Viewpoints

The COVID-19 pandemic has imposed a new set of challenges for hoteliers, making it critical to ensure that they are leveraging the right tools and technology such as CRM solutions. NextGuest's new Customer Data Management Platform provides an unmatched centralized platform where various data sources are integrated, providing hoteliers with one single source of truth.

Today every guest generates a massive amount of data. But how can these be used profitably? Modern hoteliers, especially in a post-COVID world, must be able to make profit from the opportunities data offers – also to surpass times of crisis in which manual processes are even less viable due to the lack of staff.

In the coming year, customer relationship management (CRM) will play a pivotal role in re-establishing guest trust and, perhaps more importantly, igniting long-term guest loyalty. This will prove especially paramount within the group business/event sector of hospitality, as sales teams are expected to manage an increasingly dynamic workload.

In the fight to survive, hoteliers must throw everything they have at capturing demand in the months ahead. Combining their expertise with leading-edge technology that provides actionable business insights will allow them to gain a competitive edge.

As hotel professionals, we owe it to ourselves and our guests to not be wasteful. Over the last 3-5 years, our digital strategies have become bloated, diluted, and boring. Through attempts to be “everything to everyone,” we've settled into consensus mediocrity.

The coronavirus has swept through the travel industry like a tidal wave and scarred our sector for years, perhaps even decades to come. In this context, hotel distribution has to reinvent itself by learning lessons from the past and envisioning what travelers' behavior is going to look like in an uncertain future.

Infor is dedicated to working with industry leaders to ensure lasting resilience in the coming era, post-COVID. Revenue management and pricing solutions will play an integral role to ensure success. Learn how Infor's technology solutions for the hospitality industry can help organizations create stability, gain clarity, and form actionable and effective strategies for the present and the future, too.

Our global hospitality industry is facing its greatest challenge in modern history—and also its greatest opportunity for transformational change. It would seem 2020 dealt us all a losing hand, but there's still a game to be won.

Today's hotel revenue departments are scrambling to determine the best sources of data to help them make informed decisions around operations, sales, and marketing. Fortunately, top-of-funnel data with deeper insights into traveler intent is available to help revenue teams get a real-time glimpse into current and future demand.

Since its onset, the global health pandemic has undoubtedly represented an upheaval of the hospitality market with virtually all industry professionals recognizing a need to reevaluate their offerings to conform to new guest needs, behaviors and expectations.

The entire hotel experience is currently in a state of transformation due to the spread of COVID-19, and hoteliers are in a position to leverage technology to transform the guest room into a profit center. By making PPE (Personal Protection Equipment) along with a wide range of other products available for purchase in the guest room, hotels have an opportunity to fulfill guests' needs at a distance while creating a new profit center in an environment where revenue-generating sectors appear to be disappearing by the day.

It is widely accepted that the world emerging from the current crisis, will be one shaped by the new norms and cultural evolutions that are taking place today. Hoteliers who are ready to welcome guests in an environment that emphasizes their safety and personal value, will be the first to recover.

Imagine all the chaos if you had to hire a consultant to come to your home and set up ZOOM on your computer at the onset of beginning of COVID-19. This is the state of “cloud” PMS technology in the hospitality industry. Coronavirus forced every one of us to take some time to reflect and, more importantly, reprioritize.

At the outset, it is important to understand that a pandemic like COVID has changed life in its entirety. Behaviors, priorities, and expectations have changed. Many businesses, verticals or solutions that existed/exist today will need to undergo transformations.

The short-term impact of 2019-nCoV novel coronavirus on the global travel industry has been significant. According to the International Air Transport Association, airlines are set to loose $133 billion in revenue if COVID-19 continues, while travel by Chinese nationals has slowed significantly.

From a tourism sustainability point of view, the coronavirus is both a blessing and a curse. On the bright side, it forces organizations to think about different (smarter?) ways to do business, making use of virtual options that do not require travel.

The COVID-19's impact on the hospitality sector will vary from very to extremely negative depending on the evolution of the epidemy through the northern hemisphere summer. First signs are profoundly concerning. Mass hysteria fueled by traditional and social media, large scale events (e.g., Geneva Autoshow and ITB Berlin) being canceled, a wave of cancellations in all segments even in countries with little to no record of COVID-19 cases.