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It’s all Greek to me. The COVID-19 pandemic has so thoroughly dominated everyday life that we have all got an education in the Greek alphabet. From Alpha and Beta to Gamma and Delta, each new strain is a grim reminder of the coronavirus’ intractability.

In the best of times, it’s important to keep your best employees. In tough times, it’s even more important. Customers are beginning to feel the results of The Great Resignation, which quite honestly, is not so great. It has resulted in longer lines, longer hold times, and slower service – basically a lower level of customer service.

The world is speeding up, with technology setting the pace for entire industries. This is true of the hotels space, with an emphasis on building long term relationships with guests by implementing relevant offerings that take personalization to the next level. As an integral pillar to strategy, revenue management helps create clarity to to maximize resources that contribute to profitability. That means accounting for incoming data in volumes greater than those in any other era of the industry.

20 months after the world first shut down due to COVID-19, the hospitality industry is looking for ways to continue their path to recovery. Traveler behavior has been unpredictable and hotel occupancy rates have fluctuated: emerging variants, changing government regulations, and inconsistent vaccine availability have all had their impact. But there is hope on the horizon. While we’ve yet to see 2019 levels, Expedia Group’s first-party data suggests that travelers are willing and eager to travel – whether it’s to see loved ones, business colleagues, or to simply satisfy their wanderlust.

What is the bedrock of great service? This is a question that any service provider should be well equipped to answer, but there is, perhaps, no industry more deeply rooted in the art of service than hospitality. Hotel and travel brands are, after all, in the business of experience; specifically, experience as a service, and today’s guest expects best-in-class service at every turn. So, let me ask you again, hoteliers: what is the bedrock of great guest service? The answer, if you ask me, is quite simple: technology.

During the height of the pandemic in 2020, casino hotels scrambled to adopt mobile check-in to protect their guests and staff, and adhere to social distancing guidelines. This big push towards mobile also led hoteliers to seek better tech solutions to improve other areas of the guest experience and hotel operations. Today, in the midst of a labor shortage and the pandemic’s uncertain end, casinos are doubling down on their tech initiatives, focusing investments in new technologies that will provide a more modern experience for guests, help improve operational efficiency and generate more revenue.

Are hotels making the most out of the technology they have? This is becoming a crucial question for leaders to ask as technology takes on a greater share of daily operations. Hotel property-management systems provide a vast array of capabilities, but it’s up to the technology provider to keep operators informed of what those capabilities are. Otherwise, operators could spend unnecessary time and money moving from one perfectly capable system to an unfamiliar and less effective one, costing them valuable time, capital, and resources for implementation and training, only to find they are no better off and in fact, regret making a change at all.

With the surge in travel demand, the Indian hotel sector has been regaining ground faster than expected, with occupancy climbing significantly in recent months, strengthening the sector's hope for a stronger rebound. Domestic leisure travel growth, significant pent-up demand, and the resumption of business travel in the country are all contributing to the strong revival. Weddings and social events are also driving demand in certain markets.

Following on from our dive into the Q3 data for North America, Asia Pacific, and Latin America, we round out the series by looking at the EMEA region. What was the behavior of travelers in this varied and important market as it experienced its second summer of the pandemic? Here we examine five of the most noticeable trends found in our exclusive first-party data.

To what extent will a company go to try to get customer feedback? Is it a simple email request? Is it an incentive to fill out a survey? And, if there is an incentive, can that skew the results?