The Hospitality sector caters to millions of travellers every day, and each one of them comes in with their own set of expectations. Meeting those expectations across the stay life cycle is going to be the key to enhance guest experience and getting people to return and recommend others.
Some of the expectations of a Digital Customer:
- I want to do a digital check-in
- I want you to send my payment details on mobile
- I want to place an order on your social page
- I want you to suggest nearby activities
- I want to see good places around me
- I want my reservation details across all devices
Do the hoteliers understand their customers? – Who are they, what are their needs and are they listening to them. Increasingly hotel and leisure operators realize the value of customer’s personal data across multiple touch points that helps them gain guest loyalty and win more from existing guests. Today, travellers are sharing data 2X as fast today as they were 3 years ago via mobile devices. This means opportunities to engage these guests. But, how?
Hoteliers are embracing new technologies to transform from physical to digital services (Mobility services), advanced analytics solutions to acquire and engage guests to boost the customer experience.
Data is the new “Key” for Hospitality Industry – Why do these data points matter to the hotel and leisure operators?
- Enhance Guest experience to increase revenue per available room (RevPAR)
o Manage and connect the Guests throughout the guest stay life cycle
o Provide personalized interaction, services and information
o Enable location based intelligence and monetize from Mobile ads and in-app targeting
o Enable mobile guest analytics
- Enhance Guest satisfaction and Loyalty
o On-Premise guest engagement (# campaigns, sharing incentives)
o Exclusive on-premise content, offers & content in real time
o Track what is redeemed, when, where and by whom
o Incentivise based on loyalty preferences and usage history for increasing the non room revenue
o Discover new avenues for promotions.
The breadth of what is possible with data is immense and thus a company’s data strategy scope needs to be carefully planned to grow as the organization matures in its enterprise structure and capabilities. Ideally data is one of the key elements of an overall digital strategy. Executing the digital strategy is the understanding and use of analytics. And key to analytics in our view, is the need to look at what are the feeders to the hotelier’s analytics data store (Ex: Mobile brings new sets of guest data that a hotelier may have never had apart from the other touch points). Hoteliers who are able to innovate and deliver a differentiated experience via data analytics and mobility will build better brand loyalty and trust, surpassing competitors.