Maverick is part of SHR’s larger vision of the Force10 engine; a combination of tightly integrated, revenue generating applications empowered by artificial intelligence (AI).

In keeping with the company’s mission to simplify the complex world of hoteliers with innovation and superior service, Maverick is set up to deliver more revenue with better management of campaigns and loyalty programs because it provides valuable guest information not currently found in most of today’s CRMs.

“The addition of Maverick to our product portfolio allows us to deliver another well-integrated application in a suite of applications that enables our clients to drive more revenue,” said Rod Jimenez, CEO and Co-Founder of SHR. “We all know that when trying to integrate disparate systems like a CRS and a CRM, full two-way communication is virtually impossible. In Maverick, hoteliers benefit from its integration with Windsurfer, so fields are not lost when data crosses between the two and personalization can happen because guest profiles are more robust.”

Headquartered in Houston, Texas, with offices in Europe and Asia-Pacific, SHR is a leading provider of meaningful technology that helps hotels execute their best revenue generation strategies. With a history of innovation starting with Windsurfer® CRS, SHR serves thousands of properties around the globe with an evolving suite of AI-driven solutions, ranging from high-level distribution to intricate guest management. In addition, the company offers Revenue Management for Hire to brands, chains, and management companies. SHR brings hoteliers nimble, real-world technology, intelligently supported by tested industry experts—keeping hotels competitive.

Maverick, available at ITB Berlin 2020, is the second offering from the company’s growing suite of unique AI-driven hospitality tech solutions. The first, Wave RMS, was announced last year, at HITEC.  The two, working together with the Windsurfer® CRS, form the foundation of what the company expects will be a much more powerful way for hotels to maximize the results of their revenue generation activities.

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Hotel technology solution provider For-Sight has announced the launch of For-Sight Guest Engagement a next-generation hotel marketing and CRM solution. The Edinburgh, Scotland-based developer of software solutions, including For-Sight Guest CRM, delivers world-class data management solutions, marketing tools and support specifically geared to the hotel sector. The company will demonstrate the new platform capabilities at this month’s Independent Hotel Show 2019 in London.

For-Sight Guest Engagement unites Hotel technology systems to turn siloed guest data from your Property Management System (PMS) and other core transactional hotel systems including Restaurant Bookings, Reputation Management, Spa and WiFi registration, to name a few, into a central source of truth for each guest and their journey through every hotel touchpoint.

For-Sight Guest Engagement is a trusted solution of brands such as Village Hotels, Jurys Inn, Crieff Hydro Family of Hotels, Cameron House, Galgorm Spa & Golf Resort, The Hotel Folk and many more.

The solution provides the ability to run deep dive queries into guest data using tools such as RFM (Recency, Frequency and Monetary) to identify and segment audiences for targeted, relevant and in-context omnichannel (email, SMS, Social and App) messaging, enhancing the guest experience and driving upsell opportunities.

“For-Sight Guest Engagement represents the next step in allowing hoteliers to achieve true personalisation with their marketing efforts, building off the success of its predecessor For-Sight Guest CRM,” said Allan Nelson, CEO & Co-founder of For-Sight.

“Guests are bombarded with digital content every day and the only way to make sure your offer reaches them is to make it speak specifically to them and their unique circumstances,” said Nelson. “Our hotel partners have seen ROI spike when using our solutions to provide an enhanced, personalised, guest experience with returns as high as 35:1, or over 3,500% on initial investment, on campaigns to drive direct bookings.”

To ensure hoteliers investment is maximised, For-Sight Guest Engagement visualises and reports on your campaigns, guest data and performance with a suite of built in reports empowering hotel operators to take action on key metrics and make informed decisions based on hard data and results.

“Working with our hotel partners we have created an enhanced platform that is not only easy to use but delivers real results and empowers hoteliers to deliver on the potential of their business,” said Nelson. “My team and I are delighted to be able to share this with you at the Independent Hotel Show this year.”

For-Sight, a wholly owned subsidiary of Forth Communication, will be exhibiting at the Independent Hotel Show 15-16 October at the Olympia London. Hoteliers will be able to get a hands-on preview of For-Sight Guest Engagement on Stand N40 or can register for a demo here.

