Are hotel front desks a thing of the past?
December 14, 2016
A recent article featured on the Economist asked, “Why do hotels still bother with receptionists?” And to be fair, they have a point.
Hotel Data Management: 3 Ways Hotels Use Data To Increase Revenue
Hotels that make the most out of this guest data can create effective marketing campaigns that drive direct bookings and incremental revenues to their properties.
—Justin DeRise
For a long time hotels did not just underutilize data, but were intimidated by it – the amount of it, and where and how to even begin analyzing and using it. When used effectively, data can provide hoteliers with the opportunity to improve customer interactions, their revenue and the way they run their business. Presently, applying hotel data faces the same challenge many other industries
face: proper data management. With a cloud-based property management system, collecting data, understanding and use it effectively has become easier. With a proper system in place and good data hygiene (i.e. clean, organized, and error-free), the possibilities are endless. Here are just 3 ways hotels can use data to increase revenue.
(1)
Better pricing
Hotels that accurately predict demand for rooms can price accordingly and turn a nice profit. A lot of hotels still try to do this process manually – which is painstaking, more often than not reactionary and leads to missed opportunities. Advances in real-time analysis means that hotels can use their data more accurately and effectively.
With data, hotels can forecast seasonal events that affect occupancy, understand when to lower rates just enough so that they fill their rooms at the highest possible price, even understand booking behaviors to predict cancellation rates.
Ultimately data can deliver precision to pricing, allowing hotels widen their margins.
(2)
Better marketing
Guests leave a trail of breadcrumbs at every stage of the research and booking process.
Hotels that make the most out of this guest data can create effective marketing campaigns that drive direct bookings and incremental revenues to their properties. Smart data can help hotels identify relevant audiences and potential guests, identify active shoppers by demographic and source market geography. It can help identify windows of opportunity in each season when you can get the highest exposure for the highest potential return.
It can help you identify customers with a higher overall lifetime value allowing you to focus more time and resources where they’ll have the most impact – and bigger financial reward.
In summary, data can help hoteliers forecast profitable customers and target them, in real time with relevant offers, giving them the opportunity to convert them from lookers to bookers.
(3)
Personalized service and guest satisfaction
Data gives hoteliers the ability to anticipate guests’ needs. By processing individual customer information through the lens of data analytics, it provides staff with a holistic view of the guest allowing them to personalize offers and influence purchase decisions.
Hotels can make a positive impact on the guest experience even before check-in. Analysing and using data effectively, a hotel would already know what its guests like, prompting a customized pre-arrival upsell email with relevant amenity offers and room upgrades. These offers can also extend into the on-property experience, triggering timely, innovative and relevant offers, rewards or discounted services during their stay. Ultimately, data helps hoteliers identify patterns in guest activity, gain a deeper understanding
of customer needs allowing them to better target offers, upsell more effectively, create a better, more personalized customer experience, and a more profitable business. The above are only a few of many ways in which hotels can use data to generate and increase incremental revenue. Data isn’t something that can instantly produce results, but when properly managed, analyzed and applied, the results can be magical.
