There are many ways to define a luxurious guest experience but for Kimpton diving head first into digital may not be the answer

In a world where the big OTAs are aggressively bidding for your keywords and disruptors like Airbnb are redefining where the rich and famous want to stay, how do create your own brand of luxury.

That’s something that the Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants has been grappling with as it carves out a niche in the digital era.

Kimpton is bucking some trends by:

1.     Keeping the digital wall low between the front desk and the guest

While many hotels are leaping on the digital bandwagon and implementing things like mobile check-in and digital door readers, Kimpton is taking a softly-softly approach. It isn’t burying heads under a pillow when it comes to new technologies, but wants to be sure they work for the group’s customer demographic – and from their data Kimpton knows that one-to-one engagement really works.

“What we know is that consumers really start to feel the love for our brand once they get on property, and interact with our employees,” says Connor Smith, the group’s Senior Director Brand.

He continues: “Because we are so focused on customer care and creating a personal experience, we need to be careful not put too much of a digital wall between the front desk and the guest.”

Two things that could work because they enhance the experience include the ability to:

• Order room service from an app
• Request pillows from your phone

2.     Positioning itself as a lifestyle brand

Although Kimpton’s bread and butter comes from business travel it positions itself as a lifestyle brand. Given the growing trend for millennials to merge business travel with pleasure, this is a smart move. It is also driven by data, which tells Kimpton that guests, although they tend to be on business, don’t want to say in a ‘business-oriented’ hotel and often extend their stay. The group’s customers fall into a broad range of ages and are typically the more adventurous, urban-minded sort, who will go out and find the local food cart rather than eat in the hotel restaurant, and may not own a car.

3.      Developing specific tools to help each unique hotel stand out

Kimpton learnt the hard way that trying to be all things to all men doesn’t work. In doing so they had lost the ability to deliver on their promises. To address this issue, the company, with support from its branding agency, set about arming each hotel with a unique and simple set of in-house tools clearly and concisely capture the original vision for each boutique hotel brand. 

“Brand platforms are normally quite long but the one we have developed [for each hotel] is simple, highly graphical and easy to digest. So an operator, who is running around, can look at and in a glance, know how to make a branding decision,” says Smith. 

Aside from these, Kimpton looks and secret shopper scores and customer reviews to establish how the hotels are performing the eyes of the guest.

4.      Using social media to drive guest love rather than ROI

Kimpton focuses exclusively on social media to drive guest love. “This frees up the social team to surprise and delight the guest, and in doing so has yielded a loyal and devoted following,” Smith says.

Social media is seen as the digital equivalent of positive human interaction on the property, and the online team, as they are on the property, empowered to care for guests in whatever way they see fit. The 24/7 social team closely monitors compliments and complaints and aims to resolve any tricky issues offline.

The three social main channels used by Kimpton are:

• Facebook– to deliver relevant content like special offers
• Instagram– to showcase the brand’s style and beauty.
• Twitter– to surprise, delight, interact and engage guests; this is seen as the “biggest opportunity

Join us at TDS North America (Oct 19 20) to hear more from Connor Smith, Senior Director Brand, Kimpton Hotel Group