A recent article featured on Tnooz focused on the value of big data and how, up to this point, it has mostly served to complexify and confuse the hospitality industry.
The analysis, which was collated by Margaret Ady, Head of Marketing for Snapshot, spoke about how hoteliers continue to use, endure and navigate through the multitude of different softwares built to serve different purposes in order to carry out daily operations – all of which individually, work perfectly on their own but not together. This can leave hoteliers struggling to simply manage, collate and make sense of all the data provided by each system, “They [software] float around serving little purpose rather than working in unison toward a common goal.”
The article went onto highlight five ways in which big data will evolve in 2017 to better serve the hospitality industry and ultimately better serve guests i.e.
- Integration: A topic close to our hearts and something we discuss on our own blog is how the integration of software is imperative to avoid “data silos”. With integrated software, data instantly becomes more usable. Which leads to her second point, ”predictive intelligence”.
- Predictive Intelligence: Properly integrated software leads to dynamic dashboards, where hoteliers can easily see an integrated view of business performance and operations within a single time frame from all systems. With a set up like this, hoteliers can make informed sales and marketing decisions such and create specifically designed messages to reach the right guest at the right time.
- Big revenue Management: Basically this is a combo of both integration and predicative intelligence. Hoteliers need to integrate all data points in order to take full advantage of big data i.e. instead of solely relying on the PMS and CRS to understand and predict revenue based on rooms, the industry needs to move to focus on the value of the guest, “data about guests and about other forces outside of a property’s control – weather, events, competitor rates, etc – must be integrated for maximum revenue management opportunities.”
- Better Communication: The use of chat services in some industries such as retail and hospitality has grown over the past year, however the use of chat services for internal communications for file and data sharing is also a great way to improve the way hotels communicate and run their businesses. In fact, “this form of communication will be the glue that ties all hotel software together, drastically improving internal communication and data accessibility.”
- Mobile: Last but not least, mobile; another topic close to our hearts. And while a lot of the time mobile is spoke about from a guest point of view, mobile is, in many ways, faster and more effective from an operational standpoint. “When it comes to big data, going real-time and mobile is essential to ensuring that multiple people on a property have the same access to the same high-level data at the same time for informed guest service and the best strategic thinking.” – We’re 100% behind this thinking!
Data, there’s a lot of it, that’s for sure and 2017 has been ear marked as the year that data will start to become more manageable allowing savvy hoteliers to do valuable things. With integrated systems hoteliers will have a better understand of the guest and a greater ability to customize data to serve specific purposes, such as improve operations leading to the delivery of a more personalised guest experience. With a personalised experience come greater customer satisfaction, loyalty and an improved bottom line.
