How Hotels are Using Technology to be More Competitive & Enhance the Guest Experience

by Erric Ravi CEO at Storify News

Hospitality brands these days work in an extremely competitive environment-an atmosphere where the optimal strategy for pricing their inventory is constantly evolving. Customers are always on their toes and on the lookout for a better deal by looking at hotels and comparing prices side by side on websites and OTAs. Hotels now are usually on the edge as they need to respond to competitors’ changing prices and strategies and optimize the same in real-time. This change can be caused due to the change in demand, seasonality and special events/occasions.

Keeping up-to-date with recent and relevant information that shows what customers are looking for, competitive pricing, and market performance, are the key to success. These are some of the ways how technology help small hotels to be seen more when compared to big hotel chains.

1) Online Booking- The most apparent manifestation of travel technology when talking about the hotel industry is a hotel/online booking. Moreover, with the help of the internet, it has now become easier to access information and maintain transparency. When talking about data such as rates, check-in/check-out time, facilities on offer and other crucial details that will help the guests make informed decisions. Another thing that can help small hotels shine is channel management solutions.

With the help of this software, small hotels can serve several purposes such as managing booking and lure direct bookings. It helps hotels to effectively manage their bookings and also help get direct bookings to the hotel’s website.

2) Your Online Reputation- Consumers these days are highly knowledgeable and can see through any gimmick. They are more likely to go through all the reviews and recommendations from trusted travelers. In order to make them more visible, hotels are now using social media analysis tools, to increase media presence- brand ambassadors, influencers and other.

Moreover, with the help of social media analysis tool you can do competitor analysis and keep a check on things such as conversions, impressions, clicks or likes. Furthermore, it also helps you to monitor consumer behavior, interests of the consumers, demographics, etc.

3) Enhancing Guest Experience - With the latest hospitality technology advances doing the rounds, it has become way more comfortable to check in and check out, and all the other guest-related processes seamlessly and more efficiently. Moreover, a technology like such helps you have an efficient distribution system and lets the hotels connect to multiple channels that offer additional features such as real time analysis of the market, rate recommendation, key performance data, etc.

Thus, with travel enthusiasts becoming more and more tech-savvy, hotels that are lagging behind a little when it comes to embracing the latest technology to reach out to their consumers are losing big time. In order to achieve better visibility, many hotels are adopting a robust hotel distribution channel and system too.