How to identify your customer personas — Photo by Magnuson Hotels

Do you know what your customer personas are? If you're not sure you could be missing a trick. Customer personas help you identify what your customers want, informing your decisions and allowing you to create a better offering with your target audience in mind.

A customer persona is simply a fictional representation of your ideal customer, based on information you've gathered about your existing customers and market research. It considers who they are, as well as their goals, behaviours, and motivations. Any business can have more than one customer persona and, as a hotel, you're likely to be targeting several different segments. The more details you put into each customer persona the better they are for supporting your business aims.

Creating customer personas doesn't have to be complicated and it's well worth investing time and resources into this business element.

  • Begin with research – To create accurate customer personas you first need to understand your current customers. This means you need to gather information, such as through a survey. A mixture of quantitative and in-depth qualitative data should be used.
  • Segment data – The information that you've collected should then be segmented, creating different customer personas. You could for instance have a data set for those travelling for business purposes or young families.
  • Identify patterns – With the data segmented into core customer areas you can identify wider patterns within each persona. This could be a demand for low rates, for instance.
  • Use your personas – With customer personas in place you need to make sure you use them effectively. They should be in your mind when you're making any business decisions, from the price point to what areas you invest in.

Alysha Smith
VP of Operations & Development
8000148132
Magnuson Hotels