Blogs

The journey from reputation to revenue in Travel & Hospitality

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What customers perceive about your brand can make or break an organization in the modern travel and hospitality (T&H) landscape. The depth of connections and loyalty that T&H brands can build with their customer base is significantly influenced by their reputation to deliver positive customer experiences, which can tip the scale between expanding customer base and diminishing it.  Feedback to fast forward growth Traveler and guest feedback is a key consideration in building brand reputation in the industry. T&H enterprises therefore need to be quick on their feet when it comes to responding to customer requests, resolving issues promptly and fairly, and going above and beyond to deliver a positive experience. Outside perspective can help – checking third party ratings sites like TripAdvisor, Yelp, and Google reviews gives a fair idea on how the brand is being perceived by customers. Negative comments and responses can also work for the brand, as it presents an opportunity to quickly identify areas of improvement and show initiative in delivering better service. It lets brands interact directly with customers to quickly set things right in case of an issue, or to provide additional context and clarification – making customers feel heard and valued. Actively encouraging satisfied customers to leave feedback also helps balance out any negative feedback and showcase improvement. Building reputation with data analytics and AI Data analytics and AI can play a crucial role in reputation management by providing T&H companies valuable insights into how their brand is perceived by the public. Here are some ways to do it. Sentiment Analysis: Analyzing vast amounts of customer feedback and social media data to determine the overall sentiment towards a hotel or an airline as an example. This helps T&H enterprises understand how customers feel about their products, and services.  Social Media Monitoring: Monitoring social media platforms for mentions of a travel brand and analyze the sentiment of these mentions. This helps to respond to negative comments, track mentions of their brand, and engage with their audience.  Reputation Risk Assessment: Assessing the risk of reputation damage based on factors such as industry trends, brand sentiment, and the impact of events like travel disruption. This helps to anticipate potential reputation risks and take proactive steps to mitigate them.  Predictive Analytics: Making predictions about the impact of future events on a travel company’s s reputation. For example, predicting the potential impact of a major event such as a merger or acquisition between two airlines.  Anomaly detection and content analysis: Identifying and monitoring unusual or unexpected activity related to a travel company’s reputation online, such as negative reviews, social media posts, or online comments. The process involves collecting data from various online sources, analyzing the data to identify patterns and deviations, and using machine learning algorithms to detect anomalies in real-time. This information can then be used to respond to potential threats, mitigate damage to the reputation, and improve overall online presence.   Reaping the rewards  Good reputation management can have several positive consequences for a T&H enterprise:   Increased customer loyalty:

Tech4TH Partners
Blogs

Three principles to an ESG compliant 2023

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Most consumers and organizations view sustainability as an environmental goal of going green, reducing emissions, or minimizing one’s overall impact on the environment. While they are not entirely wrong, sustainability is much more encompassing than just the carbon footprint and considers aspects of social and organizational accountability as well. The stakeholders for sustainability are not just limited to the local governments and regulatory bodies, but also includes the customers, employees, and the societies and communities within which these businesses operate. 83 percent of C-suite leaders and investment professionals say they expect that ESG programs will contribute more shareholder value in 2025 than today and would be willing to pay a ten per cent premium to acquire a company with a positive ESG record. – McKinsey, The ESG premium: New perspectives on value and performance Data is the key to changing the narrative for not just profits, but also the people and the planet. Data driven insights can not just help travel managers negotiate better with air, hotel and other travel providers, but also cut down energy consumption, manage waste better, enabling travelers to make greener choices, bring more transparency to policy making and more. Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) concerns are a C-suite priority now, that aims at creating a holistic sustainable environment within the organization. Environmental – Go beyond CO2 emissions This is usually the most focused upon aspect of ESG as “Global Climate Change” being a credible threat to the planet gets most attention from governments and media outlets globally. The environmental impact of human enterprise on our surroundings is clear and present and can be objectively measured using the “Carbon Footprint” metric.   Some of the key dimensions in this area are “Sustainable Consumption” which could be energy, water, and other resources. The emissions caused by these consumptions, both direct and indirect provide an objective metric of your sustainability alignment towards your environmental goals. Usage analytics combined with the data from smart devices that create an IoT environment can help streamline process in travel and stays to save water, reduce energy consumption and optimize the utilization of other resources.  Another dimension is around “Sustainable Waste Management” which dictates your ability to manage, minimize, and eliminate the generation of solid, liquid, and recyclable waste. The third dimension within this area is around “Sustainable Sourcing” which dictates the sustainability alignment towards your supply chain. Organizations supply chain can be a significant contributor towards environmental emissions and therefore be detrimental towards your overall carbon footprint. Using procurement data to pick products with lowest carbon emission can get organizations one step closer to being carbon neutral. Social – Cater to customers, colleagues and community (3CX)  This aspect of ESG is mostly focused on the leadership structure and employee dynamics within the organization. The ability of an organization to drive equitable and inclusive growth for its employees and leadership indicates a level of maturity that contributes to the workforce development dimensions within this key ESG area. Additionally, employee, leadership, and board diversity, equity,

