By Larry Mogelonsky, MBA, P. Eng. (www.hotelmogel.com)
The pandemic has been a great reset button for our industry,
but its long tail is only now unveiling itself. Corporate guests won’t be back
to their 2019 levels by at least the spring of 2021 – groups will take longer
still – while many leisure guests are either hunkering down for financial
reasons or because they are still fearful of viral spread. With fewer travelers
overall, it’s going to be a dogged fight this autumn and winter, but you can
stay float if your tech stack facilitates a lean operation and helps you to
better determine what motivates your core customers.
While properties have always touted a myriad of
technological deployments to augment the guest journey, most have only ever
been peripheral to the duties performed by frontline teams, supervisors and
managers. Where COVID-19 will continue to impact various departments is in the
pursuit of exceedingly automated services to meet the booming demand for
‘person-less accomodation experiences’. Namely, the virus has fundamentally
shifted many customers’ mentalities to no longer want any direct contact with
the hotel staff, and therein lies a tremendous opportunity to cut costs as well
as redefine what services you offer based upon the mountains of new data you
will have.
Much of this has already been handled during the lockdown
period earlier this year to meet the need for a more touchless and sanitized
environment in order for guests to feel safe. New technologies like self
check-in, mobile room keys, contactless payment platforms, guest service
messaging apps and housekeeping upgrades like the use of electrostatic sprayers
were all necessary to meet the new Covid safety guidelines and give travelers peace
of mind, but these have mostly become expected and may not necessarily add any
perceived value to the guest experience.
While every property or brand is different in terms of where
they draw their revenues, simply adding in new features to continue to address
viral transmission may not enough to further motivate leisure guests after
they’ve all taken their first post-pandemic staycation. Instead, gaining loyal
customers and return visits as well as new guests for the months ahead requires
a thorough understanding of their key drivers and what personalized services
they want.
Technology has thus become instrumental for catering to the
demands of the next normal – that is, the two quarters following the initial
pandemic recovery during the summer – and here are six broad practices to look
at for this upcoming low season.
1. Developing a trendsetting culture. One
of the reasons many hospitality operations have been so often labeled as tech
laggards is that we have always had great teams doing great things. The
pandemic has not only forced us to abandon this people-first philosophy but
also to adopt a much quicker cycle of implementation. Trends move too fast for
a quarterly committee evaluation; if a piece of hardware or software can
improve automation, compliance or service then it needs to move up the chain of
command within a matter of weeks or else you will already be behind the times.
We are already seeing this with the creation of a cleanliness committee or
hygiene manager tasked with accelerating the setup of anything that can further
reduce the chances of viral spread, and now this same attitude must be adopted
for all technological implementation.
2. Understanding person-less. As
behaviors have all but permanently changed from the pandemic, many people have
come to value anonymity over cleanliness as a core driver for booking. That is,
and somewhat in contrast to the previous point’s example, advocating your new
chief hygiene officer to the public or the great pains your housekeeping team
has gone to won’t win hearts and minds. While guests will indeed want to know
about these safety measures, it is expected that you have them in place and not
necessarily an emotional booking factor. What may in fact work are services
designed for guests who want a totally hands-off experience. Beyond those
aforementioned, these amenities can range from having sanitized snacks or
groceries left outside the room at specific times to having ancillary
facilities made available without ever catching sight of the staffers who made
it happen.
3. Making everything integrate. All the
new tech implementations in the past year have resulted in a huge amount of new
data at your disposal. But the managers who are still around don’t have time to
cross-reference a dozen or so applications let alone manually migrate
information from one to the other. With everything connecting onto one or two
central platforms, it reduces the total workload for your team and allows you
to better understand your guests. Go further, though, such as investigating
flight integrations to enhance the arrival experience or direct online bookings
for third-party activity providers to encourage ancillary capture and
satisfaction.
4. Harnessing your CRM. Speaking of
understanding your guests, many hotels still aren’t properly utilizing their
guest profile data aggregators to develop personalized service offerings and
appealing packages. For instance, based on this past summer’s staycation
performance, can you identify any micro-clusters where guests are coming from?
What are the most common questions or service requests that you can bundle into
a fall promotion or simply anticipate then preemptively answer to save your
team time? With a guest messaging app in place, what can you learn from the top
inquiries via these channels and what can you do to leverage these behaviors to
get more return visits?
5. Small leisure groups. Travel metrics
from the summer have pointed to the successes of secluded, multi-room lodgings
where groups of safe sizes can vacation together without regularly encountering
other guests or staff. This behavior will repeat itself for the upcoming
holiday season with families, reunions and intimate company parties all looking
for an appropriately distanced venue where they can gather for a few days while
enjoying some fantastic meals together and perhaps a few activities. Hotels can
therefore capitalize upon this trend by setting up programs that cater to this
demand by offering connected rooms or whole room sections along with those
services most likely to be desired for a holiday getaway. As before, all this
would have to be made seamless and contactless, then advertised through agile
digital channels to accommodate today’s climate of last-minute bookers.
6. Working from a hotel. Many companies
are planning to make remote work a permanent option for their employees, but
this means that many will also become quite stir-crazy. Local hybrid travel –
bleisure to use the proper portmanteau – will be on the rise, although such
customers will be looking for those properties in their region that are
specifically set up for mixing business with pleasure. Executives need
comfortable office spaces adjoining their bedrooms along with all the
appropriate technologies to seamlessly work from an inspirational setting.
Besides dispatching your sales team to seek out partnerships with larger
corporations – perhaps even introducing a day rate or subscription model to
said organizations – marketing will require finding the right channels,
including the OTAs, to promote such a program.
About Larry Mogelsonsky
One of the world’s most published writers in hospitality, Larry Mogelonsky
is the principal of Hotel
Mogel Consulting Limited, a Toronto-based consulting practice. His
experience encompasses hotel properties around the world, both branded and
independent, and ranging from luxury and boutique to select-service. Larry is
also on several boards for companies focused on hotel technology. His work
includes five books “Are You an Ostrich or a Llama?” (2012), “Llamas Rule”
(2013), “Hotel Llama” (2015), “The Llama is Inn” (2017) and “The Hotel Mogel”
(2018). You can reach Larry at larry@hotelmogel.com to discuss hotel business
challenges or to book speaking engagements.
Media Contact:
Larry
Mogelonsky
Email: larry@hotelmogel.com
Website: http://hotelmogel.com/
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