THE TRAVEL-TECH FEED

The emergence of new technologies has drastically affected all aspects of life including the hotel industry; however, as a hotelier, how can you reimagine old hotel classics with new technology in order to keep improving the experience for everyone?

One of the first places that guests directly interact with hotels is at the front desk. However, we all know that each traveler is unique. What may work with one traveler will not work for the other and vice versa. As such, some prefer talking with an employee when checking in. However, others don’t want to talk with anyone. In fact, 85% of people have used self-service kiosks and when given the choice are more likely to use them. By providing this option, you give guests the option of quick check-in and check-out with complete autonomy.

Another point that hotels are improving is the convenience of guests stays. They do not want their guests to be disturbed or interrupted by anything.

One of the big technologies to help with this is keyless entries. Long gone are the days of waiting at the front desk to get your swipe card programmed or trying to swipe your room key multiple times only to have it not work. Now you can simply use an app from your phone to enter your room! However, that is only the beginning of what hotels are doing with regards to technology. For example, similar to your home, they are adding smart devices to make your life easier, more things to watch with services such as Netflix, and AI-powered concierge services to get you whatever you need.

Hotels are also upgrading legacy services to catch up with the modern age. For example, mini-bars have long been a staple in hotel rooms. They were a great way to provide instant gratification for the customer.

However, this old structure was expensive and difficult to maintain. For example, the Four Seasons started a ‘fast delivery’ program that would allow guests to order out food and have it be directly delivered to their room. In addition, Plum in-room wine offers single pour wines directly in your room. This is so effective that they boast rates of 20% versus the traditional 1% capture of traditional mini-bars.

Not only are these more cost-effective, but they also provide a more customized and guest-centered experience that makes everyone happier at the end of the day.

As such, no matter the size of the hotel, if they want to adapt they need to reimagine old hotel classics by embracing new technologies.

We all know that that hotel guest loyalty is important that it is much easier to sell to an existing client that a new one, but what things must you do in order to make guest loyalty work?

Most hotels would say that all guests are equal, both new and old ones. However, according to studies, we have to take that with a bit of a caveat. In a study in Harvard Business Review, getting a new customer can be anywhere from 5 to 25 times more expensive than retaining an old one. In addition, Frederick Reichheld of Bain & Company found that if you increase your customer retention rate by as little as 5% you can increase profits anywhere from 25 to 95%! Lastly, customers are willing to spend up to $25 more with their preferred brand of hotels. As such, while previous customers are not necessarily any more important that new customers, there are many advantages to working on building customer loyalty.

However, what things can you do to build and increase your customer loyalty?
It is important that you make a great first impression. From here you can build upon your customer’s great experience. A great way to do this is by making the booking process really simple. No one likes a slow and difficult booking process. Most customers won’t even bother and just go to one of your competitors that do it better. Additionally, you can build a great impression by including tasteful personal touches for each customer such as concierge services and in room gifts.

Additionally, it is important to offer your customers incentives when booking a room with you. Not only does this help get new customers, but it also helps make them repeat customers. Incentive packages can be anything from gift baskets to loyalty points rewards programs. The most important thing is that you make sure to target your hotel’s core audience and offer a diverse range of rewards.

In our day and age, in order to better build customer loyalty, it is important to invest in technology. A great example of this is smart email campaigns to turn one time customers into lasting ones. In addition, you can invest in optimized CPC marketing campaigns that use cloud-based property management technology so that you can spend less time marketing and more time giving your customers the best hotel stay experience possible.

Now that we know several things you can do in order to help build your customers’ loyalty, it is also important to know some of the pitfalls to avoid that can quickly destroy it. While there are many things you should avoid, one of the main ones is not living up to your customers’ expectations. If you are painting a certain image of your company online, make sure that you live up to it. In addition, make sure to ask for customer feedback. If you don’t many customers will think that you do not care on improving their future experience, and thus they won’t want to come back. Lastly, don’t let the operational side of running a hotel get in the way of providing your customers a great experience. If you do, they will realize that they aren’t your first priority and quickly leave and never come back.

We all know that technology is affecting the operational economic models in travel; however, how has technology changed the way consumers book and research travel?

Technology in the travel industry is constantly changing what customers expect. This is especially true in how travel customers research and buy. As such, companies in this industry need to focus on how to gain customers by making this experience not only easy, but inspiring.

Mobile has drastically revolutionized how we book travel. Through Google’s concept of micro-moments, we can see that on average a person will have around 150 separate sessions of at least 1 minute 10 seconds per day. Needless to say, this leaves open plenty of opportunities for travel companies to get in front of and influence potential customers.

This new climate has opened up a new travel booking journey. Previously, you might have had to go to a travel agent or call them on the phone. However, you can now instantly book flights right at your fingertips.

