What the Guest Value Journey is
The Guest Value Journey is an operating model for Marketing, Sales, Revenue and Operations. It gives every team one objective: attract the right guests and grow profit per guest over time.
It does not replace revenue management. Revenue management still prices the room. The Guest Value Journey decides which guest the room is priced for.
The five stages:
- Attract. Inspire the right demand. Marketing owns it.
- Capture. Turn intent into a direct booking. Revenue and Sales own it.
- Prepare. Engage before arrival with upgrades guests thank you for. Operations and Front Office own it.
- Deliver. Keep your promises and recover fast when you miss one. Operations and Front Office own it.
- Review. Close the loop and earn the next stay. Marketing owns it.
Two numbers tell you if it works. NPS says your hotel is worth coming back to. GOP % says it is worth running. Both rise together, or neither does.
One forecast, or the journey does not run
Most hotels run seven forecasts. Marketing forecasts campaigns. Sales forecasts groups. Revenue forecasts rate and occupancy. Operations forecasts staffing. F&B forecasts covers. Purchasing forecasts stock. Finance forecasts cash flow. When the numbers disagree at month-end, the team holds a meeting to decide which one to believe.
A hotel with seven forecasts cannot run the Guest Value Journey. The paper shows why, and what to fix first.
What's inside
- The five stages, each with an owner, a guiding principle and two North Star metrics
- Jobs-to-be-Done and F-E-S (Functional, Emotional, Social): how to see your hotel through the guest's eyes
- How to define the two Ideal Guest Profiles your hotel is built to serve
- The arithmetic of the shift, modeled on a 200-room hotel: recover 1 point of customer acquisition cost and add €43,400 to GOP
- The CFO's three-question test: can your current systems support the model?
- A roadmap from Step 0 to Step 5, with time frames and a clear "complete when" for every step
- A gate check at the end of every stage
