If you’re in the hospitality industry (or pretty much any industry), you should know how important good, actionable hotel data is. However, there’s a good chance you don’t know exactly what kinds of data you should be looking at, or how to apply it to your hotel sales and marketing strategy.
According to a report by Econsultancy, almost a third – 32% – of travel and hospitality marketers rate data science as the skill they most lack. However, they also said they didn’t view data science as all that important, with only 16% citing it as important to develop over the next year. So, it seems possible, even likely, that many hotel marketers just aren’t putting all that much work into developing data skills.
Today, we change that.
Or we’ll try to. Data lets you make solid predictions on how many heads in beds you’ll have over the next weeks and months, which in turn lets you develop strategies to fill the low periods. Data lets you build customer personas, giving you insights that you honestly can’t get with just your “gut feelings”. Data tells you how many people are visiting your website, how many of those are booking direct, and gives you insights into how you can make that percentage bigger.
Data is key to making your hotel rock, in other words. Today, we’re going to go over what kind of data hoteliers should be using, why data is so important, and give you some specific ways to use your data. Let’s get started.
Data is often spoken about in mythical terms: “with good data anything is possible” or “just look to the data for answers.” Data is vitally important to any modern business, but how you look at your hotel data and what you decide to do with it makes all the difference.
Let’s take a closer look at the different types of data and analytics hotels use every day.
Almost a third (32%) of travel and hospitality industry marketers rate data science as the skill they most lack, with programmatic coming in a close second at 28%.
This is according to Econsultancy’s new report, Digital Trends in the Travel and Hospitality Sector, in association with Adobe.
Let’s take a look at some of the key insights from the report. (You also have the option to download the full report, if you wish)
Hoteliers know how essential online bookings are to driving their revenue. They also know that their own website booking engines are key to bringing in direct bookings and increasing their profits.
However, your booking engine is a lot more than that: it gathers multitudes of data, which you can use to unlock a competitive advantage. Unpack your hotel data, apply the information and watch the benefits roll in.
So, how can you unlock that competitive edge? Let’s find out.
There are lots of very powerful and cost-effective tools on the market which can give you far deeper insight into how and why our marketing activities are working. Big data can be intimidating, but when you know what you’re doing, your hotel data gives you deeper insight into your customer then you can get from almost any other source.
One of the most important things you can have in your toolkit is a customer persona. In this post, you’ll learn how to use Google Analytics’ demographic data to create personas, and become incredibly targeted in your marketing campaigns.