In association with The why and how
Christian James, managing director of analytics-focused marketing agency IF, answers the big big data questions.
How is big data changing the way hotels operate? Dynamic optimisation of pricing and capacity management is the really big opportunity. Apart from real-time price decisions online, good visualisation of capacity and price decisions is vital for marketing managers.
How do hotels ensure they are not overwhelmed by data, nor invest too much time and money in analysing it? We recommend being able to extract anonymised data from existing systems, formatted as simply as possible. Analysts and data scientists can then bring that data to life, which does not require systems investment.
Can small hotels use their own big data cost effectively? Yes, using the approaches mentioned above. We can take internal data and add census data, geodemographic, attitudes, lifestyle, media preferences and so on.
www.ifagency.co.uk
for both customers and the best staff will be those hotels that view investment in IT from a holistic, cross-organisational perspective. “They create a platform that hosts myriad technologies deployed for front and back of house and from third parties – such as point of sale, mystery diners, procurement data, menu management and social media senti- ment. They take data sets out of the silos they traditionally reside in, and put all that data into one central reporting hub. In doing so, they open the door to the power of sharing informa- tion and insight across the business, thereby improving the guest experience, increasing profitability and operational efficiency, and optimising the workforce.” At OTA Insight, which provides cloud-based revenue management solutions, co-founder and chief commercial officer Gino Engels warns that integration is key when adding new systems or tools to the cloud as otherwise data and content can be segregated. “Hote- liers should ensure their vendors are able to effectively integrate and work alongside current systems to ensure they gain full value,” he says. “Our range of data insight tools are presented in a way that supports and enables direct action. The tools also integrate with core
www.thecaterer.com
“Analysts can bring data to life, which does not require
Stephen Barr, managing partner at Noetic, says the revenue per available room (revpar) metric remains essential in assessing business performance. “However, any hotelier who spends a significant amount of money investing in acquiring guests – which is pretty much everyone – needs to understand that netrevpar [which factors in the cost of
industry tools including hotel property man- agement system [PMS], revenue management system, and data benchmarking providers.” So what of the future? Asset manager
Sandro Guadagnini, who manages 15 of the 28 Hallmark Hotels on behalf of Topland Group, says he is looking forward to improvements in algorithm-based forecasting, which allows managers to crunch data such as the number of general web searches for a location or event, which can help predict demand in a hotel.
SELF-CORRECTING SYSTEMS “The systems are self-learning and self- correcting,” Guadagnini says, “so they will move forward and improve the accuracy of forecasting. The integration with PMS and distribution systems is a key essential, but today you also need human involvement to check and monitor the system. In future, we will need systems to become more self-reliant as human resources will be too expensive and dispensable. Like any technology, it will get more complex and advanced – at this point, operators are still critically important. But we will take on more and more data.” He adds that access to detailed guest infor- mation means revenue managers could look at favouring certain customer profiles. For example, people from China may spend more in a certain type of hotel than those from the Netherlands. Or families may spend more in a resort, and so on. It can be at an even more micro level – Mr Jones spends more than Mr Smith at the casino.
systems investment” Christian James
“In the past a guest may have said, ‘Do you know who I am? I spend £10,000 in poker games,’ and the manager would be called and would remember them. That’s the manual way. But the manager might be away. An automated system will have more chance of success.” And it’s not just hotels that benefit. Novus Leisure, one of the UK’s largest bar, club and restaurant operators, has seized on big data’s potential (see panel opposite). Customer experi- ence director Simon Gaske says: “The future is all about data, the speed at which it is gathered, the ease of access to it, and auto-production of the analysis. If you set the KPIs that you wish to monitor, the data can be incredible. If not, it’s like a needle in a haystack.”
A better business performance metric than revpar?
guest acquisition] is a better measure of a hotel’s room occupation efficiency.” But Barr adds that
netrevpar needs to be put into context because guests are not all the same. For example, guest A has stayed twice and guest B has stayed 10 times, and both have the same netrevpar, but guest B has a higher historic lifetime revenue value and is more likely to stay again, so B’s
future value is likely to be higher too. B is also more engaged with the brand, which means they are more likely to recommend the hotel to others. “So netrevpar is a measure
we see as essential, and we need revpar as a base measure to get it,” Barr says. “But netrevpar itself needs to be seen in the context of guest segments as well as your channels.”
Technology Prospectus 2018 | 7
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