By Eric Alister
It goes without saying that Artificial Intelligence (AI) has unveiled to hotel and online-travel agency (OTA) brands the hidden powers of customer data collection for increasing operational efficiency and revenue. From improving personalized guest experiences to optimizing pricing, improving marketing efforts and enabling more accurate forecasting and better strategic planning, AI has proven time and time again that the more customer data you collect, the more valuable customer insights you will unlock. But that’s not where the story ends.
In this month’s technology segment, we continue examining data management by exploring some of the creative new ways that hotels and OTAs are putting their customer data to use.
Sheer Volume
Digital technologies produce a vast amount of data for hospitality and travel companies simply from their data collection throughout day-to-day operations. As AI technologies — such as machine learning, natural language processing and video recognition — continue to accelerate at a rapid pace, advanced analytics expert, Dilip Bhattacharjee, expects OTAs and hospitality companies will soon be able to put their large volumes of digital data that they’ve collected to new and innovative uses. Bhattacharjee notes that, while it’s still too early to predict all the ways AI technologies will change the hospitality sector, a number of new opportunities are starting to emerge.
Ahead of the Curve
One of AI’s most powerful contributions to the hospitality industry is by helping operators shape personalized guest experiences. Companies can use data analytics to understand customer preferences and behaviours, allowing them to personalize room assignments, amenities and services, in addition to tailoring room preferences, suggesting local events and offering culinary choices based on past preferences.
But according to research conducted by media and predictive intelligence company, Hospitality Technology, AI will soon enable operators to see ahead of the curve by predicting what new guests will want before even the guests know it. Through predictive modelling, hotels could automatically adjust rooms to guests’ ideal temperature, arrange in-room amenities based on their interests or stock minibars with their favourite beverages. “It’s like having a crystal ball for maximizing efficiency and wowing your customers,” says Bob Vergidis, founder and Chief Vision Officer of pointofsale.cloud.
New Partnerships
Based on the latest insights from CBRE, we’re beginning to see partnerships across a much broader range of industries. Such partnerships allow for the companies involved to consolidate their collected customer data to make more informed predictions. Hilton and Extended Stay America, for instance, recently partnered with Target, Restaurants.com and DoorDash to improve instant discount and points redemption across their platforms. According to CBRE, seventy-eight per cent of U.S. hotels are affiliated with approximately 328 brands. Furthermore, the six hotel-brand families tracked in CBRE Hotels’ 2023 KPI database owned 21 brands each on average, representing almost 60 per cent of all branded U.S. hotels.
As a hotel or OTA, the advantage of having more partnerships under your belt means having access to more customer data, collected from a more diverse range of products and services. As CBRE pointed out in its July 2024 AI’s Impact on Hotels report, partnered companies can share between them such valuable customer data as “where you live and when you go on vacation, what types of places you researched and chose not to go to, when your anniversary is, when your kids were born, who your friends are and even what you ate last night.” Armed with this data, OTAs can utilize AI to predict the right place for a customer to visit, at the right time and at the right price.
For hotels, the benefits can translate into determining price based on the guest rather than the room. Today, hotels don’t factor in the guest when pricing a room. Regardless of who is booking the room, the price stays the same. In the future, hotels can price a room differently based on who is booking it. Guests who have historically spent more at onsite amenities can be given steeper room discounts in order to maximize revenue.
Putting It Altogether
The above mentioned trends make it abundantly clear that a company’s size is a large contributing factor to the volume and diversity of customer data it can mine, which in turn translates into more personalization that drive profits and revenue. The AI era, therefore, will benefit the brands with the most partnerships, leaving behind the smaller companies. So start making new friends, fast.
