While attribute based shopping has been discussed for over 10 years, the level of noise about its application for the hotel industry has significantly increased in the last 18 months. After significant investment in new systems and technology, companies like IHG are tipping their toes in the ABS waters. While some tout the great benefits (and revenues) expected by offering customers more choice, others take a more cautious approach, questioning the expected benefits and ROI. What is your take on ABS, will it do what it did for the Airline industry - boost ancillary revenues, or will it be the "3D TV" of Hotel Technology.

Osvaldo Mauro
Osvaldo Mauro
Entrepreneur & Business Developer

Attribute-Based shopping? Customers and technology may be ready, not hotel managers! It's pretty clear that from a customer perspective, being able to choose the desired room amenities, pay the hotel according to this choice, would be the ideal experience.

On the other hand, managing these attributes in the operation of the leading hotel chains it's still pretty utopic nowadays. I think that hypothetically, in one year or two, the main technology providers could be able to create a propriety management system able to operate with a few basic attributes for the ABS distribution. At that point then, the main problems would be two: First, the top b2c sellers (read Otas, metasearch) may not be ready for such type of shopping experience. Knowing the approach of these big .COMs, if they may introduce ABS mode, they would do it "their way", laying down their own rules and not caring about hotels operations and previous tech development. Chains may want to wait for the big sellers to make the first move. Secondly, the main issue about the ABS model is BIG DATA management. Abs means a constant and high-frequency feed of data to manage and, most of all, to predict. The hotel chains top managers are usually not data scientists. They delegate this kind of maths to their revenue manages. These professionals use data tools at their service; understandably they don't intend relinquishing the control of their operations. Indeed with the ABS model, the kind of data flow that may come out is not manageable by humans. Only Artificial Intelligence predictive analytics could handle these operations and produce the desired results. Revenue managers and hotel executives are not ready to "let the machines" genuinely manage their data. They talk about it, listen to conferences, use tools that have some little fancy Ai features, but they don't want to step back. I see it with my AI startup Profiter: when you ask to the leading hotel chains to do a small, limited, conservative test of Ai based distribution, they say: "yes, great, we're very interested. We'll let you know". Then they lock themselves in the closet of their office waiting that you walk away and hoping that this thing would never arrive. ;-)

 

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