Industry development in hospitality is limited in some areas of hospitality however loyalty programmes are a new area to explore, as Andrew Boshoff discusses in this TV show.

Industry development innovation

I think loyalty is probably the area that is advancing quickest in hotels because there’s nothing new about a hotel room. As you know, you can say the bathroom should have a transparent door or a wooden door, really it’s the same, it’s still a bathroom and it’s still a bed, and it’s still F&B. So loyalty is where everyone is focusing their efforts in the hospitality industry. I think the way we’re keeping up, I wouldn’t say we’re ahead, but the way we’re keeping up is by investing and adjust the technology required to do the loyalty piece. We leave the hotel operation to the hoteliers and our business is simply as the loyalty management business – a pure loyalty management business. If you enjoyed this video about industry development, why not watch more TV shows on The Hospitality Channel?

Technology infrastructure development takes a lot of work, but is necessary as Andrew Boshoff discusses in this TV show.

Technology infrastructure development

We’ve spent a lot of time and money on the technological infrastructure which allows us to do some quite sophisticated analytical CRM. So we get data up from the hotels using a customised MICROS database, MICROS being one of our shareholders. And we then have a team of people in Dallas, Dubai, the UK, who analyse the data, analyse the PMS data, the reservation system’s data, the web analytics. Knit it all together and turn it into segmented offers in CRM terms and also turn it into offline recognition. Because what’s very important for a loyalty programme in the upmarket and luxury sphere is that you have recognition in the hotels. So the reward is just one part of loyalty and recognition is the other part. We try and do both. The Hospitality Channel will continue to follow discussions around technology infrastructure development