Executive Insight Q&A: The Benefits of Analytics, AI, and Data Management

Thanks to digital transactions and engagement, hospitality brands are collecting more data from customers than ever before. Broadly speaking, how can guest data be leveraged to enhance guest experience and revenue?

Hospitality has led the growth and promotion of loyalty program benefits with their customers for decades. These industry developments have enabled companies to automate data collection and build customer-centric profiles with appended behavior-based datasets. Consumer behavior becomes another layer of data segmentation that increases a marketer’s ability to better know their customers and speak to them in personalized ways through multiple channels like email, mail, website portals and mobile apps. Thoughtful and targeted personalization reduces costs, increases sales, and improves customer loyalty.

More specifically, how can analytics help with pricing and revenue management?

It all starts with a robust forecast. Especially during and post the pandemic, we cannot rely on traditional time-series forecasting, but have to look at more advanced technologies including AI and ML. Once, a more reliable and trusted forecast has been established, the fine-tuning of pricing, as well as staffing can kick in.

Secondly, your revenue strategy shall include a predictive analytics software solution, that automates processes from forecasting to pricing recommendations.

Finally, expand into other property outlets other than rooms (like SPA, Retail etc) in order to maximize total topline revenues, as well as the bottom line.

How can hospitality data be analyzed to help streamline operations?

We recently visited a customer team at their casino-resort property that uses advanced analytics to forecast demand in hospitality operations in today’s post-COVID environment.  It is a unique case with many variables to process, but in facing the labor challenges across the hospitality industry and additional safety measures in place to reduce throughout, this customer was relying upon analytics to help strategize which pieces of their operation they should open. After analyzing report results and mapping out a strategy, this property’s customer service scores have increased, and their profitability has peaked to record levels.

Research suggests that hotels are seeking more digital engagement with customers. How can analytics enhance digital marketing? 

Digital marketing can be enhanced through analytics in innumerable ways. Understanding if and where a customer exits an online purchase funnel can lend insight into how pricing, availability and operations are influencing consumer behaviors.  Tracking engagement, and inclining and declining behaviors within populations and segments, helps us understand which programs and activations are driving positive results and which are not. Modeling targets based on current profitable customer types in paid social and other digital media helps marketers serve ads to more receptive consumer populations. Providing tailored offers to select database segments through individualized channels like portals and apps creates more meaningful touchpoints and reasons to click “book now.”