HNtv INSIDERS: Hotel technology, loyalty and the guest experience.
Peter O’Connor in conversation with Martin Soler
Peter O'Connor (Professor of Strategy at the University of South Australia) and Martin Soler (Managing Partner at Soler & Associates) discuss current trends and development in hotel distribution, marketing, technology and loyalty and their effect on the guest experience. Capitalizing on their experience working with hotel companies, tech companies and platforms, Peter and Martin question why the hotel industry continues to fail to learn/adopt best practices from retail, banking and other sectors and speculate on what we as an industry need to do to remain competitive in the future.
00:28 Introduction
02:50 The truth behind OTA distribution costs for hotels
09:30 Non-digital distribution & OTA's owning the customer
12:45 Hoteliers' efforts in getting more direct business
19:00 Loyalty comparisons with other industries
20:10 Growing role of payment processing in travel
29:15 Managing guest-journeys; comparisons with other industries
35:20 Using data as the core of tech strategies
38:10 Challenges in extracting key-data from PMS systems
41:50 What's the next big thing in hotel IT?
52:00 Closing