In today's hyper-competitive hospitality landscape, delivering exceptional guest experiences is paramount. Travelers now seek unique and tailored stays, making personalization a game-changer for hotels and resorts worldwide. From personalized welcome amenities to customized recommendations, catering to individual guest preferences can significantly impact guest satisfaction and loyalty
The Rise of Personalization in Hospitality:
Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all hospitality experiences. Today's travelers crave personalized interactions that cater to their specific needs and preferences. The latest trend in the hospitality industry is hyper-personalization, often referred to as the future of customer experience.
Hyper-personalization revolves around one core idea: customers want to buy from companies that understand their needs. In the hotel industry, guests seek establishments that grasp their desires and expectations, going the extra mile to connect and interact with them. In essence, they desire a personalized experience that makes them feel seen and valued.
Hyper-personalization transcends standard strategies for customizing touchpoints in the customer journey by segment. It utilizes technology to tailor each guest interaction based on real-time actions. Rather than solely relying on demographic and customer value data, hotels must also respond to specific needs, wants, and behaviors, leveraging artificial intelligence, machine learning, real-time data, and predictive analytics.
Challenges of Scaling Personalization:
While the benefits of personalization are evident, scaling these efforts poses significant challenges for many hotels. Managing vast amounts of guest data, ensuring privacy compliance, and integrating disparate systems are hurdles hotels face when trying to personalize experiences at scale. Moreover, the rapid pace of technological innovation requires hotels to continuously adapt and evolve their personalization strategies to meet changing guest expectations. Failure to do so risks falling behind competitors and losing relevance in a competitive market.
To overcome these challenges, hotels must invest in robust technology infrastructure and prioritize data management and analytics. By leveraging advanced tools and platforms, hotels can effectively collect, analyze, and act upon guest data in real-time, enabling personalized experiences at scale.
Strategies for Implementing Personalization at Scale:
Evolving technology enables hotels to digitize and automate many internal and external processes, allowing them to better understand guests, both as segments and individuals.
To ensure a comprehensive exploration of personalization solutions in the hospitality industry, we reached out to several industry experts. Our objective was to delve into their respective solutions geared towards enabling hotels to achieve Personalization at Scale. We sought to understand the inner workings of these solutions and their efficacy in driving personalized experiences on a large scale. Additionally, we aimed to uncover any distinctive features that set these solutions apart, offering unique benefits to users.
Expert Insights:
Cendyn:
Cendyn's Revenue Growth Package revolutionizes hotel revenue optimization by leveraging AI-powered digital marketing strategies and CRM integrations to drive personalized engagement at scale.
This solution harmonizes digital channels and utilizes AI-driven advertising strategies to enhance direct booking channels, implement personalized marketing through CRM targeting, and utilize data insights to broaden the audience base. By dominating digital channels such as Google and Meta platforms, hotels can ensure prominent visibility and reach qualified audiences effectively.
The package facilitates the identification of ideal guests through custom audience creation and look-alike modeling, enabling targeted campaigns tailored to specific traveler profiles. Through data-driven insights and sophisticated campaign management, hotels can achieve an average return on ad spend (ROAS) of 37x using Cendyn Digital Marketing Platform (DMP) campaigns and a remarkable 30x ROAS with Google PMax for travel goals campaigns.
Anticipating industry shifts such as the phasing-out of third-party cookies, Cendyn ensures compliance with GDPR laws and prioritizes the collection of consented first-party data, strengthening customer relationships while safeguarding privacy. Cendyn's Revenue Growth Package empowers hotels to adapt to the dynamic hospitality landscape, driving direct bookings, enhancing revenue streams, and fostering guest loyalty through personalized, data-driven marketing strategies.
By breaking down silos between revenue, digital, and performance marketing teams, the package enables hotels to stay ahead of the competition and thrive in an increasingly competitive market.
Chatlyn:
For hotels aiming to achieve Personalization at Scale, chatlyn offers several solutions that contribute to this goal. The most relevant solution is the combination of its AI Assistants (including AI chatbot), the Omnichannel Inbox, and the Automation Studio. These features work in synergy to enable hotels to deliver highly personalized experiences to their guests at scale.
AI Assistants and AI Chatbot provide accurate answers to queries instantly, communicate in over 25 languages, and ensure personalized interactions 24/7 across various channels. The Omnichannel Inbox consolidates customer interactions across multiple channels into one central location, offering AI-generated reply suggestions and dynamic audience segmentation for highly personalized communication.
The Automation Studio enables hotels to automate workflows for personalized messaging at different stages of the guest journey, enhancing guest satisfaction, engagement, and loyalty. Unique features like language translation, dynamic audience segmentation, and automation tools set chatlyn apart, offering hotels a comprehensive solution to achieve their personalization goals.
Dailypoint
Dailypoint addresses the challenge of data fragmentation in the hospitality industry with its Central Guest Profile (CGP) solution. By consolidating customer interactions from all touchpoints and synthesizing data for guest insights in real-time, dailypoint enhances every aspect of the customer journey, benefiting every department and providing a foundational advantage for leveraging big data in customer experiences.
This innovative solution boasts a 350-step data cleansing process, utilizing machine learning and AI to merge profiles seamlessly and provide comprehensive guest knowledge. By breaking down data silos and prioritizing Data Quality Management, dailypoint enables hoteliers to shift towards a guest-centric IT strategy, redefining digital transformation in hospitality and positioning itself as a leader in utilizing technology to enhance guest experiences and operational efficiency.