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Most hoteliers know how to adjust their strategies in anticipation of upcoming trends, but guest data provides the key that will unlock profitable opportunities during traditionally low periods of the year.

The problem is that hoteliers struggle with their guest data. According to hotel data company Revinate, many admit that it’s difficult to make data meaningful and find the information unstructured. While this may be true in many cases there are great CRM tools available such as Batchbook that allow you to learn more about your clients in one place and build a relationship with them – and that leads on to the all-important client engagement.

Data collection is a powerful tool for hoteliers, and many are properly managing personal data for its long-term value. An email address helps connect guest data across multiple platforms.  It’s an important factor for noticing patterns and touch points related to pre-trip, in-stay and post-trip data. Personalized email campaigns that can drive bookings and repeat stays, enabling hotels to have better occupancy rates hand-in-hand with brand loyalty.

While peak season keeps the website and location buzzing, low season is the best time to keep in touch and a dialogue going with your guests.   Stay in touch with your clients through text messages and social platforms as well as emails, to maintain brand awareness and generate booking and location excitement throughout the year. Social media enables you to share content that inspires your followers during the low season. It’s also a great way to gather testimonials and customer reviews.

With personalization becoming a priority for many hoteliers, so is the founding need for analytical insights. Hotels can learn to collate across multiple touch points and data profiling to deliver a better customer experience.

This applies all year round but by structuring your data queries to focus on key periods that need a boost and using the best revenue management tools you can act with confidence.

Get Personal

According to MarketingProfs, email marketing is one of the most effective channels for over 5o% of marketers, coming second only to a hotel’s direct website.  An email address helps connect guest data across multiple platforms. It becomes an important factor for noticing patterns and touch points related to pre-trip, in-stay and post-trip data.

A report from SiteMinder shows that almost 80% of hoteliers believe that prioritizing guest personalization and experience would bring the most success to them, followed by branding at 67%.

Keep your guests informed. Let them know about your latest deals and offerings. You’ll gain deeper insights into the behaviour of your clients and better understand what motivates them.  You can use this data to send targeted off-season deals.

Ask customers to share their suggestions, stories and experiences and what they want next from their visit. The key here is to keep a dialogue going with your guests and tap into what inspires them to book.

Targeted Off-Season Promotions

This is crucial. Use knowledge about your customers—likes and dislikes—to promote specific destinations, hotels and experiences during low seasons, particularly when it comes to special discounts.  This is your area and you know it better than anyone, which is a major advantage when selecting and recommending local activities, restaurants and experiences.

If your hotel proposes a plan that includes accommodation, a tour, and some places in the city where you can beat the crowds and take the best pics, it will make a difference. Destination content technology companies such as Smartvel provide local information in real time. The information they provide enables hotels to enhance the customer experience, allowing customised plans for travellers but also opportunities and scope to negotiate a fair kick back from subsequent bookings and reservations.

Offering special deals to loyal customers—additional room nights, discounts on transfers, tickets and experiences is a great way to offset seasonal lows. Use festivals, sporting events, concerts and movie promotion shows and pop culture tie-ins to fill the sales gap.

The tours and events market is huge and has become a multi- billion dollar global industry. By positioning the hotel as the focal point of the destination and offering this as part of your product, you will increase revenue and room occupancy.

The prices of ancillaries can be used to recoup the difference in hotel room rates. Creating exciting content on social media such as early bird offers, and cleverly planned hashtag campaigns can help turn an audience into paying customers.

Smart Advertising and MICE

Show your property in different ways. The hospitality industry in particular thrives on this. Suite-level rooms for business travellers for an off-season low budget trip can be an effective marketing tactic.  

Business travellers are not influenced by seasonal trends and this helps the tourism sector continue to thrive all year around.

The MICE sector is extremely profitable. The combination of meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions, is now an integral part of the global hospitality industry. It stood at $752 billion in 2016 and is projected to grow at 7.5 per cent in the next five years.

