Return on Experience (ROE) Is Where the Personal Meets the Profitable
How is technology helping to reinvent the hotel guest experience?
When properties adopt modern guest + staff-facing technology, they are empowering their employees to deliver not only elevated experiences, but more options for guests to choose from, putting the guest in the driver’s seat and streamlining operations for staff by removing transactional, redundant components as well as opening up the opportunity for employees to be better, more hospitable hosts.
Please speak to the benefits of tech tools in supporting hotel operations and workforce training and retention.
The ability for hospitality technology to operate either in the cloud or on-premise as well as integrate with best-in-class systems through best-of-breed solutions or run a fullyintegrated ecosystem is key.
When properties evaluate hospitality technology, they should expect to see solutions that come to the table with an end-to-end solution that can deliver everything from booking to check-in to in-stay amenities to check-out and post-stay communications.
This interconnected lifecycle with a “less is more” approach can be extremely beneficial to properties looking to modernize their operations.
Technology should always benefit the staff. If staff feels under pressure, they can’t perform to their fullest potential and their frustrations will be reflected in how they interact with guests.In fact, studies show that employees consistently rate technology as one of the most important components of their jobs. Employees who feel empowered to do their jobs become excellent ambassadors for the property, which in turn builds morale and helps with recruitment.
Our data suggests that top lodging technology initiatives in the coming year include driving guest loyalty, improving analytics, and enhancing data security. Can you speak to best practices in leveraging data?
Most properties suffer from siloed data which creates friction and obstructs the ability of properties to create seamless, personalized guest experiences. Solutions should offer a 360-degree view of the guest. But the data also should enable managers to plan for the future and understand the past. You don’t want to be bound by a single stay or experience. For long-term success, you must be able to analyze past experiences as well as predict optimal offers to stimulate interest in returning more frequently.
In terms of security, properties should have a firm grasp around data encryption, 2FA, and the ability to confine data and easily revoke access to data.
Our survey data also suggests that hoteliers are more open than ever to redefining tech ROI. How can hotel operators more accurately calculate the benefits of tech investments?
How do you determine the ROI of training your staff to be great hosts… smile, say hello, please and thank you? You can’t, the ROI is inherent. When technology applications work together to manage and exceed guest’s expectations, thatROI is also inherent as it elevates your ability to separate your property from the competition. Because it’s personal, hospitality solutions must go beyond ROI to achieve ROE (Return on Experience). ROE is where personal meets profitable.
Everyone values personalized experiences. But scaling “personal” is hard. Most solutions personalize marketing data, but don’t operationalize it. It’s not clear which experiences offered to guests will profit most in the short-term, much less across Customer Lifetime Value.
Disparate best-of-breed systems aren’t designed to think about each other or share insights. Customers and guests experience delight in pockets, and employees sometimes know more and save time — but this falls short of maximizing ROE.
Agilysys solves for this through a “secret sauce” formula that, over time, generates High Return Hospitality:
