How to Supercharge Your Hospitality Operations
For the last few years, the hospitality industry has been grappling with a number of challenges. The pandemic dealt a drastic blow to the sector, necessitating a rapid, costly response to an unfolding crisis from which some businesses are still recovering. While post-pandemic “revenge travel” in 2023 led to increased demand – and rising prices – for rooms, analysts are expecting a more muted 2024, mirroring a gloomier economic outlook.
Amid this uncertainty, hotels still face everyday challenges: guests are seeking and demanding ever-superior and personalized customer service, while ongoing supply chain disruptions and a burgeoning demand for more sustainable practices have complicated operations. With some of the highest rates of staff burnout, the hospitality sector also faces the challenge of attracting and retaining employees. Against this backdrop and 2024’s economic uncertainty, the sector is also on an urgent quest to identify and develop new revenue streams.
As with many industries, the path toward operational efficiency and new revenue streams lies in the ability to collect and analyze data. The last decade has seen a significant rise in the number of hospitality tools that the industry uses, a mix of on-premise legacy systems and newer, API-based tools. According to research from travel news provider Skift, hotels are using up to 50 different tech systems to operate effectively. While this proliferation of digital tools has led to an explosion in the data that the sector now collects, this valuable data is often trapped in these separate, fractured systems, hampering an organization’s drive toward operational efficiency, and its ability to identify new revenue streams. Until the industry can freely and deeply tap this trapped data, it will remain difficult for hospitality to meet its challenges.
This data can be freed by installing “digital plumbing” – this leaves the original data in place but allows copies of it to flow freely. An Integration Platform-as-a-Service (IPaaS) solution can integrate information from one system to another, connecting legacy systems and the latest API-based products. There is no need to rip out entire systems to start from scratch. From creating a unified, GDPR-compliant customer view to tapping into AI tools to predict utilities usage to aid sustainability efforts, to deploying chatbot translators to enhance guest communications, all of these benefits can be achieved at a fraction of the cost and effort by connecting fragmented systems.
Hoteliers with the right data can send the right message to the right guest through the right channels. They can gain a clear insight into their customers booking behavior and preferences in real time. This 360-degree vision can allow customers to receive and communicate in the way that best suits them. The hotel team can focus then on delivering the best service for that specific customer, whether by using technology or personal interaction.
44% say more responsive service from hotels and restaurants is of the most value to them in exchange for offering their personal data, according to HTs 12th annual 2023 Customer Engagement Technology Study.
Opening Up a New Hospitality Category
Having worked with many customers in the hospitality space – including GCH Hotel Group, H Hotels AG, and Romantik Hotels – we know that many hotels need help with integrating the critical systems holding customer data. These include property management systems, meeting and events systems, spa member data. Once the team is confidently using the product, they add other tools that can be integrated using a library of prebuilt templates and deployed using clicks not code.
In essence, to supercharge your hospitality operations, break free from data silos by seamlessly connecting systems with integration and business automation solutions. This unlocks the full potential of interconnected data, enabling personalized guest experiences, predictive analytics, and streamlined communications, propelling your operations forward in the face of ongoing challenges and evolving industry demands. The revamped approach ensures that your hotel not only survives but thrives, setting a new standard for operational excellence.
About the Author
Keith Rigg is Vice President of EMEA Technical Services, Jitterbit. He is a senior IT leader with 20 years of experience in implementations, technical and functional upgrades, as well as significant system integration activities within global businesses. Keith is passionate about implementing innovative solutions with the aim of delivering real business value to customer-facing businesses in the EMEA region. Prior to joining Jitterbit, Keith worked for Inovize and Kingspan, where he was responsible for strategic customer-facing IT projects and development programmes.