Digital platforms are an essential touch point for guests. In this TV show Frank Fiskers of Scandic Hotels discusses the importance of engaging guests on brand websites.

Engaging guests on digital platforms

I think that is a very good question and I think this is an area where the fight is at the moment, it’s the who owns the customer relation and I think all hotel companies are now trying to try to own this customer relation and I think something that encourages us is the fact that most research shows that guests go on to, often on to the brand’s web site before they make their final purchasing decision and eventually go back to the intermediaries and I think there is the challenge for us, it’s now to keep people there so that they book with us, so we have the data and then we own the customer relation. I think that is the, one of our biggest priorities now in the hotel industry.

In the digital economy digital platforms are ever more important. Subscribe to the Hospital Channel briefings for discussion of developing trends in the industry.

Social media usage can be a fantastic way to connect with customers, as Hooman Ehsani explains in this TV show.

Active social media usage

I think it’s been a very big part of what Tribe does.  Social media is one of our strongest elements.  We have more Facebook fans than probably all of the Nairobi hotels put together, something over 25,000.  I think the next hotel, next, you know, after us has about 1,500.  So we have a very active Twitter channel.  We have on all forms of social media we’re actually quite well represented.  And we see the power of that.  It’s one of the tools that as a developing or emerging nation, it actually puts us on par with the rest of the world.  So we can still communicate to our clients equally, you know, send them updates, give them news of what’s happening.  And I think they really appreciate that too.

The Hospitality Channel will continue to watch the development of social media usage in the hospitality industry. Keep an eye out for the next 10 experts in the Hospitality250.

A connected digital economy in hospitality means news ways of interacting with customers and receiving bookings, as Aron Libinson of InterContinental Hotels Group explains in this TV show.

Hospitality's connected digital economy

Well, digital revolution means there are different, 20 years ago there were calls to the hotel, there were visitors to the hotel, there were direct sales that a hotel management team would do.  Now we have distribution channels, you know, we have direct bookings through the hotel websites.  We have bookings through the intermediaries.  And we have various options to capitalise on this new digital era. And the speed of decision making is much faster than it was before.  I mean we have mobile applications for bookings, everyone has a smart phone now these days in the developed world, you know, almost everyone is using their smart phone for different things, not only for texting and calling.  So we have 14 applications to book to all our brands in different languages, including Russian, Turkish, Hebrew, Arabic, French.  And these applications, the revenue from mobile bookings has delivered 600 million dollars in 2013, I think so, 600 million dollars just bookings made through the mobile apps. That’s a great story because I mean you see we didn’t have that five years ago.  We didn’t have that ten years ago.  So what we’re seeing now is the speed of development of those channels unknown before.  And the hotel groups, the brands must adapt to it. And we have launched our Russian website.  We’re working on a Turkish website.  We know what our guests want to see, how our guests want to make their decisions, because this is what I said, we need to think of our guests at the core of all our decisions.

There are more great videos about the connected digital economy and related issues on the Hospitality Channel.

 

Digital platforms, including OTA sites and social media can be worked with to enhance business. In this TV show Lennert De Jong discusses optimising the channels that provide customers.

Embracing all digital platforms

It’s about where the revenue is coming from right. Again, if you go back to the guests, the guests have chosen to do business with you in a certain way, so you can fight it or embrace it and become smarter. I mean nobody is fighting Google, because everybody understands, you’re using Google yourself. I’m using Booking.com myself for every for every reservation I make at a hotel. So we embrace it and at the same time we try to get the repeat customers. So we get the people we recognise at a lesser cost of distribution. So we look at it as a graph with a long and a short, and every hotel every OTA, display sites such as YouTube, Facebook all serve a purpose in the guest journey to getting to know you. So we try to optimize. We don’t focus really on the channel, if customer chooses Booking.com that’s fine, we look at the net contribution from each channel and make our decisions who we work with.

If you found this TV show interesting and want to hear more about digital platforms and similar subjects then please browse our videos.

Marketing communications strategy is being somewhat undermined by user generated content. In this TV show Satyan Joshi, Travel, Google explains why it is imperative to update website content.

Marketing communications strategy - Keep it fresh

With regards to their own website it’s keeping content fresh. I mean in terms of enticing users to go back and search and look at your website is just crucial. I mean 95% of browsing habit online is actually looking at content. It’s only about 5% of users are actual search. So it’s making sure the content is fresh, making sure that our own crawlers and other search engines’ crawlers are updating their own systems with their own content, and that becomes a part of it. And I think users are becoming more and more savvy now as well. There’s websites comparing official photos to how they compare against other websites as well. People want to see user generated content they can trust. To a certain extent people do still trust hoteliers content but they want to get other people opinions as well. The validation of seeing people’s own photographs which are uploaded compared to the airbrushed content which you can see sometimes is a huge part of that. The Hospitality Channel will continue to follow discussions around marketing communications strategy.  

There are more digital platforms than we might realise. Peter Greenberg explains further in this TV show.

Digital platforms - CBS News

When I do a piece on CBS news, it rests almost instantaneously on about 25 other platforms in the digital space. Websites, all sorts of URLs I don't even know exist but the impact there is huge and yes, I'm on Twitter and yes, I'm on Facebook and I'm on things I don't even know I'm on. But I still am a content creator and as I content creator, my staff is smart enough and young enough to know where to put it. The key is that content is still king and that applies to hotel development as well. You can't just say we're building X number of hotels. It's not a numbers game, it is not a numbers game, it's an experience game and if you're going to build a hotel, you better bring along the experiences or your hotel will fail. ___________________________________________________________ If you enjoyed this video about digital platforms why not watch more TV shows on The Hospitality Channel?