Targeting delegations can help even smaller operators earn a healthy profit, as these groups, particularly the smaller ones, often tend to look for unique and tailor-made services in terms of accommodation and tours. More travellers are combining work with leisure activities in their business destination, which again presents a great opportunity for travel agents and tour operators to keep sales going during off-seasons.

Innovative strategies to maximize revenue is key for hoteliers, destination management companies and travel agencies. A marketing framework is necessary in order to maximize the scale of profitability during low season. These are sales gaps which with clever marketing strategies can actually turn seasonal lows into highs.

Phan Le, CEO and Founder VLeisure, a Vietnam-based B2B global travel network platform that empowers agencies to manage and distribute travel products and services to their online partners. We have access to over 50,000 hotels across the globe and are big advocates of maintaining profit throughout the year. With our global network of travel suppliers, you can now access a rich product database.

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This week, the company announced its latest upgrade. According to reports, it has implemented a new CRM platform and mobile application designed to drive improved sales growth while ensuring standardized and efficient operations. By integrating technologies into a single, scalable system, the company aims to make it easier for its franchisees and owners to do business with the global hotel group.

The cloud-based solution was built on Salesforce Sales Cloud and Salesforce Community Cloud. It was implemented in one fell swoop across the company’s Americas portfolio, including Radisson Blu, Radisson, Radisson RED, Park Inn by Radisson and Country Inn & Suites by Radisson.

The primary goal of the initiative is to equip owners and franchisees — whether the owner of a single Country Inn & Suites by Radisson or an owner with a portfolio of hotels across multiple brands and countries — with standardized tools and information that helps them to apply for, open and operate their Radisson Hotel Group properties with greater ease.

“We continue to look at all the investments we are making through the lens of our owners and franchisees and this new platform allows us to dramatically standardize, digitize and automate our owner, franchisee, and global sales engagement model,” said Ken Greene, Radisson Hotel Group president, Americas, in a company statement. “We look forward to continuing our collaboration with Accenture to improve efficiencies across the company and fuel our future growth plans.”

As part of the project, the company, working in partnership with global consulting firm Accenture, helped develop “Community by Radisson Hotel Group,” an owner / management facing website that provides a more personalized, cross-functional approach to improve the owner and franchisee experience. The solution helps owners and franchisees to easily and consistently onboard hotels, maintain brand standards, and respond to sales opportunities.

The new solution is designed to consolidate the franchise-owner touchpoints into a single portal that provides standardized processes for operational effectiveness. “The single-platform solution gives our franchisees the ability to analyze, consolidate and segment system data to personalize the right experience at the right time, enhancing their decision-making capabilities and enabling them to respond more quickly to ever-changing guest expectations,” said Aly El-Bassuni, Radisson Hotel Group senior vice president of Franchise Operations, Americas, in a press statement.

Last month, as reported here, Radisson Hotel Group launched its new multi-brand and mobile-first global website, RadissonHotels.com. The website also serves as the unique platform for Radisson Rewards members and is the focal point of the group’s new multi-brand approach to hospitality under the Radisson Hotels umbrella.

The launch of the new website as well as its new guest-facing app are part of the company’s five-year strategic plan, announced last year, which includes a strong digital transformation component, including investments into new platforms and technology.

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Conveniently situated in the heart of Manhattan, Apple Core Hotels includes four boutique locations:  The Hotel at Times Square, The Hotel at Fifth Avenue, The Broadway at Times Square Hotel, and The Hotel at New York City. All are located in the heart of Manhattan, from 30th Street to 46th Street, and from Broadway to Lexington Avenue.

Cendyn will implement CRM at Apple Core’s hotels, bringing to light intuitive marketing automation and guest intelligence. This will mobilize Apple Core Hotels to employ data collected from multiple channels to gain an accurate, single source of truth for each guest.

This visibility and accessibility will provide each Apple Core property a clear understanding of its guest history and preferences in real time, while providing total chain visibility to hotel management for all locations.

Moreover, Cendyn eInsight CRM will help Apple Core Hotels further personalize a guest experience that empowers exceptional service, leverage tools that build lasting brand loyalty, and drive direct bookings.

