Hotelier Perspectives

Picture yourself going through this small, yet frustrating, scenario as a business guest. During some free time between meetings, you decide to use the hotel’s fitness center. You head up to your room, change into your gear, then walk over to the gym. The entrance is unlocked via keycard, though, and yours somehow doesn’t work. Confused, the nearby receptionist tells you that gym access is an additional $10 per day. While not extortive, it’s nonetheless a shock because there was no prior mention of this fee.

With 2023 almost upon us, perhaps the tourism industry can finally expect to rebound in the coming months to its happy and healthy state. But the word "perhaps" cannot be overlooked, as nobody can predict the future and we will certainly live future crises. The travel sector cannot experience another collapse and should not rest on the status quo when recovering from downfalls. Therefore, rethinking tourism and building resilience in the coming years is exactly what is needed to prepare and minimize future challenges. In a joint effort to stay ahead with trends, the Swiss tourism and travel sector has chosen to bet on data and technology to undertake its national resilience journey, thanks to a national Innosuisse-funded project: The Flagship Resilient Tourism Project.

A restaurant took its most popular item off the menu. It had been on there a long time, and the owner decided it was time to make a change, even though it was his guests’ favorite dish.

Big promises define the world of technology. After all, many digital tools that have transformed the way we work and live today are a direct product of big, innovative ideas that were, at one time, inconceivable. But even in this digital era, skepticism is often warranted as businesses look to vet new platforms and services that come to the table with bold promises. Can the platform really live up to the sales pitch? Are the innovations touted by tech vendors as transformative in practice as they sound in theory? When we look at sales and catering systems, these questions are often the hypothetical elephant in the room as hospitality brands grapple between continued reliance on legacy systems and the adoption of a new-age platform. Are a new platform’s additional bells and whistles truly capable of solving the day-to-day challenges hotel sales teams face? Are tech vendors familiar enough with those challenges to build a system created from the ground up with hospitality sales teams in mind?

Covid 19 and subsequent lockdown have made a massive impact on guest behavior. The often-changing regulations coupled with turbulent political atmosphere have made people apprehensive about possible uncertainties. There is optimism and then there are uncertainties. Their expectations have changed. Their behavior and purchasing decisions are influenced by heightened emotions, as highlighted by a recent Google study.

University Based Retirement Communities (UBRCs) are a growing trend among universities and in the senior living world. They take on different forms across the nation (College-Linked Retirement Communities 2019). UBRCs are a concept that is intriguing and beneficial to both retirees and universities. To operate these communities professionally and prosper financially, most UBRCs either contract with a third-party operator or partner with an existing local retirement community.

Travel demand continues to surge as restrictions ease, and people can finally experience the world again. International travel nearly tripled in the first half of 2022, and the International Air Transport Association expects at least 4 billion travelers by 2024, even higher than 2019’s pre-pandemic numbers.

We all know the uneventful history of data collection. Annoying requests for permission to use your data in a way that is neither useful nor transparent for the customer. “Tick a box here to allow us to use your data however we want, without really telling you why”, or more importantly, how it will improve your guest experience.

Creating customer amazement is a foundational concept I cover in almost every one of my customer service keynote speeches. I’ve always preached that to amaze customers, we must simply be better than average all the time. While I’ve thought a lot about this over the years, lately I have been trying to make it even simpler for people to understand. To do that, you must understand the three ways you can be amazing for your customers, including your internal customers, who are the people you work with.

At Booking.com, we have a set of values that aren’t simply posters on the walls, but anchors that guide our thinking every day and ground our decision-making processes. One of them is to learn forever.