Blogs

Smart Hotels: A Win-Win for Hotel Owners and Guests

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Imagine you plan a trip and after a long and exhausting journey, reach the stay to be greeted with a virtual guide who helps you to your room that sets the ambiance just how you like it with a single voice command, exceeding your expectations. Feels like a tall order? Well, Smart Hotel Rooms, can bring this wish to life. What are Smart Hotels? Smart hotels leverage the power of IoT along with data analytics and edge computing to deliver guest experiences that are superlative in nature with intelligent bots, virtual guides, instant services-based devices, etc. IoT (Internet of Things) and other enabling technologies help create an ecosystem of connected devices that gather data and take actions based on insights generated by processing that data. For example, smart controls for the room, smart elevator, motion detection within common areas for lighting manipulation etc. Why Smart Hotels? Hotel owners are looking for options to re-imagine tourism and hospitality post the pandemic, to make the most of the huge influx of guests. One of the ways to achieve is by adding a digital zing to their experience like touchless room entry, instant verification and payment, automatic services, etc. Advantages for owners While creating a hassle-free customer experience is the endgame, Smart hotel rooms also deliver an impressive fleet of services with energy-saving options like automatic lights, temperature management, light intensity control etc. that saves expenses, and the environment in the long run, by being energy efficient and more eco-friendly. You know your hotel has the best customer experience when guests become regulars. With AI powered insights drawn from a combination of IoT data and data from customer preferences, custom hyper personalized options can be made available to guests to create a seamless experience that they would want to revisit. Intelligent devices working in an IoT ecosystem can provide an immediate response based on triggers. They can be of help in identifying emergencies like gas leaks, fires, theft, etc., using smart sensors which can be used by the hotel units to quickly take action. For hotel owners specifically, it helps avoid damages, downtime and extra costs that are incurred because of such incidents. Voice-enabled functions, instant service requests and more provide a great way to interact with guests, reducing the turnaround time and enabling service even during the times when staff might be unavailable. By streamlining and automating processes they become more efficient and productive, resulting in increased net revenue, and helping you achieve the targeted ROI. Smart hotels streamline and automate processes to avoid manual error and effort leakage. For example, if guests want to make a meal order, they can simply place an order through voice-enabled devices. The order straight goes to the restaurant without the need for an individual to monitor it. The same goes for reducing energy consumption with smart lighting, temperature control and more. Advantages for guests Who does not love personalized hospitality? Consider you visiting a hotel and they know what you would like to have as

