How to get repeat customers for your hotel, restaurant or café
Updated By Akkrev
Repeat guests drive most hospitality revenue. What keeps them coming back, why many rebook through an OTA or app, and how to make the way back lead to you.
Key points
- Repeat guests are where the money is: 7% of restaurant guests can drive up to 50% of order volume (Toast, Q1 2026).
- Recognition beats rewards: 48% of diners say being remembered makes them feel most valued.
- Guests leave slowly: 43% who stopped visiting a favourite place blamed a gradual slide, not one bad night.
- Hotels: direct guests made 68% of return stays in Bookboost's data. But in short-term rentals, 77% of repeat revenue still went through OTAs (hostAI).
- Many returning guests look you up again on Google or an AI assistant. Whatever link comes first gets the booking.
They were remembered
A name, a usual order, a preferred room.
It was as good as last time
Consistency keeps people. A slow slide loses them.
You stayed in touch
Email, text or a loyalty app gives them a reason to return.
The way back was easy
When they search for you, they find you, not a platform.
Hotels, restaurants and cafés get repeat customers by being as good as last time, remembering people, staying in touch, and making the way back lead to them rather than to a platform. Repeat guests usually bring in most of the revenue, so this is often the fastest way to grow.
This guide is for owners and managers who want more regulars and more returning guests, and want those guests to come back direct.
Why regulars matter so much
Restaurants and cafés. Toast and Resy’s Regulars Report 2026 found:
- 7% of guests can drive up to 50% of order volume (Toast transaction data, Q1 2026).
- 62% of diners keep a shortlist of two or three “home base” places.
- Regulars book ahead (83% of their visits on Resy against 48% for other guests), spend more and tip more.
Hotels. Bookboost looked at 2.2 million guests at European hotel groups from 2024 to 2026:
- Guests who booked direct came back about four times as often as OTA guests.
- Among long-standing guests, direct guests were worth roughly three times as much over time. That sample was small, so treat it as a signal.
- Direct bookings also cancel half as often: 10.6% against 21.8% for OTA bookings (Cloudbeds, 2025 data).
What brings people back
| Driver | What the data says |
|---|---|
| Being remembered | 48% of diners say it’s what makes them feel most valued. Only 30% always get it. |
| Consistency | 43% who left a favourite place blamed a gradual slide in food or service |
| Staying in touch | 86% of restaurant email orders and 83% of text orders came from past guests |
| A simple reward | Loyalty members came back about four times as often as walk-ins. Cashback-style rewards worked best for cafés and pizzerias. |
| A reason to return | Regulars on Resy bought 46% more event tickets |
All figures in this table come from Toast and Resy’s Regulars Report 2026.
None of this needs expensive software. A guest list, a reason to write to it, and staff who remember names go a long way.
Where repeat revenue leaks
Winning a guest once doesn’t mean they come back to you.
- In hostAI’s study of 230,000 short-term rental bookings, 77% of repeat-guest revenue was booked through OTAs. Operators with under 5% direct bookings lost up to 87% of it. Those with over 30% direct bookings lost about 10%.
- The study pointed to stronger brand recall for platforms than for the property. Guests remember “I booked it on Airbnb”, not your name.
- Hotels show the opposite when the relationship is strong. In Bookboost’s data, OTAs won 65% of first stays, but direct won 68% of return stays.
Restaurants and cafés can leak the same way through delivery and booking apps. A guest who loved your food may simply reorder through whichever app shows you first.
The search for “that place we liked”
Returning guests often don’t remember your exact name. They search, or they ask an AI: “the Italian place near Borough Market with the courtyard”, “that B&B in Whitby with the harbour view”. Whatever link comes up first usually gets the booking.
That makes AI answers part of retention, not only discovery. If ChatGPT or Google recognises your venue from a description and links your own site, the returning guest books with you. If it links an OTA or app, you pay again for a guest you’d already won. See why AI links Booking.com instead of your hotel.
Where to start
- Describe your venue to ChatGPT the way a past guest might, without the name. Does it find you, and which link does it give?
- Search your own name in Google. What comes first: your site, an OTA or a delivery app?
- Count your guest list. How many past guests can you actually contact, and when did you last do it?
- Check last month’s returning guests and how they came back.
- Ask your team which regulars they know by name. Then make sure everyone does.
How to measure progress
Use your booking, till or loyalty records to compare repeat visits or stays and the channels they came through. Keep identifiable AI referrals as a separate signal. See how to measure AI search results and how to find AI referrals in Google Analytics.
Akkrev tracks what ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Grok models say about your venue every week: whether they name you, what they say and which link they send guests to. That covers new guests and returning ones who look you up again. See plans for hotels, restaurants and cafés.
Questions
How do I get more repeat customers for my restaurant?
Keep quality consistent, remember people, and collect contact details so you can invite them back. Toast's 2026 data found guests in a loyalty programme returned at roughly four times the rate of a standard walk-in, and 86% of orders from restaurant email came from people who had already eaten there.
How do hotels get repeat guests to book direct?
Stay in touch after the stay, offer something an OTA can't (a better room, breakfast, flexible cancellation or a returning-guest rate), and make sure that when a past guest searches for your hotel, your own website appears before your OTA listing.
Why do repeat guests book through Booking.com or Airbnb?
Usually convenience. They search, the platform appears first and they're already logged in. hostAI's study of short-term rentals found stronger brand recall for platforms than for properties was one of the main reasons.
Does AI affect repeat customers?
Yes. A returning guest who has forgotten your exact name may describe you to ChatGPT or Google instead. If the answer links your website, the booking comes to you. If it links an OTA or a delivery app, you pay commission on a guest you already won.
What is a good repeat customer rate?
It varies a lot by type of venue, and published benchmarks use different definitions. The useful number is your own trend: track how many of last month's guests had visited before, and through which channel they came back.