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Hospitality property marketing teams have to become masters of data.
Leveraging a deeper understanding of data flows and ensuring that it’s being captured cleanly, shared seamlessly and parsed profitably will drive results.
Here’s how to turn data into bookings.
Welcome to another edition of Hospitality Property School.
I am your instructor, Gerry MacPherson.
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Data is the fuel that powers the marketing engine, but this fuel requires more refining and care than ever before.
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Looking ahead to 2022, the most impactful trends in hospitality marketing fall into three groups: the advancement of privacy, the marketing operations manual and enhancing the guest experience.
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Here are a few key trends that shape both high-level strategy and ground-level tactics that will help turn data into bookings.
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The marketing manual
While marketing has long been the domain of imagination and ingenuity, it’s now also a requirement to have a firm grasp on marketing operations. With data driving so many decisions and swaying the effectiveness of a given marketing campaign, property marketers now have to be one part imagination, one part ingenuity and one part data master.
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The impact of Apple’s privacy changes
With the update of Apple iOS 15, email marketing has changed. Hospitality properties will no longer be able to see when a subscriber opens their emails and must adjust to a new privacy concept.
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Properties will now be completely reliant on the data that they can gather themselves, meaning the technology they use to manage and make sense of this data will be vital. How well they can manage their data will determine how successful their marketing and success will be.
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As data streams into a hospitality property’s website, booking engine, newsletters, surveys, etc., the data gathered can provide high-quality figures to power guest communications, services, and personalized marketing. All this while having a detailed account of where that data came from and ensuring the ability to meet global privacy regulations.
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This will allow properties to evaluate guests’ RFM value (Recency, Frequency, and Monetary). Segment audiences for marketing campaigns, and target guests with personalized messaging.
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Third-party data is coming to an end
Even though it has been pushed to 2023, the end of cookies is going to happen. This has given hospitality property marketers more time to adapt to a world without cross-site behavioural tracking.
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The upcoming end of third-party data is the perfect moment to pivot to first-party data. As already mentioned, these are data sources collected directly from your property also including, website clicks, booking patterns, search behaviour, and everything captured in your rich guest profiles. All of that data can be used to optimize, personalize and enhance your efforts and initiatives across other tools and platforms.
Utilizing an all in one platform
A property that’s short-staffed also means that no one has time to learn and regularly check a slew of different software. Hospitality property teams have to be super-time-efficient, with the ability to see all reviews as well as quickly execute follow-up actions from one central hub.
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These are customer data platforms that pull together all of a property’s data into a single spot, cleansing it into a standardized format that can then be distributed to other tools in the tech stack. This puts you in charge of how data flows between tools while also ensuring that new tools have access to accurate data.
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Correct data hygiene
In 2022, the ability to capture clean first-party data will be the key to a successful transition towards a more personalized guest experience and a shift away from relying on third-party data sources.
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Since hospitality properties can no longer rely on third-party data to augment their marketing efforts, they need data that are precise and reliable. Data standardization cleans up your data so it can be shared across your property’s tech stack.
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Channel-driven marketing
Successful marketing in 2022 will require a personalized channel strategy that’s driven by each channel’s different qualities. From basics like demographics and engagement rates to more advanced areas like the types of ads available, a channel-driven marketing strategy optimizes for value based on each channel’s specific features.
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A rounded, channel-driven marketing strategy also requires close alignment with profit. Profitability must be top-of-mind. A channel that produces fewer, more profitable bookings may be better than one that drives quantity. Close alignment with profit puts channel profitability in focus.
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Are these make sense so far?
Let me know in the comments.
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Increasing the guest experience
Another focus area for marketers in 2022 is enhancing the guest experience through data-driven personalization. Of course, personalization has fortified itself as a core guest expectation and the notable development is that advancing the guest experience is now a marketer’s responsibility alongside operations.
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Guest survey integrations
The best way to improve a hospitality property’s online reputation is to first look at guest satisfaction scores. Here is where having an automated system to help with error recovery via in-stay surveys and to generate analytical reports from post-stay surveys will respectively prevent negative reviews from reaching third-party websites. Plus, give you actionable insights on how to improve in a way that’s meaningful to the guest.
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Improved third-party reviews
Besides the in-house automation, the next step is to build an Application Programming Interface to the properties outward-facing review sites, for example, TripAdvisor and the OTAs. This will aid in catching negative reviews and responding to those criticisms.
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An important second is the data accumulation whereby an API feeds more information back to a property for analysis, helping to improve the guest experience and move the property up the online rankings.
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If you are a member of the Hospitality Property School Group, as a bonus, I am going to talk about 4 more ways that will help turn data into bookings.
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In conclusion
Thanks to shifting attitudes towards privacy, hospitality property marketers face a dramatically different landscape in 2022. Implementing some or all the key trends will help shape both high-level strategy and ground-level tactics.
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Leveraging a deeper understanding of data flows to ensure that it’s being captured cleanly, shared seamlessly and parsed profitably will lead to more bookings and very satisfied guests. Data will drive the results.
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We cover more on marketing in “The Guide to Owning & Operating a Hospitality Property – Successfully” book & course. You find more information at KeystoneHPD.com
I would like to know what you are doing to become more data-focused.
Let me know in the comments.
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You will have access to this episode for the next six weeks and then it’s locked in the vault for Hospitality Property School Group members only.
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To see all the other valuable material you’d have access to as a member of the Hospitality Property School Group, check out the short video in the episode post-show notes.
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In the next episode, I will talk about the most popular episodes of 2021.
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That’s it for today’s episode,
Until next time, have a fun day.
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Are you getting your weekly INNsider Tips? You can find the link in the show notes.
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⇒ TO READ OR LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE ON KEYSTONE HOSPITALITY PROPERTY DEVELOPMENT:
https://keystonehpd.com/how-to-turn-data-into-bookings-for-hotels-resorts-bed-breakfasts-ep-277
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