The convenience of booking flights from your phone has also lead to convenience in other mobile travel sectors such as mobile digital wallets. With the addition of tokenization that adds an added layer of biometric security, digital wallets are quickly spreading throughout the travel world.

Additionally, messaging has become a big frontier in the travel industry. In fact, in a large part of the world, messaging dominates. Needless to say, the integration of SMS or WhatsApp in order to book travel is becoming more and more prevalent. It is also only getting better with the addition of AI and messaging services.

Technology is also helping build trust by the travel consumer and the travel industry. In fact, it is quickly reshaping how consumers make travel choices. According to Nielsen research, online consumer opinions are the 3rd most trusted source of advertising with 66% of travelers trusting it. It only falls behind friends and family at 83% and branded websites at 70%. Needless to say, technology is allowing travelers to better trust travel brands.

As a hotelier, the hotel guest experience is extremely important; however, what are the relevant metrics you should be looking at in order to improve your niche?

The most important thing to increase profits for your hotel is to treat your customers right. In fact, up to 70% of their buying experience is based on how they feel that they are being treated. As such, you need to make sure that you focus on the customer experience. This includes before they even check-in! However, it is very important that you make sure their entire experience from booking to departure is consistent. If you are promising them a 5 star experience, make sure the entire stay is 5 stars. By focusing on your guests’ positive experience at your hotel, they will help bring you more business in the future.

Building on the previous point, make sure that your customer service is top notch. In our modern information age, customers will not tolerate bad service. In fact, they are much more likely to ditch you for a competitor due to bad service rather than based on your product or price. Bad service will not only result in loss of business but also loss of reputation.

Additionally, customers will pay more money for a good experience. In fact, according to studies, 55% of customers will pay a premium price for a “guaranteed good experience”. This gives you great opportunities to cross-sell and upsell. However, don’t forget, if you are making them pay more money, make sure that you are providing them with a higher quality experience.

In our day and age, going online and being mobile is not only important, it is necessary. In fact, according to studies, in 2018, there were 27.8 billion more searches on mobile devices than on desktops! This means that you should be everywhere your customer is including review sites, social media, and OTAs.

Lastly, you need to focus on a holistic approach to enhancing your guests’ experience. This is important because 96% of unhappy customers won’t complain; rather, 91% of those people just never come back to your hotel. In addition, most of them will end up telling around 9 to 15 people about their bad experience, with around 13% of unhappy customers telling more than 20 people! As such, you can’t just rely on reactive customer feedback because quicker than you might realize, you will be losing a lot of past and potential customers. Therefore, it is important to proactively engage your customers to get feedback because it is 6 to 7 times more difficult to gain a new customer than to keep an existing one.

We know that hotels of today aren’t like before; however, what are the big trends and how can we implement them?

One of the biggest trends in today’s hotels is the integration of technology in order to enhance the guest experience. This includes everything from before to after your hotel stay.

For example, one of the biggest things visitors want to know before even booking a hotel room is how does it look? Previously, this meant simple 2D pictures. Unfortunately, you can only show so much. Today, many hotels are including augmented or virtual reality tours of hotel rooms and spaces, so that potential guest can get a true feel of the place before booking.

Building on this technological approach, sometimes pictures might not be enough. Therefore, many hotels also include chatbots to help provide around the clock service to potential customers. They are there all the time to help answer any questions that you might have about the hotel.

Our society has become independent on smartphones and apps. Once you have decided on booking a hotel room, there are plenty of specialized apps to help you do so. For example, Hotel Tonight is a great app that can help you find cheap and nice last minute hotel deals all over the world.

Once, your customer has booked their rooms online, you want to make their stay as enjoyable as possible. One of the biggest things that can negatively affect a customer’s experience is waiting in line. Therefore, many hotels have included mobile check-in and check-out. Not only does this reduce waiting time, it also give guests the option to easily select add-ons such as late check-out.

Now that you got guests in your hotel, you want to provide them with the best experience possible. Many hotels are doing this through the implementation of technology in the room. For example, hotels such as the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas has an AI concierge service that can help guests make reservations, provide them with menus, and even make suggestions on fun things to do. Additionally, rooms are quickly become “smart” with devices such as Alexa so that we can easily control temperature with our voice. Lastly, hotels are using data in order to better personalize guests’ experience. For example, say you stay at a hotel a couple times. Each time you stay you ask for extra pillows and towels. Using this data, the next time you stay at the hotel, your extra pillows and towels will already be waiting for you in your room!

Hotels have also taking a page out of the airlines’ book by including subscription based hotel perks. Now they also offer rewards for the more money you spend with them.

