What a week! We’ve had a super productive and an overall great time at HITEC in Minneapolis, Minnesota where we met with industry professionals from around the world. But the world of hotel technology doesn’t stop, just because many of the industry’s key players are attending a conference together! Once again Airbnb is making waves in the industry, hotels are finding the line between robots and personalization, and data science (woo!) is the key to succeeding in the travel industry.
In 2017, Airbnb celebrated its 10th anniversary and unveiled a series of new products, including new property types and tiers, Airbnb Collections, a revamped Superhost program, and introduced Superguests, as seen here. Since then, the company has continued to grow and keep traditional hospitality players on their toes. In the article, the author points out a few lessons to be learned from Airbnb’s strategy - implement meaningful brand architecture, focus on travelers, strengthening successful franchisees to lead to successful hotel corporations, and stressing the importance of successful branding to create a market. Still not convinced of Airbnb’s success within the hospitality industry? This article uses data to show the exponential growth of Airbnb over the years in comparison to other hospitality players. Not only does the data show that Airbnb’s growth has skyrocketed and is broken down by major cities in the United States, but it also found the impact the company has had on the industry itself in terms of revenue, prices, and occupancy.
While the expansion of Airbnb can be seen as a bit daunting to some industry players, the industry is on an exciting growth of technological innovation and there are new tools to help hotels stay
ahead of the competition. Another concept that is shaking up the industry is the introduction of AI, machine learning, and robots. As correctly stated in this article, “to stand out, a hotel needs to deliver personalized services with speed and accuracy.” Concierge robots definitely allow for hotels to stand out, but without properly introducing the new technology into the hotel operations and to the guests, the competitive advantage isn’t as obvious. The key to innovating a hotel lies in tech augmented hospitality, which is the collaboration of humans and technology together.
But how do you know what the right amount of technology is for your hotel and if your guests are even looking for it? That’s right, data science. To figure out where your hotel is succeeding or struggling, hoteliers need to look into the individual factors that are affecting its operations through data. As seen in this article, data science is crucial for the travel industry and allows hotels to understand its performance indicators and improve their business strategies. Data science isn’t going anywhere and it’s only going to become more and more well known within the industry. Take your data knowledge one step further by understanding the different stages and usages of data in hotels. HITEC Bytes recently published an article by Carson Booth, CEO of SnapShot, about how to transform your daily data into a data strategy as your hotel moves away from data silos and towards interconnected wisdom.