Hotelogix:
Hotelogix's PMS assists hotels in achieving personalization at scale by offering a centralized and comprehensive guest history. It captures detailed guest information, preferences, past interactions, and special occasions, allowing hotel staff across departments to anticipate and tailor services accordingly.
With dynamic communication capabilities, Hotelogix PMS enables hotels to engage with guests via their preferred channels, from pre-arrival to post-departure. Seamless integration with other systems such as CRM and POS further enhances personalization efforts, ensuring guests receive consistent and personalized experiences throughout their journey. By analyzing vast amounts of data and offering actionable insights, Hotelogix PMS empowers hotels to offer tailored experiences that enhance guest satisfaction, loyalty, and revenue.
HotelTime Solutions:
HotelTime Solutions offers a comprehensive solution for hotels aiming to achieve personalization at scale through its Concierge and Online Check-in module. This innovative solution revolutionizes guest communication and streamlines operational efficiency in hotels by automating interactions with guests, reducing manual workload for receptionists, and enhancing personalization at scale.
Upon room booking, HotelTime Solutions' system triggers automatic emails to guests, providing essential information and offering additional services or online check-in. These emails are customizable, allowing for personalized salutations, arrival and departure dates, room details, guest counts, total prices, pre-payments, distinct hotel information (such as restaurant details or specific review links), invoice information, or even birthday wishes.
Additionally, booking confirmations or pre-arrival emails can be tailored to replace printed brochures or encourage guests to rate their stay. Specific settings of email automation and the content of messages depend on staff preferences, ensuring flexibility and alignment with hotel standards.
The online check-in functionality further enhances guest satisfaction and operational efficiency. Guests receive emails prompting them to complete check-in procedures via a web application, seamlessly integrating with HotelTime PMS. This eliminates the need for manual data entry upon arrival, expediting the check-in process and enhancing overall guest satisfaction.
In summary, HotelTime Solutions' Concierge and Online Check-in module not only automates guest communication but also facilitates personalized interactions and accelerates hotel operations. Thanks to automated emailing and online check-in, neither the guest nor the staff must spend pointless minutes filling up data after arrival, making the check-in process faster and more pleasant for everyone involved.
Profitroom:
Profitroom offers Marketing Automation and Personalized Offers tools, enabling hoteliers to stay in touch with guests throughout the entire guest journey and create appealing, personalized offers that convert and loyalize hotel guests. Profitroom Marketing Automation is an email marketing platform that automates database segmentation, preset seasonal campaigns, and triggered messages to reduce the time spent on preparing campaigns and allow for more effective communication with guests.
With tried-and-tested email designs and AI Copywriter writing compelling message content based on data pulled straight from the Booking Engine 360, it's easy to create appealing, beautiful emails that convert and loyalize hotel guests. Profitroom Marketing Automation tool is fully integrated with Profitroom Suite, allowing for the most effective guest-data usage and communication on each step of the booking process.
It's equipped with mechanisms collecting marketing consents and designed to loyalize guests and create upsell opportunities. Personalized Offers, a Booking Engine 360 module, streamlines phone and email booking enquiries and enables quick email proposal transmissions. Email stay proposals can be created in minutes, including always fresh data pulled straight from the Booking Engine 360, personalized discounts, and extras.
The guest can then select the most suitable offer, confirm booking with one click, and make a safe online payment. The data is seamlessly integrated, and confirmation is sent directly to the hotel system to make the experience smooth and hassle-free. Profitroom's solutions empower hoteliers to personalize interactions, drive revenue, and enhance guest loyalty, ultimately creating unforgettable experiences that differentiate their properties in the competitive hospitality landscape.
Shiji:
Shiji's solution, the Shiji Enterprise Platform, revolutionizes the hospitality industry with its next-generation PMS, the Guest-Centric PMS. This innovative platform empowers hotels to prioritize personalization through its sophisticated match-and-merge capabilities, seamlessly integrating single, comprehensive guest profiles across the entire hotel network.
By safeguarding guest data integrity and enhancing overall satisfaction and loyalty, the Shiji Enterprise Platform ensures that hotels can deliver hyper-personalized experiences at scale. Unique features of this platform include ensuring guest privacy and company security around the clock, enhanced performance, scalability, and resilience, as well as facilitating central configuration updates across the network. With an API-first infrastructure approach, Shiji's solution paves the way for hoteliers to innovate and thrive in the evolving hospitality landscape, making it a pioneering choice for mastering personalization.
The Hotels Network (THN):
The Hotels Network (THN) offers a suite of Personalization tools designed to fuel direct channel growth by tailoring the hotel website experience for every visitor, resulting in higher conversion rates. THN's advanced targeting system utilizes intelligent behavioral triggers and incorporates over 40 built-in segmentation criteria, alongside AI-based targeting for automated optimization.
This allows hoteliers to effortlessly display hyper-relevant content and exclusive offers precisely when they matter most during the booking process. THN's unique approach, termed "Decentralized Personalization," provides hotel chains with a powerful system for deploying Personalization at Scale (PAS), upholding brand standards, and facilitating local property engagement.
With message and campaign templates crafted by THN's team of design and marketing experts, an AI Assistant for automated message creation, and fully customizable features, THN's Personalization platform empowers hoteliers worldwide with efficient, data-driven solutions to drive revenue and loyalty at scale.
Conclusion:
Personalization at scale is no longer just a luxury but a necessity in the hospitality industry. By understanding guest needs, investing in advanced technology, and leveraging innovative solutions, hotels can deliver exceptional experiences that drive guest satisfaction, loyalty, and revenue. As the industry continues to evolve, embracing personalization will be crucial for hotels to stay competitive and thrive in an increasingly dynamic market.
