The hospitality industry as a whole has never been more competitive nor seen faster transactions. Those trends are strongly tied to the use of digital and mobile tools, as guests constantly seek out the best deals – sometimes during their trip – and the right mix of amenities. Online bookings account for about 90 percent of all such transactions. Customers are also more vocal than before, using review sites and social media to speak up about things they liked about their visit and, especially, things they didn't.
Effective use of analytics, marketing drives hospitality success
To remain competitive, property managers must take advantage of predictive analytics and hospitality management system software to address a number of operational needs, including:
- Effective analysis of guests, including their behavior, preferences and habits, to generate useful understanding of their behaviors.
- Determining the right time to make the right offer to maximize effectiveness.
- Use analytics to determine the most profitable guest possible.
"The hospitality industry as a whole has never been more competitive nor seen faster transactions."
The use of marketing program, apps and campaigns has grown in recent years as a method for capturing data to fulfill those three defined objectives. Everything from loyalty programs and social media to newer innovations like keyless apps play a role and provide some kind of dual advantage: a discount or other benefit for the guest and effective data collection for businesses. With so many tools to gather necessary data, the challenge is no longer collecting information but consolidating, integrating and preparing that information for effective, profit-driving use by analysts and data scientists. Let's consider that process and the advantages it brings:
Catch them if you can: Through leveraging advanced analytics and statistical modeling, businesses can now track and merge data for single customers that may have been generated under a variety of aliases or identities. This is critical for ensuring a single, unified view of each guest.
Define them: Clear definitions are key to tagging attributes and enabling effective segmentation. This process, called master data management, is supported by technology that expands customer definitions across departments in a collaborative, governed environment.
Track them: Mobile apps that effectively capture and consolidate a variety of customer data dimensions as they happen, allowing hospitality businesses to track them effectively.
Analyze them: The final and most important step is the integration and use of a platform that allows businesses to consume the gathered data and make sense of it, helping to understand daily reports and marketing campaigns as well as effectively plan for labor, assets, inventory and more.
The Aviana Sensus solution: Aviana has selected the best technology components and developed an integrated platform to support the analytics-driven hospitality organization. The Aviana Sensus solution is used by many hotels and casinos nationally. The solution can be scaled down to start small and introduce the elements and methodologies necessary. By bringing big data, master data management, predictive modeling, planning and analytics all together, it empowers organizations with the information and analysis they need to stay competitive, productive and profitable.