Blogs

AI & Data: The Silver Lining for the Travel Industry

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Everyone loves a well-planned trip where almost everything goes right and becomes memorable, but we all know, behind most of such trips lies a scapegoat who has been tasked with the research, planning, and booking – leaving the door wide open for the inevitable human error. The buck doesn’t stop there. Tourists of today want holistic options that lets them travel without burning a hole in their pocket. On the other hand, travel operators have suffered enough with the pandemic related slowdown and want to make up for it quickly by creating attractive traveler experiences. To help overcome these hurdles on the road to Instagram-worthy stories, the travel industry has turned to technology. AI and data are being leveraged to deliver optimal solutions that translate into better experience for travelers and cost savings for operators, here’s how. 1. Chatbots Every day, travel websites get hundreds of queries regarding several travel options. Some tourists would like a customized travel itinerary, while some want to check the best month to travel to a certain destination. Answering these questions quickly and accurately with real-time information is something chatbots accomplish with ease. There are different kinds of tourists based on the experience they would like to have – adventurous, off-beat, lavish, budget-friendly etc. It is tricky to come up with an itinerary of places and experiences at a destination that can address each tourist’s custom needs. Chatbots backed with a logical travel algorithm can prepare such customized lists that consider factors like time, cost, destination type, interests etc. based on traveler data. 2. Analytics Data is a powerful entity and with the right insights drawn from it, destinations can flourish with a good influx of tourists. Data driven decisions on offerings, cross selling opportunities and discounts can help travel operators make the most of the current travel scenario. Travelers also benefit from insights that can get them better deals in line with their preferences. Here are some sample use cases on how analytics can be used by travel operators: Predictive Analytics: Predictive analytics help in analyzing predictions like foreseeable flight offers, stay offers, probable disruptions, etc. It helps in better planning for both tourists and travel operators. Real-time Analytics: While predictive analytics share insights into the future, real-time analytics helps to deep dive into the present. Weather conditions, flight delays, price comparisons are some examples of variables that can change travel plans. They influence traveler behaviour and give operators a heads up if things go south, enabling them to swiftly take measures to tackle the situation. Customer Sentiment Analytics: Customer sentiment analytics gathers traveler reviews across different platforms and help travel operators know which parts of the experience delivers the best value and understand the gaps in traveler experience to improve their services. Trend Analytics: Tourist decisions are highly susceptive to trends and influencers. If travel operators want to capitalize on this, they need to have the right insights to understand current and developing trends like staycations, workcations, glamping etc. 3. Targeted Marketing Travelers are fed up
Future of Mobile Application Acquisition and Retention
Blogs

Future of Mobile Application Acquisition and Retention

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June kick-started on a high note with the Mobile Apps Unlocked (MAU) in Las Vegas. Focused on the future of mobile application acquisition and retention, the conference emphasized on some of the biggest trends taking over the digital marketing space. Although it’s been nearly a year since Apple introduced the App Tracking Transparency (ATT) in iOS 14.5, the mobile app landscape is still grappling with its massive influence on user acquisition.  While ATT protects consumers from being tracked by third-party apps, it impedes the collection of identifiers that advertisers essentially leverage for personalized targeting. Coming from a world where marketers championed their audiences and campaigns through complete visibility, this creates a pressing business problem. With this paradigm shift in privacy centricity, brands ought to be smarter with building trust through the relationships with their customers and users. Less data signals now call for custom metrics for attribution that give specific signals to their solution. Additionally, with diminishing attention spans, brands across the globe are unanimously struggling with the fallout of departed app users. And so, with user attrition becoming yet another key business hurdle, brands are at a pressing juncture to unlock the full potential of digital customer experiences. The conference brought together seasoned leaders and subject matter experts who proposed the need for sophisticated platforms that can drive measurable value, support segmentation, creative testing and deliver unique insights across the customer experience. Here, Machine Learning (ML) algorithms have proven to dramatically improve customer experience, maintain customer loyalty and increase engagement. This technology suits all mobile business apps that need predictions and insights from large data sets. Although personalization is believed to drive customer experiences, it will be increasingly difficult to achieve without an integrated system that allows marketing to leverage first-party data. In light of this, user acquisition is now becoming more complex by the day, urging an inevitable focus on making the best efforts in sync with user retention and engagement. However, experts believe that the wide gaps in strategy have been brought by the now obsolete retargeting. Tapping into potential solutions, the industry has identified the use of creatives as the apt pivot in this level playing field. With authenticity believed to aid relatability, data shows that authenticity has made attainability a lot more real. And it is in this tangent that brands are building their digital identity and presence for the current generation, through bite-sized creatives, better known as the TikTok style of engagement. Finally, on the flip side of this booming new digital era, is the marketers’ heavy dependence on developers. Although it has been a familiar and ongoing struggle for brands since the dawn of time, now more than ever it continues to inhibit independent discretion of marketers. The vicious cycle of consumers demanding relevant content and brands becoming more reliant on dev teams, sprint cycles, and app store approvals to launch even the simplest of personalized and segmented campaigns, seems like it is here to stay. But in all, MAU was a testament to
Hospitality sector
Blogs

