Most hotel marketing energy is spent on the decision to book and the stay itself. The weeks in between are treated as administrative: a booking reference, a check-in time, perhaps a pre-arrival email about parking. Yet this is often when a guest is at their most emotionally invested, researching the destination, imagining the room and telling friends where they are going.
Anticipation is part of the experience
Behavioural research on anticipation consistently finds that looking forward to an experience can be as pleasurable as the experience itself, sometimes more so, because imagination is unconstrained by reality. A guest picturing their arrival at a lakeside suite is already having a positive emotional experience connected to the hotel.
Give the anticipation somewhere to go
A generic confirmation email does little to feed that excitement. A short, personal and visually rich moment built from the guest's own booking details gives the imagination something concrete to hold onto. It also creates a second, more memorable touchpoint before the guest has set foot on the property.
A useful pre-arrival moment should feel
- Personal to the guest and their booking
- Visually consistent with the hotel brand
- Relevant to the room, destination or occasion
- Easy to watch, save and share
The challenge is scale
A personal, well-crafted moment for every guest is not something a marketing team can build by hand across hundreds of bookings each month. GuestStory is designed to close that gap by applying the same care to every booking automatically, using details already held in the reservation.
