Undoubtedly, the travel industry is going through the greatest challenge it has ever faced, at least in the modern era. While countries continue to be in lockdown, with no end in sight, there is a natural instinct to avoid talking about the time after COVID-19. However, given the losses that hotels in particular, will have to face up to, there will be no avoiding the need for recovery when business begins to return again.
Below, we look at some of the topics hotels will have to pay attention to, in order to get more income out of the first, and likely fewer, guests that will stay at the properties.
Guest Engagement Drive
As we have extensively pointed out the importance of guest engagement (explore the 7 most pertinent guest engagement strategies HERE), there is arguably a very limited need to do a deep-dive here. Having said that, many hoteliers seem to miss the importance of deploying the most suitable technology when it comes to actually improving guest engagement. The correctly selected technology drives engagement and delivers financial returns that most other initiatives can only dream of.
As you can read HERE, guest engagement on and off property can lead to an increase in guest spending of 45%! Such an uplift would certainly help you hit the ground running again. In that sense, post COVID-19, guest engagement will likely become the talk of the town.
Data Insights
Guest engagement will get you the attention and the eyeballs needed to deliver more to your bottom line, but that's only half the job! Having the audience to sell spa treatments, airport transfers and more to is one thing, but understanding what they need is the pinnacle.
For hoteliers, it will be of paramount importance what guests do and consume at the hotel and across the destination, so personalization at scale can become a reality. If you simply analyse past consumption patterns available on your PMS system, you will not be able to interpret changing behavior on-the-go, and will ultimately miss out on promoting your services when they are most relevant. Read HERE to understand what type of data our hotel partners action and benefit from.
Dynamic Adjustments
Finally, once you have the attention of your audience and you understand their behavior and therefore, you can anticipate their likes and dislikes, you have to make sure your property and services match the newly discovered consumption patterns.
For example, a number of our hotel partners based in some of the more remote corners of Thailand analyzed the patterns the Portier Platform delivered to them and understood that offering floating breakfasts is particularly relevant to guests from China. As a result, they introduced the above as a new breakfast option. In the same sense, just the simple fact that we will have gone through a global pandemic might change guest needs, and hotels will have to dynamically adjust their service offerings to match this new wave of travelers.
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