Hotels of the Future — New Experiences, New Opportunities (Part 1)

Gone are those days, where we used Hotels just as a temporary sleeping quarters! In this experiential world, Hotels are the new “Experiential Destinations”! It is now time for Hoteliers to level up their game by Analyzing, Identifying, Diversifying and Maximize their revenue opportunities by bringing in the experiential flavors to the play!

Now, the big question is how to untap these opportunities! How to identify these experiential levers to attract the new age customers? How to be ahead of the competitors by serving the right product/ service at the right time?

The answer lies how effectively the hoteliers are going to use their hidden treasure, DATA. To begin with, Hoteliers can start looking at significant data-led revenue opportunities from:

· Innovating their “Core Offerings”

· Innovating their “Ancillary Offerings”

· Looking for innovation “Outside of Core”

In this article, let’s look at how Hoteliers can use “Data” to Innovate Core Offerings

Reimagine Spaces

Reimagining Spaces has become a core emerging theme of Hospitality Industry with the entry of “Hometels — Home + Hotels” Concept of the revolutionary brand, Airbnb. This Hometels concept gave the confidence for hoteliers to innovate their space to meet the needs of new-age Customers.

Data, here comes into play in identifying the needs and desires of future customers and helps Hoteliers to prepare for the future!

City Hub, a hotel brand, introduced a new futuristic hotel chain for Digital Natives. Orbitz, another hotel brand became on the early pioneers of the “Pop-Up Hotels” — A hotel that pops up suddenly. Orbitz uses these themed Pop-up hotels to impress specific customer segments like Plant Pop Up Hotels for Eco-friendly customers, Sun & Sauna Pop Up Hotels for leisure customers.

Hilton introduced a new brand, Motto, featuring Travel Sized (Cozy) Rooms for back pack travelers and for travelers who prefer long vacations, brands like Ama and Stay Vista are offering Vacation Rentals and Luxury Home Stays!

There are hundreds of other examples where hoteliers are trying innovative concepts to meet the future customer needs!

Change the Bookings Game

The Hotel Booking Space is now dominated by OTAs and With new brands like Hopper, Bitbook and surprisingly, marketplaces like Flipkart entering the Hotel Booking Space, the direct channels for hotels are hitting a huge dip!

Hoteliers needs to invest huge bags of money now to incentivize customers to book through the direct channels! Either by completely personalizing their booking experience using Data, providing new modes of payments like Bitcoins, Buy Now Pay Later etc., or by simply enhancing their Price Prediction Engines led by data to beat the prices of competitors and maximize the revenue!

Upgraded Exclusivity & Tailored Offerings

The value given to “Exclusivity” in this experiential era is paramount! This is the place where traditional hotels can shine by using innovative Loyalty Schemes, Membership packages, Collaborations with Partner Experiential Centers and many more! Many marquee hoteliers like Hilton, Marriott, Wyndham are already catching this opportunity by introducing cobranded Credit Cards, Innovative redemption options for loyalty points, Personalized and Gamified Loyalty Dashboards!

Many hoteliers are also looking for Radical Personalization Systems like Go Moment’s Intelligent Concierge Service, Gladly’s Personalized Customer Service Platform etc. These systems are in place to talk to the customer, learn about the customer and serve the customer before the customer realizes the need!

Using Data to provide such immense personalization can definitely bring in huge volumes of Upsells and Cross-sells!

Upgrade to Provide Seamless Experiences

Imagine avoiding the hefty queues in the reception and directly going to the door of your room in hotel and checking in without any hassle — Welcome to the Contactless Digital Check In era! Not just the check-in, technology is now everywhere in the customer journey and thanks to pandemic, customers are now opting more digital friendly options!

Levelling up the technology game and fueling Technology with Data is now a big necessity for Hoteliers!

So, the mantra for Hoteliers to achieve success in this competitive is: More Data -> More Re-imagination -> More Personalization -> More Exclusivity -> More Customers -> More Revenue

Stay tuned for my next article to know more about how Hoteliers can use data to innovate their Non-core Offerings and Outside of Core Offerings!