How Hotels Can Use Psychology to Better Serve Business Travelers

Understanding the wants and needs of corporate guests can help you improve their stays and keep them coming back.

Business travelers are flooding back to hotels in the wake of the pandemic. As they return, it’s worth taking a new look at the ever-changing makeup of business travel and how you can use psychology to better serve these guests.

“Corporate travel budgets are recovering to pre-COVID levels,” a new Morgan Stanley report, “2023 Outlook: Business Travel Bounces Back,” states. In fact, 2023 budgets are expected to hit 98 percent of 2019’s pre-pandemic levels, according to the report.

Here are four ways to use psychology to better serve these returning business travelers and to provide the experiences that will make them feel welcome:

1. Make them feel at home. Business travelers may be traveling solo or with colleagues, but one thing is sure: they’re likely missing their home, their loved ones and maybe their dog or cat. One study found that 75 percent of business travelers experience high levels of stress. Warmth and friendliness can go a long way toward making a business traveler feel that they’re not in a strange, cold place but a welcoming “home away from home.” Data can be helpful here, allowing staff to greet business travelers with familiarity and to offer personalized service. For example, instead of a generic greeting, “Hello Mr. Green. Good to see you again. We put a yoga mat in your room, as usual. Please let us know if there’s anything else we can do to make your stay more comfortable.”
2. Keep generational psychology in mind. The makeup of business traveler demographics is constantly changing, and millennials now make up around half  of all corporate travelers. That means that it’s important to think not just of the psychology of business travelers in general, but specifically of business travelers by generation. Hotels can better serve millennials by embracing technology, providing information about the hotel surroundings and offering curated experiences. Keep in mind that millennials also prize sustainability.
3. Emphasize the sleep experience. Business travel can be exciting but also exhausting. A study published in the Journal of Vacation Marketing, “The psychology of vacationers’ hotel brand choice in a post-pandemic world,” found that business travelers pay special attention to the quality of the bed and the bedding with the aim of getting a “good night’s sleep.” It’s worth focusing on ways you can both improve the quality of sleep guests get at your hotel and communicate these advantages to guests. Some hotels are investing in luxe beds and offering amenities such as weighted blankets and melatonin gummies, according to Travel Weekly.
4. Help them focus. Business travelers have a lot on their minds: they may be attending an important conference, giving a speech or wining and dining prospective clients in an effort to land a lucrative deal. In order to best serve business travelers, it’s important to provide the services and support they need to keep their minds on the task ahead. “Above all, business travelers just want to focus on their visit,” Svenja Ullrich, a business traveler of 30 years and a senior manager for BCD Travel states. This means offering free, fast Wi-Fi, jumping to solve problems that arise and offering extra support when needed, so the guest can focus on the task at hand and not on, say, troubleshooting a hotel Wi-Fi connectivity problem that’s keeping them from finishing a report.

“Modern corporate travelers are highly responsive to hospitable behavior,” HospitalityNet states. “They want the best ecosystem to handle their work during their stay.”