Technology is a critical aspect of a successful hotel. Hospitality properties – large and small, star and non-star are adopting it with open arms to keep pace with their tech savvy guests.
Until a couple of years ago, hotel software was the core of the technology adopted in a hotel. A robust, user-friendly hotel management software was desired to help hotel staff check-in guests faster, systematize operations at the restaurant, better manage food and beverage costing, enhance visibility into hotel’s finances, HR and payroll, engage in smart sales and marketing, simplify inventory management and organize MICE offerings etc. These functions were all related to the day to day operations of a hotel.
The goal post for hotels has drastically shifted since then, and guests are significantly influencing the way in which hotels leverage technology. Today’s hoteliers have to align themselves to guests needs and constantly ask themselves questions like –
• Is my service strongly branding my hotel and building loyalty?
• Are we adequately connecting and engaging with our guests online?
• Am I present on all the right online distribution channels?
• Are my rooms attractively priced?
• How can my hotel break into other guest segments like the millennial traveler?
Thus, the wise hotelier is compelled to move beyond hotel software to leverage the internet and a host of other solutions that connect him to potential guests.
For example, guests are searching for hotelsonline. Is your hotel leveraging an online reputation management system to easily monitor the hundreds of social media channels and review sites available? Knowing when your guests mention you and responding to them in a timely manner is critical. Tracking guest sentiment, both positive and negative is an important aspect of online reputation management. Today’s guest is also notoriously disloyal. Engaging your guest on social media offers an excellent opportunity to share new developments at your hotel, facilities launched and seasonal offers. Also take guest feedback and build a relationship with your potential brand ambassadors. Research shows that hotels that respond to over 50 percent of reviews written on social media platforms witness a rise of 6.4 percent in their occupancy compared to those hotel that ignore reviews.
The 600 strong million millennial population in India is extremely price sensitive and very much the steam behind the sharing economy. As impulsive travelers, they are constantly looking for offers, and last-minute deals. It would thus be great for a hotel to actually connect with a last-minute room booking service to grow room occupancy. The major advantage of a last-minute room booking solution is that hotels get yet another distribution platform and can now sell aggressively down to their last room.
Analytic can also yield some interesting findings for a hotel. It can offer trends for the data in the property management system and enable hotels to engage in predictive planning related to various departments of a hotel, be it front office, food and beverage, restaurant, banquet and conferences and other departments. Business intelligence offers trends that hotels can action and positively impact their revenue and guest satisfaction.
Revenue management is yet another solution that hotels are increasingly turning to. With this solution, a rooms division manager, front office manager and director of sales can competitively set room pricing, determine channels that are performing for the hotel and detect changes in guest behavior pattern. A revenue management solution lets hotels develop an optimal sales strategy for dates of arrival, market segments, room groups, distribution channels, rate categories, and lengths of stay.
While hotels are adopting many of these solutions, they are used in silos due to integration costs. This ends up increasing instead of decreasing work for hotel staff.
