By using key analytics, leveraging the right segment intelligence, managers and owners will very soon be able to get a target lock on as yet undiscovered guest conversions, yield, and demand forecasting.
Your hotel’s true market, this is the only business intelligence that really matters. Understanding “where”, and where “not to” position a property is what differentiates failure, survival, and hotels thriving in an ever more competitive hotel space. By using key analytics, leveraging the right segment intelligence, managers and owners will very soon be able to get a target lock on as yet undiscovered guest conversions, yield, and demand forecasting. The rub for now is identifying the right databases, and the tools needed to integrate predictive analytics with operations. Here’s a look at a few strategies, storehouses of vital data, and key experts’ insights into the whole Big Data conundrum.
Tracking the Future Hotel Guest
The possibility of tracking down future demand and leads via digital libraries has arrived. Taking advantage of powerful industry resources, such as STR Global has in its extensive library is not only a future possibility; hoteliers have been utilizing the resource for a long time. The only thing that has changed is the mountainous volume and value of this data, and the growing list of tools becoming available to integrate these data sets within legacy and property systems. Frankly, STR Global is a must have resource for determining future supply and demand for the industry. This is why some 50,000 plus hotels already participate in STR’s performance surveys, which provide a vast resource for understanding historical events, day to day. If you’re hotel business requires supply and demand dynamics for predicting future business, STR Global data is vital.
I mention STR first for good reason. Several of the up-and-coming data analysis businesses have already begun integrating this treasure trove of data within their own frameworks. One such data innovator, SnapShot GmbH, has incorporated STR Global data with other data libraries to power latter analytics tools.
Martin Soler, Chief Marketing Officer at SnapShot explained how the German startup company treats this and other libraries: “As a hotel data and analytics company, at Snapshot we realized early on the vastness of data and insight that exists. Rather than trying to re-invent this data we believe there is great value in integrating with existing authoritative statistic companies such as STR, and in helping hotels find the relationships in between their data and these very deep data resource libraries.”
The Sunny Forecast
Help in forecasting demand is yet another game changing possibility for predictive analytics. Here’s where powerful data like that available with Passport comes in. The Euromonitor library keeps tabs on such things as consumer spending, industry trends, demographics, and much, much more. Many thousands of companies worldwide utilize this data for strategic planning, and hospitality is no exception. Hoteliers and restaurateurs have been leveraging this data for years in order to develop successful strategic planning, both at the macro, and micro level.
Taking as an example the Russian market, it’s easy to see how key market intelligence can help competing hotels gain advantage. With the Eastern European market as a focus, I asked another industry expert, Tomasz Janczak, Director E-Commerce& Distribution, Plateno Europe how revenue managers might better make use of such data. Here’s what the co-founder of the dotcomhotel Hospitality E-commerce& Revenue Management Conference had to add to the discussion: “Hospitality management changes the way the marketing and price management proceed. In my experience I’ve paid notice to the evolution the evolution of the decision processes, from analysing the previous years data, than adding competition rates, and market demand etc., and so on. Today technology supports hoteliers, but the market also changed and there is much more data to be analyzed. Therefore, one major key to harnessing all these variables is a single dashboard that will present all available information integrated into an easy to understand format. The problem now is not a lack of data, but the means to harness it.”
The Passport data, enhanced by news OneTwoTrip, Airbnb and Anydayanyway.com continue to see significant expansion in Russia, affords a wholly different picture of this unique market than one might glean from the 10 o’clock news. As Janczak points out though, the need for innovation is upon us. A toolset to allow typical hoteliers to do deep analysis is not yet on the table.
The Hotel Tides
Reading the tides in a sea of data will allow many hotel businesses to stay afloat, while others sink hopelessly. Truly deep analytics analysis, gaining critical industry insight, it’s not simply for the Hiltons of the world any more. Every hotel needs the capability to understand in advance, the trends that affect local markets. Using scholarly libraries of data like HVS gives access to, empowers users with things like hotel valuations and investing, asset management, sales, PR, and much more. This tool is especially useful in order to learn about international trends.
If we visit HVS and use the filtering function selecting Europe, we find articles like the Q2 2015 Hotel Bulletin, by Russell Kett. Anyone interested can easily glean a shakeup in the London hotel market from this report. Kett’s paper brings to the forefront the budding budget segment, and movements by players like Travelodge and Premier Inn. With the news telling of luxury stays on the front page, it’s actually the cheaper rooms that lead the trend these days. Isn’t this the sort of intelligence your hotel in London needs to operate on? Kett graciously accepted our invitation to comment on this hotel “dominance” issue for London.
Here’s what Kett had to offer with regard to even attempting to position a new brand in this London segment: “As for positioning a new brand in the UK budget hotel space in competition with Premier Inn and Travelodge, this would indeed be a real challenge given their existing dominance (60,000 and 37,500 rooms respectively). Holiday Inn Express has 15,700 rooms in the UK followed by Ibis with 8,500, so any new entrant needs to be able to offer a differentiated / distinctive product (to get noticed) and critical mass (sufficient sites) to be able to make any form of serious impact.”
Finally, in order to glean a bit more insight into how successful hoteliers already use big data sets, I spoke with one of the most successful hoteliers in Greece, Lefteris Karatarakis, Managing Director at Lato Boutique Hotel. Here’s what the he had to say about data points of pain: “At Lato one of our biggest hurdles is understanding demand out past 30 days. By using very in depth analysis like that found in the HVS Library, we can glean a picture of the immediate and extended future. But predictive analysis bears its own stumblingblocks, as an independent time and resource are often too critical to engage in such research. A better tool-set is urgently needed.”
Like I said before, the “true” market picture is vital for every hotel from an operational standpoint. Taking Lato Boutique as a perfect example for Crete, I know Karatarakis operates knowing full well what his property can, and cannot achieve conversion wise. Lato makes a perfect base from which travelers to massive Crete can venture out from, but it’s certainly not a resort hotel. If you want luxury, centrality, and practicality, Lato is your perfect Crete home. But if the beach and a big swimming pool is what your after, the Chania or Platanias strip hotels make more sense. On Crete though, who really needs a swimming pool amid an aquamarine paradise?
As I’ve illustrated briefly here, finding libraries of highly pertinent data to power predictive hotel analytics is not the problem. First researching, then selecting, and implementing and powering up your hotel operations with the right data and tools is the hurdle. Right now the industry is taking baby steps at transforming business analytics to deriving business intelligence. The next phase of this evolutionary process will be turning predictive analytics into predictive intelligence. Finally, the requisite end for the Big Data shift will be stunning analytics tools than help us churn out the right decisions, which lead to more profitable outcomes.
Phillip A. Butler is Partner at Pamil Visions Public Relations, and CEO, Our Russia.
Phil is a prolific technology, travel, and news journalist and editor. An engineer by trade, he is a partner in one of Europe’s leading PR and digital marketing firms, Pamil Visions PR.
He’s also a Huffington Post contributor on many topics, a travel and tech writer for The Epoch Times in print and online, and for several magazines including Luxurious.
Phil also contributes regularly to TravelDailyNews, The official Visit Greece Blog, and is an analyst for Russia Today and other media.
His firm has done all the content for Time Magazine’s top travel site Stay.com, as well as other online travel portals such as Vinivi out of France. He’s also a very influential evangelist of social media and new digital business, with a network of some of the most notable business people therein.