Cendyn is a cloud-based software and services provider that develops integrated technology platforms for driving sales and marketing performance in the travel and hospitality industry. With offices in Boca Raton, Atlanta, Boston, San Diego, Whistler, London, Munich, Singapore, Sydney, Bangkok and Tokyo, Cendyn serves more than 30,000 clients in 143 countries, sending over 1.5 billion personalized communications on behalf of their customers every year.

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Today’s typical online travel consumer is exposed to more than 38,983 micro-moments in a 60-day timeframe and visits an average of 18 websites via multiple devices across eight sessions before making a hotel booking (Google Research).

With the explosion of the “digital way of life”, the customer journey has become increasingly complex, forcing hoteliers overhaul not only their corporate and marketing strategies, but also their technology stack in order to engage, acquire, service and retain these digitally-enabled travel consumers across multiple digital touch points and across all digital channels and devices.

Today’s hospitality is being transformed into a 100% digital technology-enabled industry powered by online, mobile, cloud, IoT, AI and blockchain tools and applications. Digital technology is making its way into every aspect of the industry: hotel operations, guest services and communications, revenue management, distribution, CRM and marketing.

Today’s hotelier must understand, know and use digital tech solutions in their everyday environment, and be able to assess, evaluate, recommend and acquire technology solutions to improve guest satisfaction, operational efficiencies and productivity, customer service and revenue.

Types of Guest-Facing Hospitality Digital Technology

If we set aside the traditional hotel operations, administrative/back office and HR technology, and the hotel engineering infrastructure and “mechanical” technology (all of which are typically “hidden” from the guests), there are two categories of guest-facing digital technology:

• Guest Engagement, Acquisition and Retention Technology – these are technology applications focused on engaging and bringing the guest to the property, continuing the conversation pre-, during and post-stay and eventually turning the guest into a loyal and repeat guest.
• Guest Services Technology – these are on-property hardware devices and appliances, and software applications (on premises or cloud-based) that provide or enhance guest services, improve guest comfort and satisfaction and enable customer service and communications.

Today, the vast majority of hoteliers are primarily focused on and investing in Guest Services Technology, while underinvesting in Guest Engagement, Acquisition and Retention Technology.

Unlike hoteliers, the OTAs are focused exclusively and investing only in Guest Engagement, Acquisition and Retention Technology since they do not have to worry about on-property technology and guest experiences. In other words, hoteliers’ technology focus and investments end where the OTA focus and investment begin.

It’s no wonder that over the last 6 years the OTAs have increased their market share by over 40% at the expense of the hotel direct channel. By investing heavily in technology applications to engage the traveler at all possible touchpoints of the customer journey, OTAs have monopolized the guest relationships and left hoteliers in the dust.

This is particularly true for independent hotels and resorts, smaller and mid-size hotel brands.

Guest Engagement, Acquisition and Retention Technology

There are crucial aspects of the Guest Engagement, Acquisition and Retention Technology category which the hospitality industry is ignoring, not exceling in, or dramatically falling behind in including:

Online Distribution Technology: Over the past 15 years or so, the industry has become somewhat better at adopting online distribution technology: cloud-based website booking engines (WBE), central reservation systems (CRS) and channel management platforms. Yet, many independent hoteliers still utilize separate WBEs, CRS, and Channel Management vendors. WBEs are used that are not mobile-friendly or have a weak uptime record, and some hotels are even a WBE and CRS provided by an OTA. To reduce friction and lower costs and vendor management efforts, evaluate and select a cloud-based distribution technology vendor that provides all three capabilities: WBE with proven user experience (UX) record, CRS, and Channel Manager, naturally with a two-way API tom your property’s PMS.

Revenue Management Technology: Over 95% of independent hotels, resorts and casinos do not have an adequate Revenue Management System (RMS). An RMS is a predictive analytics tech platform for accurate and often real-time data processing, demand forecasting, pricing and segment optimization, and channel optimization. An RMS allows the property to sell rooms at the right price, at the right time, through the right channels, and to the right customers, which can result in significant increases in occupancy and revenue. Look for a cloud-based RMS which have lower implementation and ongoing SaaS costs, typically priced per room/month.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Technology: Over 95% of independents have no meaningful CRM application as part of their hotel tech stack. A CRM technology platform typically provides guest profile data management with ongoing cleansing and de-duping, guest pre-stay communications, in-stay communications, post-stay communications, guest satisfaction surveys, marketing automation, ongoing marketing, loyalty and guest recognition programs. If your property’s repeat guests are 10% and above, you need a CRM solution to help you double or triple that number. A cloud-based CRM is the way to go today.

