HNtv at Unfold 2023: Where lies the single biggest opportunity for hotels in the immediate future?

Hospitality Net was honored to attend Unfold 2023 Amsterdam as their media partner on Tuesday, April 4th. Unfold is an annual hospitality tech forum that is hosted and curated by Mews. This year's event brought together an impressive lineup of inspiring innovators, visionaries, and thought leaders from the hospitality industry at the Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam. As part of our coverage, we asked a panel of speakers, hoteliers, and suppliers to share their insights on the most significant opportunity for hotels in the immediate future.

Experts and industry professionals at Mews Unfold 2023 have shared their opinions on the single biggest opportunity for hotels in the immediate future.

Tom Ito, Hospitality Leader and Principat at Gensler, said that it is essential to design hotels that align with the changing values and lifestyles of guests.

Dimitris Manikis of Wyndham Hotels & Resorts believes that the biggest opportunity for hotels is to make travel accessible for all, considering that travel is a vital part of people's lives.

Kari Anna Fiskvik of Nordic Choice says that the single biggest opportunity for hotels is to understand the customer, emphasizing the importance of hospitality in the last hundred years.

Richard Valtr of Mews suggests that hotels need to rethink their tech stack, considering revenue opportunities and looking at opportunities that help manage their spaces, such as utilizing revenue management systems or upselling tools.

Linde Borger of Hotels for Trees believes that the biggest opportunity for hotels is to become more sustainable and that they can do more to reduce carbon emissions by simple concepts like planting a tree every time a guest chooses to skip room cleaning.

Erik Tengen of Oaky found that the biggest challenge for hotels was staff turnover, and the solution is creating an automated recommendation engine for front office agents that enhances the guest experience, drives revenue, and provides gamification and commission tracking.

Klaus Kohlmayr, Chief Evangelist & Development Officer at IDeaS, believes that hotels can leverage the digital data collected from guests to automate their decision-making processes related to marketing, distribution, pricing, and sales.

Daniel Salmanovich, Founder & Director of The Arcade Hotel, emphasizes the importance of innovation in all aspects of hotel operations, from the guest journey to bookings and reservations.

Tess Mattisson, CEO at Zaplox, sees the post-pandemic recovery as an opportunity to leverage technology to offer guests an exceptional experience both in physical and digital spaces.

Daan de Bruijn, Co-Founder of Bookboost Customer Experience Platform, suggests that customer data is the most important aspect for hotels to focus on. Clean and good customer data enables hotels to make the best use of digital engagement tools.

Eduardo Gonzaga, Executive Director at Leevin Group, believes that creating a community can be the most rewarding thing for travelers, and hotels should aim to offer this experience to their customers.

Steve Davis, CEO at Operto Guest Technologies, highlights the importance of viewing the guest journey as a holistic process that extends beyond the physical property of the hotel.

Bart-Jan Leyts, CEO & Founder at Loreca, suggests that hotels need to focus on their ranking on OTA platforms in relation to their revenue management. The higher the ranking, the more revenue a hotel can generate.

Finally, Thomas Landen, CMO at RoomPriceGenie, believes that hotels should focus on improving staff quality and empowering them to create a great guest experience.

Overall, the speakers emphasized the importance of leveraging data, innovation, technology, customer experience, and staff quality to create a competitive advantage for hotels in the immediate future.

Transcript

Tom Ito - Hospitality Leader and Principal at Gensler
In my opinion, the single biggest opportunity for hotels in the immediate future is to recognize that our guests values and lifestyles are changing, and we need to design hotels to align with that.

Dimitris Manikis - President EMEA at Wyndham Hotels & Resorts
So the one single opportunity for the hotel industry, for the immediate future is that following the pandemic, everybody understood around the world that travel is a necessity, travel connects people, travel connects families, travel brings people together, travel creates experiences, and now everybody realizes more than ever what a vital part travel has plays in their lives. So one opportunity for all of us in the hotel industry is how we capitalize on that and make people accessible to all. That is, for me, the most important opportunity and the most critical thing that everybody in the hotel industry needs to understand, make travel possible for all. And we've got an amazing future for our industry.

