The power of insight: Harnessing data to unlock your hotel’s true potential

Today’s hotels need a data-driven approach to survive and thrive – but where should they start when it comes to data analysis?

Understanding the data behind your hotel is vital for success in today's economic climate. But do you have what you need to embrace a data-driven approach to hospitality operations? Discover how to utilize your data.

In today’s economic climate, having a full understanding of your data is one of the most crucial factors that determine whether a business will sink or swim. This is particularly true for the hospitality industry, where hotels and resorts are now seeing a surge in demand after the events of the last few years. The question is, do they have the appropriate technological support to take advantage of this situation?

Every hotel sits on a goldmine of data regarding their performance, guest preferences, and intelligence but it’s not uncommon for these facts and figures to go unused. Turning information into action is easier said than done when a hotel’s teams still work in silos, relying on manual processes and managing increasingly disparate systems as the business expands geographically. However, the rewards for doing so are huge. Embracing a data-driven approach to hotel operations is imperative to developing a competitive edge and creating the conditions for success. With that in mind, let’s explore a few practical ways that hoteliers can start making the most of their data today.

Predicting future booking trends

In the past, predicting basic future occupancy rates was as simple (and unhelpful!) as knowing that a certain season tended to be busier for your hotel or resort. These days, hotels have access to a wealth of data around guest booking behavior. From fluctuating traffic to businesses in your area, to detailed documentation of how guests interact with your booking platform, these factors all build to a holistic picture of what a hotel can expect for the road ahead. And once you know this, you can begin to optimize yield management, leverage competitive pricing, and maximize resources accordingly.

But without real-time predictive data analytics, this information can lie dormant – or even add confusion if a business tries to analyze it manually. To unlock the power of this data and start putting it to use, hotels need a solution that makes it simple. For example, new solutions enable you to automatically analyze booking trends against other hotel data to create a clear, flexible, data-driven strategy for maximizing profit and efficiency, even during traditionally slower periods.

Personalizing guest experiences

Being able to offer a bespoke experience for every guest is a key focus for many hotels and resorts today – and it’s not hard to see why. 70% of hotel guests say they had a more positive experience at hotels that use personalization techniques, while 61% are willing to spend more with companies that offer a customized experience. But offering a truly unique service to each guest is near impossible without the insight, convenience, and ease afforded to hotels by advances in data analytics for hospitality.

Rather than increasing staff workload or hiring additional teams, new solutions can take over some of the burden. By ‘remembering’ guest preferences and analyzing previous feedback, advances in hospitality management software ensure that every individual guest’s needs are automatically met and hopefully exceeded during each repeat stay – freeing up time and energy for your staff to focus on tasks that add value. Over time, this information can be used to develop personalized marketing strategies for each unique customer, based on the times and reasons they are most likely to book a stay, leading to more repeat bookings, increased guest loyalty, and, ultimately, a better bottom line.

Ensuring consistency during growth

With the global revenue of the hotel industry ‘soaring’ to new heights, many are taking this opportunity to expand, with 6,160 hotel projects currently under construction worldwide. While this is an exciting development, particularly after the challenges of the last few years, these expansions need to be well managed to ensure operational efficiency continues across new and old venues alike. For example, is your new-build hotel receiving more investment in tech innovation as a ‘beta test’ while the rest of your portfolio relies on the systems of yesterday?

Hoteliers must be mindful that their important data, and ways of managing it efficiently and securely, can easily get lost as businesses expand. But thankfully this doesn’t have to be inevitable. Smart software can ensure that key information transfer and best practice are continuously implemented across any number of hotel branches. This means that guests will always receive a consistently positive experience, no matter where they’re staying today, from the ease of the check-in process to how staff are trained.

The time to embrace data is now

Every hotel and resort can power their future success with the information they hold today. Utilizing this data is key to building efficiencies into operations and understanding what attracts guests to your unique offering – in turn, enabling you to double down on those attributes and develop your USPs in an increasingly competitive market.

But to unlock this power, it’s essential for the hospitality industry to adopt a more data-driven approach, with the right technological infrastructure to support making impactful evidence-based decisions in real time.

Learn more about how to unlock your hotel's potential with data in our new infographic. Download now.