Online Reputation Management Technology (ORM): Monitoring and reacting to your customer reviews has become a must-do in hospitality. An ORM system typically includes sentiment analysis, comp set analysis, reputation monitoring, guest satisfaction surveys, and analytics. Using ORM, hotels can understand what the sentiments of the traveling public are toward their property versus their competition, and can proactively impact their guests’ online reviews and ratings by better understanding their guests and by making improvements that address issues brought up in reviews. By default, ORM services today are cloud and subscription-based.

Digital Marketing Technology: All marketing efforts of the property involve digital technology and applications. Marketing is used to engage travel consumers in the Dreaming and Planning Phases, acquiring them in the Booking Phase, and re-engaging them in the Reminiscence and post-stay phase. The digital marketing tech stack includes:

• SEO technology to manage rankings, monitor competition and provide keyword and ranking recommendations.
• Dynamic rate marketing applications to engage and convert customers who have expressed interest to travel to your destination.
• Programmatic and native display advertising.
• Metasearch marketing.
• Multichannel campaign applications for offers and promotions.
• Audience segmentation applications.
• Demand side platforms (DSP).
• Email marketing technology.
• Social media management tools.

Typically, independents and mid-size or smaller hotel brands outsource digital technology needs to specialized tech-enabled digital marketing firms.

Website Technology: The property or hotel brand website has become the gravitational center of all hotelier’s efforts to engage, acquire and retain the customer. Any marketing efforts of the hotel today lead the potential customers to the hotel website. Today’s website technology includes cloud-based Content Management System (CMS), comprehensive merchandising suites, reservation abandonment tools, personalization pricing and content, technical SEO, cloud hosting, and robust analytics suite

Case Study: What Should Your Website Technology Do?

Many hoteliers often fail to understand the crucial role the hotel website and its user experience (UX) plays in the overall health of the property and the bottom line. With nearly 59% of online travelers now visiting the hotel website from mobile devices, a mobile-first website design is a must.

According to Google, 53% of visits are abandoned if a mobile site takes longer than three seconds to load. On average, hotel websites download in 6 seconds or more. Mobile-first responsive website with cloud hosting and CDN (Content Delivery Network) provides far better server response times and faster download speeds.

Your property’s mobile-first website must be backed by a mobile-first website technology platform and Content Management System (CMS) that includes mobile-first functionalities specific to the hoteliers’ needs, such as:

• Mobile-first website design, ensuring an optimum mobile user experience and content access plus best-in-class UX booking path strategy to ensure users can easily complete a booking across devices.
• Automated Schema Markup on the mobile-first hotel website, which help the search engines understand the content and intent of websites, especially dynamic content elements.
• Google Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), greatly increasing hotel visibility and creating another entry point to boost mobile visitors and bookings.
• Advanced merchandising technology platform for pushing specials, including last-minute offers for mobile users as well as automatic time-based offers, etc.
• Personalization capabilities to target users with one-to-one marketing messages and promotions, based their demographic info, geo location, feeder market origin, loyalty member affiliation, and many more.
• Secure cloud hosting platform, featuring a full stack of automated download speed- enhancement tools and bandwidth, specifically designed for mobile users.

Today’s hoteliers must create and manage a robust digital presence and engage, acquire, service and retain travel consumers in this increasingly mobile-first world. They must understand and invest in digital technology and marketing that enables the best possible user experience, provides the best customer service, increases efficiencies and boosts revenues.

Guest Services Digital Technology

Until recently, hotels offered better technology and amenities compared to many guests’ own homes. This is no longer the case. Quite often, today’s travel consumer enjoys better technology and amenities at home: high-speed internet, voice assistants like Alexa, streaming media like Hulu or Netflix, smart TVs and IoT-enabled refrigerators and A/Cs.