Kari Anna Fiskvik - Vice President Technology at Nordic Choice
I still think that the single biggest opportunity for hotels in the future is understanding the customer. I mean, hospitality has always been around, people have always traveled, they've always needed some bridge to stay. It's just the way we're doing it, the how and why and when that is changing. If you're able to understand when people do their decision making, then you're still able to be in hospitality from other a hundred years.

Richard Valtr - Founder of Mews
I think the single biggest opportunity is really in rethinking the tech stack, and really rethinking the way that you, you actually look at opportunities. So I think most hotelier these days are actually focused on the rising costs and all of the different ways that the inflation is actually having a huge impact on what they're doing. Also, for example, trying to get people in. But I think that those are all operational questions, and I think that where hoteliers aren't focusing on enough these days is actually the revenue opportunity. So thinking about getting the most out of your spaces, even still today, I find it shocking in the same way that, for example, you know, 10 years ago, most hoteliers or a lot of hoteliers were reluctant to use channel managers. I find it shocking that still you find the same reluctance towards, for example, utilizing revenue management systems or upselling tools and things like that. And I think that that should really just be a no-brainer for most hotels, these days. Anything that enhances the revenue and then helps you, for example, manage some of your other spaces, some of your event spaces, I think that hoteliers sometimes focuse a lot on 'this costs a little bit of money', or 'this costs a little bit of my time to actually manage this'. But I think that there's so many opportunities and so many different things that, that hotels can actually kind of do. And that the, the way to set up some of those, some of those systems, it's so easy to do it nowadays that, that I feel it should really be a no-brainer for any hotelier to actually start interacting with those systems and start actually putting in that technology into their stack and into their hotels.

Linde Borger - Regional Manager Europe at Hotels for Trees
Okay, great. I think the biggest opportunity lies for hotels to become, more sustainable. I think we don't do enough. 1% of the global carbon emission is caused by the hotel industry, and I think we can do more, with simple ideas like ours: planting a tree every time the guest chooses to skip the room cleaning. I think we can do a lot. the aim is to plant 1 million trees a year. We currently have 147 hotel partners live planting 500 trees a day. We started this one and a half years ago. Simple concept. And I think if more hoteliers start with these concepts or join our initiative, we will be able to make a significant impact. And, regreen the hotel world. That's the aim. Thank you.

Erik Tengen - Co-Founder & CEO at Oaky
Welcome to Muse Unfold here in beautiful Amsterdam. Me and my team, we asked 50 of our hotel chain customers last year where they thought their biggest opportunity was and their biggest challenge that they had to solve. And it was on the one hand, to fix the ever-growing problem about staff turnover, new staff coming in all the time. How do they make sure that new staff get productive and at the same time find a way that drives revenue by enhancing the guest experience? And the solution that we found was in creating an automated recommendation engine for front office agents. So a way that is integrated technology that is integrated into the PMs that basically pops up and provides you with recommendations on what to sell based on the guest needs that is in front of you. And then we track commission and have some very cool gamification on the backend, which makes someone who's at the front desk agent at the very first week, productive in upselling from their first week. And they very importantly, make more money than they would've otherwise, and create some more fun work experience than without it. So, that for was our customer's biggest need over the past six months. And today, here at Unfold, we're actually unfolding this product as a world release for the very first time.

Klaus Kohlmayr - Chief Evangelist & Development Officer at IDeaS
In my opinion, the biggest opportunity for hotels today is to leverage all the digital data that is being collected from guests around the world. The customer journey is becoming digitized. We all shop differently, we work differently, we interact differently In all of that allows us to capture data, how people interact with technology and with us as businesses. So the hotels for the future are going to be the ones that know how to leverage the millions and millions of data points that are being collected, incorporate that into their decision making, and automate the decisions as they market, distribute, price, and sell.

