Technology

Any hotel group which values the direct channel (brand.com) already knows that data science has been at the core of digital marketing in hospitality for many years. It's fundamental to customer segmentation, targeting and results measurement.

The data fragmentation in hospitality is a huge challenge the industry faces today. Guest and operational data lives in multiple "data islands" that do not talk to each other: PMS, CRS, WBE, CRM, ORM, CMS, DMS, Social Media and BI.

Data science is an area of expertise that needs specialists, similar to other areas like design and creativity. Typically, most companies have outsourced these non-core functions; in the case of creativity, to ad agencies, for example.

Behaviors of guests & sorting of all offerings (room, packages, meals, drinks, activities) based on previous behaviors. Much of this if done on a per person can be done using general purpose AI along with a just in time promp injection model.

The best data that a PMS stores is its guest history - travel purchase, rooms stayed in, ancillary purchases, number of occupants, special requests and so on. While we can discover some patterns to help grow the business, a machine can sift through this multitude far more efficiently to find patterns and do so in an unbiased manner.

PMS data is only one source of first-party data, and it's actually quite limited because it focuses only on past guests. A richer set of data is built when combining PMS with CRM data and direct website behavior data. Once powered by that dataset, some key practical applications are: Benchmarking: create automated competitive sets for each hotel and find opportunities for improvement.

The words 'permanent reality' are hardhitting and oftentimes hard for hotel decision makers to absorb. While there are a host of technologies that can be added to the stack to help chip away at the labor problem, what I pose instead is to go one level deeper and look at the human stack.

According to a Perkbox survey, Hospitality is the fifth most stressful industry to work in, with 64% of employees suffering from workplace anxiety. Therefore, it is not surprising that a significant number of hospitality workers are reconsidering their employment situation and evaluating different career options.

Today's HIGH-TOUCH LOW-TECH business model in hospitality results in increasingly inadequate service and customer dissatisfaction. Currently, the poorly paid and trained employees, overwhelmed by labor shortages and mundane, repetitive tasks simply cannot provide better service.