then when someone books a room and shares that so-and-so referred them, you can, in turn, reward the new customer, too, for participating in the program.

Of course, there is a slight upfront cost that your business has to maintain to keep a hotel referral program running, but in the long-term, it highly increases your revenue and transforms your customer base into loyal followers.

How to Create Your Own Hotel Referral Program

To get started with creating your own hotel referral program, you first need to focus on your current customer base and decide on what your customer rewards will be.

Obviously, you don’t want to lose crazy amounts of money on rewards, so choose something that provides real value without sacrificing too much of your business needs. You could start with some rewards ideas like…

One free night’s stay

A free complimentary breakfast

A 50% off discount on a one-night booking

A 25% off discount on bookings up to three nights

Points toward a free night’s stay

A percentage off of a meal at a local restaurant that you partner with

You can really be as creative as you want to be, so as long as you make it attractive enough to increase referrals for hotels you manage.

Next, you want to focus on your existing client base because after all, they’re the ones who will promote your new hotel referral program the best! All you need to do is send out a newsletter or mass email to your contacts and explain to them the benefits of the hotel referral program. Or, as soon as a customer checks out, take a moment to explain the hotel referral program and outline the benefits that they can enjoy from promoting your business. Simple.

Increase Referrals for Hotels with BuzzyBooth

Altogether, creating a customer referral program for hotels isn’t too complicated.

As long as you have some worthwhile incentives to offer customers and you make the terms of your hotel referral program easy to understand, your guests should be eager and willing to participate.

That being said, if you run into any issues throughout the process, you can easily increase referrals for hotels with BuzzyBooth. With products and services designed to engage and promote your business to consumers everywhere, you’ll gain a steady client base with tons of customer referrals in no time.