Daniel Salmanovich - Founder & Director of The Arcade Hotel
You ever realize the single biggest opportunity for hotels in the immediate future, innovation, innovation, innovation in all forms! Whether it's the guest journey, whether it's operational, bookings, reservations, everything right now is flipped on his head. Corona made sure of that, and now we have a chance to come back and essentially remodel the whole system. And I think that it. It's very broad my answer, but I think it's got the idea behind it.

Tess Mattisson - Chief Executive Officer at Zaplox
So you see the biggest opportunities sometimes come from crisis. They're born from crisis. And I believe that our industry, as you know, has just recovered from the worst crisis ever. And there's a lot of opportunity that comes with that. You could either see it's good or bad, but I choose to see this as an opportunity. And I believe that the hospitality industry now can leverage technology in a way greater way to not only support their staff, but then also to offer the guests an exceptional experience every time they walk through the tell the physical and the digital.

Daan de Bruijn - Co-Founder of Bookboost Customer Experience Platform
The most important thing is customer data. When you have control over your customer data and clean and good customer data to use, you set yourself up to use digital engagement tools to the fullest potential. The keyword is customer data.

Eduardo Gonzaga - Executive Director at Leevin Group
So in my opinion, the single biggest opportunity forhotels and hostels is creating a community. We have been working with like international students and young professionals, and every time we see that doesn't matter if they're traveling together or by themselves. Community and experience is what like, is the most rewarding thing for a traveler. And it's, I think what we should aim for our customers. So this is my suggestion.

Steve Davis - CEO at Operto Guest Technologies
One of the biggest opportunities for hotels these days is to look at the guest journey as a holistic journey from the moment that they book to the moment that they arrive home from their, their vacation. We look at it as a multi-stage process whereby the, the guest checks in at home, they start their journey, and they can really get taken care of through technology all the way through until they check out and then get home. I think for hotels, they can really lean in here and really understand that the, the hotel experience can actually be extended beyond just the, the moment that they arrive at the property and the moment that they leave the property that it actually begins a few months before and could potentially end a few months after. When you're talking lo looking at, direct bookings and other things that come along later on.

Bart-Jan Leyts - CEO & Founder at Loreca
In my opinion, the biggest opportunity for hotels in the immediate future, is to determine their ranking in relation to their revenue management. It's like SEO on OTAs because we see from a Loreca point of view that the ranking has a direct impact on the revenue management. The higher you're ranked on an OTA, the more pickup that you have, the more revenue you have. So we have got this wave of revenue management to determine the most market optimal pricing, but we say no, you have to take visibility, ranking coefficient as a primary factor for revenue management.

Thomas Landen - Chief Marketing Officer at RoomPriceGenie
The biggest opportunity for hotels in the immediate future. Well, of course I'm gonna give you an answer that pricing is gonna be the biggest opportunity for hotels in the immediate future. And we know things like AI and chatGTP and all the things you see on a daily basis, but I think actually there's a lot of opportunity for staff. Improving staff quality because that really makes and breaks a hospitality stay or a hotel stay. And I think for hotels to treat their staff and respect their staff and value their staff and give them the freedom to really make that guest experience is really gonna make an opportunity for hotels to deliver that service.

About Mews

Mews is a leading platform for the new era of hospitality. Over 3,000 properties in 70 countries are powered by Mews. The Mews Hospitality Cloud is designed to streamline operations for modern hoteliers, transform the guest experience and create more profitable businesses. Customers include Accor, Generator-Freehand, Nordic Choice Hotels, The Social Hub, Life House and Airelles. Mews has been named the World's Best Independent Hotel PMS Provider by World Travel Tech Awards (2022) and Best Place to Work in Hotel Tech (2021, 2022) by Hotel Tech Report. The company has offices in Europe, the United States and Australia.