Jennifer Axness
Originally published to Amadeus Insights
By Francisco Pérez-Lozao Rüter, President, Hospitality, Amadeus
Travel expectations are evolving. As influencers drive new trends and different generations seek their own diverse experiences, travelers’ needs are increasingly multi-dimensional. They want inspiration, reliability, transparency, and trips that are customized to their needs.
At Amadeus, we are motivated by transforming the end-to-end traveler experience and building an environment that delivers lasting loyalty for our customers. To do this, we are extracting actionable intelligence from data, enabling connected thinking across the travel marketplace, moving towards a more sophisticated way of selling travel, and empowering exceptional customer service with our technology.
It all starts with data – The secret to driving profitable demand and decisions
As retailers worldwide use data to understand customers with pinpoint accuracy, the travel industry travel should be no different. The next era in the hotel sector will be about offering guests interesting and relevant options that give them exactly what they want to make their stay the best it can be.
Coupled with our industry leading air and broader travel data, we work with hoteliers across the world to combine sources like the Central Reservation System (CRS), booking engine, and social media to give our customers a 360-degree view of their guests. For Destination Management Organizations (DMOs), we profile new demographics of potential tourists who have shown preferences for similar places, to help drive fresh demand for their region.
Data helps our customers anticipate and exceed customer expectations with personalized offers, delivered at the right time, to the right people.
Connections power a more seamless, end-to-end journey
Fresh ideas, one website, one booking, and everything relevant included at the point of purchase. That’s the traveler dream.
We are connecting the fragmented travel space so companies in the sector can add new value to their customers, selling products and services beyond their core business to enhance traveler and guest journeys and drive more revenue. For example, we are enabling hotels to offer additional products such as travel protection, which earns them commission. This strategy enhances guest satisfaction and boosts revenue, setting hotels apart.
We know from our recent Travel Dreams research, where we surveyed 6,000 travelers from six countries, that just over a quarter of leisure travelers globally (28%) believe that they will get the best car hire deal if they take it as part of their hotel booking. There is real opportunity here to build on this kind of collaboration, deliver a more seamless customer experience, and expand travel providers’ visibility and revenue opportunities.
Modern retailing meets hotels – How we are delivering differentiation and loyalty
But it is not just about adding new services. Until now, selling hotel inventory has been about selling rooms, bed types and, if you are lucky, there might be a pillow menu.
Our current hotel technology evolution has our customers’ creativity and every one of their best features in mind. Our mission as we build cutting edge CRSs, is to enable our customers, large and small, to present their assets and attractions in a way that will differentiate what they offer so they can truly stand out from the crowd.
We know from the airline sector that unbundling and giving people choices is welcomed by travelers. However, true attribute-based selling, where literally any feature can be retailed, is yet to be fully available in the hotel sector.
We wanted to understand more about the appetite for attribute-based selling so in our recent study, we asked questions about eight key attributes or services that guests may be interested in. We discovered that 63% of global travelers are willing to pay significant sums for attributes on top of their standard average daily rates. The younger generation (Millennials aged 18-27) showed themselves to be particularly open, consistently willing to spend more than any other generation surveyed on the attributes we tested.
There is huge potential here for hoteliers to differentiate themselves and to earn more revenue. Nearly a fifth (17%) of business travelers from the U.S. say they would be prepared to pay up to 20% more to have business services like printing as part of their room package. Just over one in ten (12%) Gen Z (18–27-year-olds) say they would pay up to 25% more on top of their room rate to have an Xbox or premium TV channels.
Once the functionality is in place, our digital media solutions are there to take the best attributes and use them to attract profitable demand from direct and indirect leisure, business, and group business. Our campaigns are always precisely targeted to drive down customer acquisition costs.
Achieving operational excellence and enhancing customer service
No matter what route the customer has taken to get there, when they walk through the door of a hotel or car hire company, they expect good service. From the type of check-in, they are most comfortable with, a personal greeting from the front desk team, or a spotless hotel room when and where they requested it. Ultimately, the experience needs to match up to the promise.
Technology needs to be deployed to help the teams on the ground make the most of the resources they have, and to enable them to provide the human interaction that makes hospitality special. Many of the processes and support functions in hotels can be made more efficient by applying technology. This, in turn, gives the front of house, cleaning, support, and events staff time to focus on the guest.
From our Travel Dreams research, we asked “what factors would most influence you to revisit a particular hotel?” Aside from value for money, the second highest choice was the cleanliness of the hotel, and third was excellent customer service. Getting these things right in hospitality is non-negotiable in today’s competitive market.
The big picture
Travel expectations are evolving, and we are building the next-generation infrastructure that will track, meet, and exceed their needs.
From the moment travelers begin searching for their trip to the time they return home, we are empowering hoteliers, destinations, and travel providers with flexible, industry-leading technology and insights that enable exceptional experiences at every step of the journey.
It is exciting to be working in partnership with our customers to develop a transformative technology approach that will enable us all to realize the huge potential of our industry and the great opportunities that lie ahead.