A fresh perspective of moving forward in the Hospitality sector

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The hospitality sector was one of the worst-hit during the pandemic and requires evolving in these uncertain times with fresh perspectives While looking at trends and data in the past three years, with regards to the hospitality industry, there’s only one thing we know for sure- change is the only constant. Gone are the times when there was a specific set format and a considerable difference between leisure and business travel. From doubling down on investment in relevant technology to accelerating and automating processes to identifying and shifting the way we cater to different groups of guests, it’s about time we take a pause and move forward in a strategic manner as an industry, on the whole. These are some of the many points that were addressed at the 44th Annual NYU International Hospitality Industry Investment Conference, which was a great opportunity to network with industry leaders, and get exclusive insights, perspectives and happenings on everything hospitality. Understanding the prevalent shift in customer expectations, and what we are and should be doing about it-   As of late, lead booking time has considerably reduced to anywhere between 0 to 6 days, with almost 50% of guests making their bookings on the very same day as their arrival. A steady increase can be seen in the rate of impulsive travellers, and the only way to match this pace is to be agile with our technology. Pre-pandemic trends can no longer be taken into consideration, and the steps that we take henceforth has to reflect futuristic thinking. Subscription-based model is gaining high momentum in the high-end leisure travel and hospitality sector. There are also a number of bookings that have already been made for the foreseeable future, which also means a large increase in lead booking times. Companies and brands have to focus on catering to both these groups- impulsive travellers and high-end leisure travellers. A sharp increase can be seen in group travel, with private properties and hotel suites getting booked out faster than ever. While this was not so prevalent a few years ago, more companies turning to remote working and experimenting with 4-day work week is opening up opportunities for an increase in group/family travel and stay. The fact that technology could possibly replace FTE is causing a certain sense of fear in people. While we should definitely be pro-automation, having people handle front office operations is a must. An ideal 10-15% of the process can be automated, and live engagement with customers without having to use Business Intelligence tools is a definite must. We must ponder about how we can use technology better to enable these live interactions and also how automation can enable staff and co-exist with them rather than replace them Events and entertainment are taking a front seat, and travel specifically for this purpose is making a huge comeback. With Las Vegas being completely booked till 2024, it only makes sense to take this new development into consideration whilst strategizing. There is a notable trend
Blogs

Sustainability in restaurants: the future of hospitality

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Impact of sustainability in restaurants To operate responsibly and drive sustainability in restaurants and hospitality industry, companies must address environmental and social challenges with conviction and develop practical interventions. Technology is here to help hospitality leaders achieve their sustainability goals. With the growing size of the global pipeline of new hotels and restaurants mushrooming every year, leaders must measure and manage the impact of this growth. The hotel industry accounts for around 1 percent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, buildings more broadly generate 19 percent of energy-related GHG emissions and consume 40 percent of electricity globally. Whether it is restaurants or retail brands, we are entering an era of sustainability where ‘mindful shopping’ or ‘sustainable choices’ have taken precedence. This trend pivots us to an age of sustainability-minded customers that care deeply about the environment and seek companies that care about environmental issues. Customers globally are making lifestyle choices and buying decisions by their values, attitudes, and preferences and not just by their wallets – the reason that explains why sustainability in hotels and restaurants is more at the forefront than ever.   How does a sustainability-minded restaurant look like? Sustainable hospitality is the practice of creating and using more resource-efficient models of construction, operation, maintenance, renovation, and demolition of buildings. A sustainability-minded restaurant is more efficient when pursuing technology and guest behavior modifications for reduced resource usage in construction and operations. Sustainable practices in restaurants stand out because most travelers and guests today look for companies that share their values. According to Skift Research, visiting destinations and hotels that reflect their values and sustainability will likely intensify over time. Travelers and guests want to ensure that the companies they give business follow environmentally, socially, and ethically sound practices. An overwhelming majority of millennials and Generation Zers today will pay more for products and services that don't harm the environment, deplete natural resources, or negatively affect people's lives or wildlife. To differentiate themselves and stand out, the hospitality industry, especially Quick Service Restaurants can focus on a few key aspects leading to attaining sustainability goals:   #1 Use of energy efficient options Energy conservation in the hospitality industry entails a dual approach: efficiency and reduction. Energy conservation may also include training employees in behaviors that reduce energy consumption and sending friendly reminders to guests about using in-house resources or electricity. For efficiency, organizations can look for opportunities to use green technology or products. For example, switching to energy-efficient LED lights. Energy-efficient buildings, innovative sewage systems, and intelligent automated controls would reduce costs for both hotel owners and residents. Internet of things is a big area where smart switches and lighting can significantly improve the guest experience. Self-check-in/check-out functions, smart-locking systems, and automated temperature regulation and controls can further accelerate conservation.   #2 Reduce and manage waste For hotels and restaurants, the opportunities to limit waste are numerous. They can source their food locally or grow it by themselves to avoid food wastage. This sustainability mindset ensures fresher products
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