OTAs have disrupted the industry in more ways than one. In this TV show Brian Reeves discusses how OTAs drive conversion rates.

OTA's approach to conversion

I guess the cornerstone, from a conversions perspective, the cornerstone of conversion matrix is abandonment analytics and understanding why it is visitors to our web site don’t end up booking with us. So we look at the performance of a typical hotel’s web site and compare it with the online travel agents; there’s a gulf between the two. So people like Booking.com spend a lot of time, probably a lot of money in multi variant testing which is the key too that drives the conversion improvement. Hotels are starting to pay attention to that a little bit at the moment but what happens as a result is that as the online travel agents improve their conversion rate, their advertising cost per room night sold decreases. So what they’re able to do is carry on with a lot more digital marketing work which tends to be disruptive and gain an awful lot of OTA market share in that space where even if you look at – I think it’s got some of the leading hotel brands. They haven’t caught up from any like, science perspective terms of understanding that key component which is I guess the central component from a travel investment perspective.

The Hospitality Channel will continue to follow discussions around OTAs and bring you videos from experts within online travel agents. Look out for the next 10 industry experts to be announced as part of Hospitality250

Data strategy for hotels will vary from other industries because of the way it is set up. In this TV show Brian Reeves discusses how Big Data can connect pricing and marketing.

Connected Big Data strategy

I think there are a lot of instances of data just not being connected and I think in part it is because a lot of the functions within hotels are not connected. We have a siloed function of distribution to digital marketing, to revenue management and the hospitality I guess is a little bit unique, it’s certainly different from retail in that pricing is a function of revenue management within the hotel organisation and not marketing. So marketing sales are responsible for the generation of demand but the conversion of demand lies largely around pricing. So when you have those two departments operating from a perspective in a disconnected fashion, it doesn’t help matters. So I think one of the opportunities around big data is to get those 2 things connected. So to look at everything being driven by a demand forecast, that makes sense and then making our pricing decisions, our spend decisions, whether that’s spending in terms of condition overrides on online travel agents or spend in terms of the paid search arena which is a big area for potential growth for hotels. But that will be one of the big stand out areas I think that – it’s an opportunity I guess.

The Hospitality Channel is very interested in discussions around data strategy and technology systems in hotels. Look out for the next 10 industry experts to be announced as part of Hospitality250

Technology systems have been upgraded across brands and hotels in recent years and many are still changing. In this TV show Brian Reeves of Goppar Digital explains how the transition from legacy tech is becoming less painful.

Upgrading technology systems in hotels

There are still some legacy technology pieces that are in play, particularly in the property management space but it’s improving. I think a lot of the more recent tools for reputation management, for revenue management, most of those have moved into the cloud. So, access to the data that runs behind those systems is relatively easy. So from that sense, transitioning to a demand driven organisation as a hotel is relatively straightforward. The property management system space is still, I think still needs to catch up a little bit. So there is a movement to the cloud at the moment but there's still of the legacy tech that it can be difficult to get quality reliable data from that you can use. That's probably the only obstacle, so for the majority of hotels that I work with it’s relatively painless. So it’s a matter of just connecting thoughts – and understanding this was the business drivers, understanding the why behind, you know, going data driven and it is the optimisation of, as the name suggests, of gross operating profit, it’s – you know, how can we cut distribution costs and cut the cost of every room late that we sell.

The Hospitality Channel will continue to follow developments in hotel technology systems and will bring you more TV shows from the companies offering new products.