Hotels have also invested in technology to make employees safer. By doing so, they make the hotel safer in turn. Some of this technology includes goelocating in order to exactly pinpoint where employees are in the hotel. This means if something goes wrong, they are better able to help you.

Lastly, getting away from technology, hotels have realized that a one size fits all approach doesn’t work with guests anymore. Rather, they have focused on decorating hotels in order to give guests a better feel of the local area.

Hotel guests are always demanding for more and it can make it hard to keep up; however, in 2019, what are the biggest things that they are looking for when staying at your hotel?

Hotel guests expect a lot of things when staying at a hotel. One of the most important things is their hotel amenities.

While it is currently the trend to provide your guests with all of the latest technological gadgets in their rooms in order to make their experiences as personalized as possible, it is important to not forget to cover the basics first. In fact, according to a 2018 Cornell University study, the most used hotel amenities as actually the iron, safe, hairdryer, television, complimentary toiletries, and closet.

However, it is important to not forget technology, especially with the market penetration of smartphones. According to an Openkey survey, 98% of guests expect high-speed internet, 88% expect charging ports for their device, and 50% even expect their phone to be their room key!

With regards to the booking experience, guests expect that it is extremely personalized. For example, they expect you to anticipate what they need based off of their previous stays. However, at the same time, they are afraid of providing too much personal information. This means that you need to be very transparent about how you handle their data.

Additionally, metasearch is becoming very important. In fact, 73% of travelers are using it in order to find and make bookings. According to Phocuswright, 2/3 of hotels get direct booking due to metasearch. Therefore, as a hotel, you need to take advantage of it by optimizing your profile in order to pique potential customers’ interest.

The booking experience is also very important as it offers you a great chance to inspire potential guests. According to an Expedia survey, most travelers are often choosing from multiple destinations for their future vacation plans and need some inspiration as to which one to choose. A great way to do this is by not just advertising your hotel, but to advertise the location with beautiful pictures so that they can see all the great things to do and see during their stay.

Once you have the guests at your location, it doesn’t mean you should stop. In fact, it is very important to give them a great experience. A great way to do this is by providing an authentic local experience. You can do this by not only showing the destinations with local guides and taking them on the local culinary tour but by also decorating their rooms with a local flavor.

While it might seem strange, one of the greatest ways to make your guests’ experience great is by making them feel like they are at home with services such as Netflix and appliances such as in-room coffee makers.

Guests also look at a hotel’s reputation as a deciding factor as to whether or not to stay there. They tend to get this by reading reviews from other guests. In fact, 97% of millennials share photos and videos of their travel experience. Therefore, it is important that you make it as easy as possible for them to get their Instagram worth pictures.

However, more than just pictures, guests are also looking for hotels that are environmentally conscious. So make sure to highlight things such as your renewable energy initiatives and recycling programs.

Business travel is constantly growing and changing; however, how has technology made a stressful process a bit easier?
One of the biggest changes in business travel is how companies view it. Previously, most companies looked at travel and traveling for business as two separate and distinct things. However, that is not the case anymore, especially with the advent of nonstop connectivity. For example, now I can email from a plane exactly the same as I can from my office.

As such it is important to change how we look at business travel and see it as not just a step to a goal but an integral part of the business process. This is where technology and things such as AI can help make the process more efficient.

However, a strong travel culture is not only important for your business because it can make you more efficient. In fact, according to research by the Harvard Business Review, a strong company travel culture can make your customers more loyal by 50%, increase your market share by 43%, and improve your employee satisfaction by 35%!

AI and data science is completely changing and improving the business travel experience. More specifically, it is doing this by personalizing your travel. This helps reduce the amount of time wasted planning a trip. Now using AI, you can get all the small travel details right so that you can use your business trip most efficiently. For example, using your previous travel history, it can help book a hotel room that you would like, rent a car, and suggest places to eat during your trip.

One of the worst and most stressful things about business travel when arriving at a new destination is getting around. AI with GPS can solve this problem by either directing you around traffic when driving even though you have never been to the place before or even make suggestions on the quickest public transportation routes.

Additionally, AI helps keep you safe. This is especially important if you are in a new place or country where the norms are very different and you don’t know who to trust. By aggregating data, AI apps can help you make quick and informed decisions on what to do. While you could do all the research ahead of time, as a busy business traveller, do you even have the time?

While on business trips, you are there for your company. However, everyone knows that if you don’t take some personal time, you won’t be able to work at your best. AI can also help here by suggesting places to eat and things to do on your time off.

Lastly, technology allows you to aggregate, report, and optimize your business travel. Now rather than just telling your boss that your trip cost X amount, you can show them that it helped build X dollars of business while costing X% less than a regular business trip.