Talk to us about being proactive with Big Data.
We now live in a hugely connected world driven by Big Data. At one end of the scale we have smartphones listening to us and serving up ads for that gadget we’ve been mulling over, whilst at the other end of the scale, generally speaking, we have hotels.
Each day I probably receive a hundred emails from companies that have somehow harvested my data from somewhere. These emails are really interesting (and annoying) because they do speak to my life profile in a way that makes me more than certain there are cogs working in the background that I can’t see, and neither can you. I seem to spend half my day unsubscribing from emails in the belief it will do some good.
Big Data is big business. It’s massive and if you’re not aware of it now, BIG Data is already here, and it will run our lives for the next 50 years. It’s digital water that’s permeating everywhere, except UK hospitality and perhaps Mrs Smiths knitting club in Bognor Regis. The reason for the Big Data explosion relies on exploring tech used in other industries and if this exercise is undertaken it’s clear that as a fragmented multi-layered industry we’re well behind the curve.
We don’t even get the Fisher Price basic right. Despite having visited hundreds of hotels multiple times, do I ever get a welcome back? When I’ve celebrated family events and birthdays do I ever get an annual reminder that any hotel took a blind bit of notice? No to both. And that’s just scratching the surface.
Part of the issue is that our industry is still operating on Web 1.0. Web 1.0 generally utlises swish poster web sites with a few booking portals attached, and that’s it. Customer engagement and property observation is almost zero. Thousands of guests walk in and out of your property with the same data capture not much better than what we were doing in the year 2000. Ironically, hotels now have incredibly sophisticated software systems but these don’t help if they’re not used imaginatively.
Over recent years, my property websites have been fully engaging in harvesting guest data, not in a voyeuristic, illegal way, but in a way guests actually want to provide as much information as they can to secure their own best experience. Let’s face it, people have been building their brand new Mercedes and complex travel plans online for years, so having them act in the same way in my websites is pretty intuitive.
Case Study
So, Big Data is really useful in making intelligent strategy decisions based on reports the Big Data provides. If you’re not excited about this yet, imagine achieving the results below with just some some basic real world info below in a 90 bedroom hotel with a Spa.
- By looking at OTA room sale segments and driving return guest bookings direct (minus incentive) a saving of £82k was made across 1 year.
- By sending a Happy Birthday email £95k of private dining was generated across 1 year.
- By sending a Happy Anniversary email £78k of private dining was generated across 1 year.
- By analysing previous DDB guests against the same guests returning on B&B, £47k was generated.
- In recording that you had 388 in-restaurant requests for vegan dishes in the last year, a new specialist Vegan menu was introduced that generated £24.5k alone.
- Big Data shoed that a campaign to uplift Room Only’s to B&B generated £25.9k in additional sales.
- With 87% of wedding couples ordering chair covers, chair covers were bought rather than hired – saving of £3.1k
- Big Data on pre-arrival emails showed a 12% increase in room upgrades to the value of £15k you didn’t have before.
- Big Data pre-arrival emails produced £43.2k of pre-arrival add-ons.
- By analysing leisure shifts to guest footfall, Spa shifts were changed to boost retail sales whilst reducing manning. Net saving of £22.5k per year.
As a result of spending time analysing Big Data and acting on the intel, £331k was generated with a saving on OTA billing of £82k and manning saved by £22.5k. And these figures are just looking at the basic stuff.
When you think in terms what information drives selected revenue streams, are you just going with the flow, or is sophisticated data driving your sparkling results? How do your HOD’s play their part in revenue delivery and their understanding of their data.
If you want to know about big data, get in touch.
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