From a technology perspective, the challenge to hoteliers is to create a hotel and room environment that at least matches but preferably exceeds their guests’ home environment. In other words, hotel and room technology, amenities, and features should be the same or better than what guests already enjoy at home. These include:

Smart Room Technology:

• High Speed Internet (HSIA): true HSIA of 200 – 500 Mbps
• Entertainment: including big screen 4K, Ultra HD or OLED smart TVs, seamless multimedia hubs to enable the “synching” of the guest-own streaming media accounts (Hulu, Amazon Fire TV, AppleTV, Google Play) with the room TV.
• Voice personal assistants: these natural language processing devices, typically based on Alexa or Google Home, allow the guest to access room service, facilitate guest requests, and manage utilities and amenities such as adjusting room temperature or lights.
• Smart Barista and Beverage Center: hubs that “know and remember” the guest’s preferences and taste.
• RFID keyless mobile device-enabled locks and security.
• Smart Utilities Management: through voice assistants, IoT controls, thermal occupancy sensors or hotel app (ex. Cirq+).
• Frictionless Messaging Communications: with front desk, housekeeping, engineering, concierge and room service (ex. ReviewPro, Zingle, Whistle).
• Issue Resolution Technology: guest incident tracking, logging, dispatching, and follow up. Virtually connect guests to housekeeping and engineering or work order automation (ex. Runtriz, Guestware)

The future of this technology is the Smart Guestroom which will be completely personalized to guest preferences and loyalty member profile. Hilton Hotels via their Connected Room and Marriott via their IoT Guestroom prototypes are already working on synching loyalty member profiles and preferences with the room experience: room temperature, lighting, bathroom accessories, streaming media preferences, beverages, bedding, and more. Recently Hilton CEO Christopher Nassetta stated: “Imagine a world where the room knows you, and you know your room.”

Self-Service Guest Technology: For DIY-obsessed consumers, self-service kiosks, devices, and mobile applications have already entered the marketplace and are enjoying wide adoption, both by hoteliers and guests. The most common devices and applications are:

• Hotel Check-in/Check-out Kiosks: these lobby-based devices typically provide guest Identification, room upgrades and special offers, early check-ins, room selection/assignment, online registration card and signature, acceptance of the hotel policies, credit card payments and keycards issuance.
• Mobile Apps: all major hotel chains, and many midsize/smaller hotel brands, provide their loyalty members with mobile check-in from anywhere, room selection/assignment, ability to customize stay, ability to receive alerts (traffic, weather, when the room is ready), get key from Mobile Check-in Desk or mobile key, credit card payments.
• Interactive Information Kiosks: these guest information kiosks serve as a 24/7 virtual concierge and information source for both property and destination information, which increases lobby functionality, shortens concierge wait times and enhances the guest experience.
• Virtual Concierge: these mobile or website apps allow 24/7 guest interaction via messaging with the Virtual Concierge, which can make suggestions, order services, and track the status of requests. This technology enhances the guest experience and generates additional revenue from auxiliary services and upsells.
• Chat Bots: these AI-powered applications have already received wide acceptance and adoption in the marketplace, especially for customer service and call center reservations. All OTAs and major hotel brands have deployed some form of chat bot or AI-powered customer service application. Some OTAs already handle as much as 85% of their online customer service via an AI-powered chat bot, which has led to huge cost-savings and improved customer satisfaction.
• Self-Ordering Kiosks: these F&B kiosks typically provide full menu ordering with real-time order information sent to the kitchen, inventory management, credit card payments, and printed or emailed receipts.

What are the main challenges for hotels to adopt digital technology?

Hoteliers are overwhelmed by the amount of technology, data, and digital marketing silos and the need to work with multitude of vendors in their guest acquisition and services efforts. The typical hotel uses a myriad of vendors that do not talk to each other, and in many cases do not even know each other. There will be one for CRM, a second for the property website, a third for SEO, a fourth for SEM, a fifth for online media, and so on.

Each property team, from revenue generation teams like RM, S&M and CRM to guest services teams such as housekeeping, engineering and front desk, operate in isolation of each other. Each team has its own technology tools, databases, and vendors which are not in communication with the other teams.

