While Facebook posts and Twitter feeds aren’t going to stop showing up on hoteliers’ marketing to-do lists, experts contend the operational models of “sharing economy” sites like Airbnb mean hotel companies need a seismic shift in their thinking. That starts with upping the ante on all aspects of the mobile experience.
HOTELS: What are the musts for mobile in 2015?
Robert Cole, founder, RockCheetah, Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin: Responsive website design so the content shifts to support the device form. Mobile sites will get much better at integrating images and video into the user experience. The imagery and content will become adaptive to the guest’s needs, profile or navigational actions. Third-party booking engines must improve to eliminate the often jarring transition from navigating through site content to transacting a booking. Universal analytics must be deployed to integrate the tracking of mobile sessions for an individual with desktop, tablet and offline touchpoints.
H: What do hoteliers tend to overlook about mobile?
Cole: Analytics are critical. If they don’t get captured, it is doubtful the hotelier can truly know and understand the guest to the point where their needs may be anticipated.
H: How can hotel companies use mobile to boost CRM and personalization initiatives?
Cole: Mobile devices need to be tied into the analytics platforms and big-data capture processes. CRM/loyalty programs need to be altered to deal with multiple traveler personas based on the purpose or objective of their itinerary. Relevant data from all customer touchpoints needs to be associated with the guest profile, and communication streams need to be captured to facilitate more efficient service delivery.
H: What’s the most futuristic trend for 2015?
Cindy Green, CEO, Kalibri Labs, Rockville, Maryland: Wearable technology, like watches.
H: What do hoteliers need to do with apps to stay relevant?
Green: I think apps will give way to companies getting embedded in mapping and other online platforms (like Uber promoting itself on Google Maps). Instead of companies having their own apps, consumers will want to have shared platforms to support the full travel experience where they can access many hotel brands, airlines, car-rental companies, ground transport, restaurant info and local attractions.
H: How can hoteliers make the most of revenue management software?
Green: Revenue management is looking at more revenue streams besides the room and more variables to think about forecasting besides past history. Using top-line revenue as a guide for evaluating a hotel’s performance will need to be supplemented with measures that provide more of an indication of profit contribution, like Net RevPAR and sales and marketing efficiency.
H: What do mobile platforms need to offer to compete?
John Burns, president, Hospitality Technology Consulting, Scottsdale, Arizona: One-click booking, especially on mobile devices, as achieved so effectively in Amazon Prime.
H: What’s your view on the relationship between mobile and CRM?
Burns: We should not be trying the use mobile to optimize CRM but just the opposite — use CRM to improve the mobile relationship. We need to drill down into both the macro (trend) and micro (individual guest) data levels to better understand both of them. OTAs and sharing economy operators are so far ahead of hotel companies in this area — in understanding and skillfully applying analytics.