Since 2010, Thailand has experienced a 10 year boom in the hospitality industry as the number of inbound tourists has nearly tripled from 15M to almost 40M tourists arriving in Thailand each year. And as any hotelier would know, many of these new tourists arrive from China.
Fewer Chinese tourists coming to Thailand?
And if the Chinese traveler is driving many of the decisions made in global travel, there are some worrying trends for Hoteliers, specifically in China, that affect the overall health of their businesses.
According to Bloomberg, Thailand’s Central Plaza Hotel is experiencing a softening of its hotel business in the second quarter due to largely to fewer Chinese travelers resulting in a 7% drop in occupancy over the previous quarter.
Making this worrisome trend even more troubling is the large number of new hotel rooms coming online in the next 5 years in Thailand. Central Plaza Hotel has 2,040 additional rooms in opening to add to its existing portfolio of 6,678 rooms in Bangkok. The Ritz Carlton and Hilton will both open new hotels in Bangkok in 2022 and 2023. Phuket is expected to have 18% more hotel rooms by 2024.
Challenge for hoteliers - maximizing the revenue from each guest
As competition for guests increases in Thailand and South East Asia for not only Chinese travelers, but travelers in general, luxury hotels will need to learn how to better understand their guests so that they can provide better service or be at risk of price cutting and races to discount the most.
Using data to build a better guest experience to maximize revenue
At Portier, our devices help hotels to maximize the revenue from each guest. Our guests in Phuket and Samui spend on average 70 minutes per day exploring a hotels offerings. In the process of these 70 minutes, our devices collect enough data to help hotels to uncover insights and better understand guest trends.
In the following weeks, we will uncover data insights that can help Thai hoteliers to better understand and monetize their guests.
Three key metrics for Spas in Thailand
In a recent analysis of Thailand, we uncovered the following three metrics that can help hoteliers to better understand how and when to engage guests to purchase spa treatments.
Chinese guests are 200% more likely to to reach out to the hotel after reading a promotional message from a Portier device as they are after reading another piece of content (menu, info, etc).
42.8% of spa related content is consumed between 3pm till 7pm in city hotels
40.7% of spa related content is consumed between 1pm till 5pm in resort hotels
What this means for hoteliers
These data insights, while often intuitive, can help hotels to more effectively understand when a guest is more receptive and how to engage those guests.
If a city hotel is looking to increase the number of bookings at its spa, our data suggests that it is twice as effective to send a promotional message at 5pm, as the guest returns from a day of sightseeing, than merely hoping that the guest will discover the spa in the compendium.
On the other hand, resort hotels looking to increase spa bookings might want to send or schedule a promotional spa message at 2pm, inviting the guest to get out of the sun and to enjoy a treatment before they go to dinner.
How Hotelier can use data to drive revenue
As the market for travelers becomes more and more competitive, blending data with five star services will be paramount to creating an environment that guests will continue to spend money in.
Understanding not only what but when to engage guests in activities that encourage them to spend additional dollars at the hotel will be critical to ensuring that hotels remain profitable even in a time of increasing numbers of rooms and decreasing numbers of travelers.