These are the major impediments to the industry becoming a digital technology-driven and technology-savvy industry:

• Reluctance to invest in digital technology: This reluctance to invest in digital technology comes from the lack of understanding that we are serving technology obsessed travel consumers who demand a hotel technological experience be equal or better to what they have at home. In this digital age, hospitality technology goes way beyond the flat-screen TV or the property PMS, and should focus on guest-facing digital technology applications and devices like streaming media hubs, voice assistants, messaging capabilities, mobile-first property website, personalization technology and one-to-one pricing and marketing applications.
• Antiquated accounting in hospitality: Most of the cloud Guest Engagement, Acquisition and Retention Technology solutions and many of the cloud Guest Services Technology applications are accounted for from the Sales, General and Administrative Expense section of the property P&L. In other words, these new technologies are not being amortized like capital expenses or considered COGS (Cost of Goods Sold). This singular fact makes many property owners and managers reluctant to invest in new types of digital technology applications, most of which are being sold to the property on a subscription SaaS basis.
• The technology and data fragmentation in hospitality is another big challenge and impediment to progress the industry faces today. Guest data lives in multiple “data islands” that do not talk to each other: PMS, CRM, CRS, Social Media, Web Analytics, Marketing Data, and BI. Very few properties and hotel companies can boast a single view on customer data with live data feeds from ALL touchpoints with the traveler.

In most instances, past guest data (CRM data) is not being utilized to engage and retain past guests. Quite often different teams at the property use different sets of data in their day-to-day operations, creating a total “data integrity mess,” which directly affects the property’s guest acquisition and retention efforts.

The goal here is very clear: bridge the guest data and technology silos in hospitality and create an end-to-end solution, empowering hotels to acquire new guests, engage current guests, and retain past guests by combining digital marketing, website, and CRM data into one cohesive marketing and personalization platform.

• Lack of proper education and professional development opportunities on digital hospitality technology and the latest technology innovations, trends and best practices. How many hospitality schools today teach hospitality technology courses? Only a few. New York University’s Tisch Center for Hospitality launched a brand-new course on Hospitality Technology in the Spring 2019 Semester, which is a great start to educating future hoteliers on the importance of technology in this industry.
• And finally, we have become an industry of buzzwords and flashy gadgets, in the hope of impressing guests, owners, and investors. These things show that your hotel brand is not “falling behind the curve.” Recently, an independent hotel introduced room service delivery robots, which would have been great if the rest of the hotel tech stack were in order, and if it weren’t for the 6-year old property website, and absence of any CRM technology.

Hotels should first focus on the fundamentals of the technology stack before implementing more advanced things.

Fragmentation in the hospitality tech sector

The global hospitality industry a highly fragmented industry with a lot of technology deficiencies and needs that require smart solutions. The U.S. hospitality industry is a $155 billion industry. This provides endless opportunities for smart technology vendors to thrive and service the industry with state-of-the-art solutions.

The technology and data fragmentation at the property or hotel chain, discussed above, is exacerbated further by the super fragmentation in hotel tech vendors. The industry needs fewer, as opposed to more, technology vendors servicing the industry. The industry has a “vendor deficit disorder” in the sense of being overwhelmed by the number of tech vendors and solutions out there.

In the same time, due to the increasing complexity of hotel tech and the need to implement cutting edge technologies like AI, Internet of Things (IoT), Voice Assistants, Chat Bots, Robotics, and Blockchain, smaller and under-funded tech vendors are already in need of significant investments to innovate and scale up. As a result, it’s expected there will be consolidation and M&A in hotel tech which will accelerate dramatically over the next few years.

What are the next generation hotel technology applications?

Hoteliers need to monitor, proactively inquire about and familiarize themselves with the Next Generation Technologies that are already making their way into hospitality, including Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), Voice Assistants, Chat Bots, Robotics, and Blockchain.

Hotel tech vendors are called upon to carry the technology torch and help the industry overcome its technology deficiencies and embrace this rising tide of digital technology-obsessed travel consumers. In the same time hoteliers need to embrace, learn about and invest in the next gen technologies already being adopted across the economy.

