Emerging Hospitality Industry Trends in 2015 – 8 Key Trends for Hoteliers
RezNext has recently conducted a survey and published an industry report on the ‘Emerging Hospitality Trends in 2015′. This report is a great insight for hoteliers into the changing market dynamics, helping them develop prognostic distribution and revenue strategies that are aligned with the current and future market conditions. Below are the key findings and Infographic developed based on the findings of the same survey.
Trend 1: Tip the conventional balance:
Business travel to yield more than the leisure segment in 2015. While leisure travel is the dominant revenue generator for the hospitality sector, it is also widely known that business travel is increasingly becoming an important contributor towards hotel yield. But 2015 may see a complete change in the revenue equation. 34% of hoteliers believe that business travel will yield more than the leisure segment this year.
Trend 2: Mobile technology for effective distribution management will be a priority; no rush to leverage it for in-hotel customer service.
This year, a large number of hoteliers will adopt mobile technology to optimise their distribution processes. 46% of hoteliers have indicated that adopting a mobile booking engine in the first quarter of the year will be an important strategy to drive hotel bookings. Over 40% of hoteliers are also looking at leveraging mobile technology by mid-year to receive distribution intelligence and accomplish channel management while on-the-move.
Many hoteliers are also looking at utilising mobile technology to drive loyalty programs. However, they are not keen on using mobiles to offer check-in facility or in-room services to guests this year.
Trend 3: Google Hotel Finder program will gain more importance as a tool to drive direct bookings
Hoteliers are looking at the Google Hotel Finder program as a strong tool to leverage direct bookings in 2015. While a majority of responses (24%) are in favour of integrating guest reviews into the hotel website, Google Hotel Finder ranked close with 18% of responses choosing it as an important strategy to ensure direct bookings. The Google Hotel Finder program has been preferred over pay-per-click campaigns as well as metasearch.
Trend 4: Social media platforms to be leveraged as a two-way communication channel
This year, hoteliers are keen to adopt better strategies to maximise pricing and revenue opportunities based on their online reputation. To do this, they are looking to leverage online networking platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and TripAdvisor to engage with guests. 44% of responses indicate that hoteliers want to respond to all guest reviews posted on networking channels with personalised messages and engage in a two-way dialogue with guests on these virtual networking platforms.
Trend 5: Loyalty program will make a come back
The importance of innovative loyalty programs and targeted promotional offers will continue to grow in 2015. Over 50% of responses indicate that hoteliers believe promotions and loyalty programs will drive better guest relationship this year than service upsell, community engagement programs or local experience packages.
Trend 6: The emerging need for real-time business analytics
2015 will see a lot of hoteliers adopt real-time business analytics to strengthen the foundation of various aspects of decision-making. From optimising distribution strategy to planning a targeted marketing campaign, hoteliers believe that business analytics will play an important role in solving operational challenges this year. According to the survey, 30% of responses are in favour of using business analytics to study guest preferences and design targeted marketing plans, 25% seek an insight into booking patterns to decide appropriate room-rate strategy, 23% look at optimising inventory allocation and 22% want to monitor channel performance and revenue.
Trend 7: Distribution analytics will be crucial for yield management strategy
In 2015, most hoteliers will look at adopting distribution analytics to prepare their yield management strategy. Over 65% of responses indicated that metrics on booking source and channel performance will be crucial in planning hotel revenue and distribution strategies.
Trend 8: Multi-channel management to be simplified with increased dependency on distribution technology
Analytic-driven seamless distribution technology will be the need-of-the-hour as hoteliers seek to tie-up with more and more online demand generators to maximise occupancy opportunity. In the survey taken, 27% of responses indicate the need for analytics to arrive at an effective pricing model while 26% highlight the importance of an intelligent distribution technology that can promptly update room rates based on demand and occupancy.
Click here to download the infographic
About RezNext Global Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
RezNext is the world’s only true enterprise distribution technology company that helps hoteliers approach distribution as a data-driven business where the availability of real-time information across strategy to execution impacts the business performance of the hotel. To learn more visit www.reznext.com