Labor-intensive hotel positions that involve repetitive or structured work such as housekeeping, customer service and call center reps, and F&B waiting staff will see wider adoption of robotics, automation, and other AI-powered devices in the years to come.

Over the next 3-5 years we will witness wider adoption and implementation of the following next gen technologies:

• Artificial Intelligence (AI): Customer service (chat bots), personalization (one-to-one marketing, one-to-one pricing), database management (single-view customer data) and loyalty programs.
• Voice Assistants/Voice Search: Integration of major hotel brand CRS with voice assistants like Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and Apple Home Pod, customer service (voice assistants in hotel rooms).
• Internet of Things (IoT): Customer service (concierge, hotel lobby, room service); hotel security, operations (power and A/C management).
• Robotics: Robots will replace jobs around the property, from front desk to housekeeping to kitchen staff.

Blockchain:

The much-promoted use of blockchain in all aspects of hotel distribution, marketing and operations is another affirmation that we are an industry of buzzwords. Over the past two years many hoteliers got overly excited by this new technology and its perceived “magic wand” ability to solve industry deficiencies.

In my view, blockchain technology will have the following three potential uses in hospitality:

• Procurement: a mega brand like Marriott deals with tens of thousands of vendors in hundreds of geographies. Utilizing a public or a private version of blockchain technology (like the IBM Blockchain Platform), a major hotel brand can introduce unprecedented traceability and transparency in its supply chain and streamline its procurement logistics.
• Secure Contracting: blockchain can power secure legal contracts between hotel chains and numerous legal parties: from franchisee agreements, to preferred vendor contracts, to corporate groups.
• Universal Digital IDs: in the future, the blockchain could provide travel consumers with Universal Digital IDs, that can be used for online and voice hotel reservations, loyalty program memberships, and ultimately facilitate easier and more secure online transactions.

One thing blockchain technology is not good for at this point is hotel distribution. In order to utilize blockchain for hotel distribution, any blockchain player has to tackle the complexity of hospitality technology which consists of many moving parts.

Conclusion

The “digital way of life” adopted by today’s tech-savvy travel consumer is forcing the hospitality industry to accelerate the adoption of digital technologies and become a 100% digital technology-enabled industry.

Hoteliers must wake up to the fact that by being primarily focused on and investing in Guest Services Technology, while underinvesting in Guest Engagement, Acquisition and Retention Technology, they are allowing the OTAs more visibility to engage, acquire and retain the online travel consumer.

Unlike hoteliers, the OTAs are focused exclusively and investing only in Guest Engagement, Acquisition and Retention Technology. By investing heavily in technology applications to engage the traveler at all possible touchpoints of the customer journey hoteliers have the opportunity to take market share away from OTAs and keep guests engaged throughout their lifetimes.

Max Starkov is the Founder & Director at HEBS Digital. Max is a recognized “thought leader” in digital marketing strategies in hospitality and is a frequent guest speaker at industry events and conferences.

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Established last year, the collective is designed to bring together hotels and inns consisting of a diverse range of properties spread across the UK, from Langdale Chase on the bank of Windermere through to the Golden Lion in the heart of the market town of Settle in Yorkshire.

Today it was announced that all the hotels and inns within the House of Daniel Thwaites collective will use Revinate solutions for data-driven email marketing. The solution has been proven to help hoteliers connect with guests and effectively drive direct bookings and upsells with personalized communications.

Ultimately, these personalized communications should translate into increased revenue. In fact, according to Revinate, targeted marketing campaigns result in 20% higher open rates, 70% higher click-thru rates and 73% higher revenue per recipient. For hoteliers, those stats are plenty of reason to celebrate. 

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The solution provider reportedly does business with more than 900 hotels worldwide, including large brands and independent hotels in over 75 countries.

This week, the company announced a new release of its cloud software solution. The latest version adds a number of new features, including reoccurring automatic guest request fulfillment, multi-incident guest request entry and reservation event triggered dispatch. The latest release also expands its Welcome Intelligences® algorithms, which are designed to give hotel managers and staff the automated tools they need to personalize guest’s experiences and, ultimately, increase hotel revenue and profitability.

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