Modern travellers expect a seamless journey, from destination research to hotel booking, flight confirmation, and local hangout suggestions, up until when they reach their homes. However, the hospitality industry has been slow in adopting new technologies. Hotel solutions are neither intuitive nor capable of making full use of the abundant customer data. Will the hospitality industry continue relying on Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) to bring in more revenue? Or there will be service providers confident enough to take on the challenges that hotels present?

Sustainability has been top of mind among hoteliers in recent years as tourists are increasingly concerned about the environmental issues. In fact, green practices adopted by hotels may soon become critical factors for travellers when choosing and booking accommodation to stay in.

Business intelligence tools have evolved from useful to critical to help hospitality organisations thrive in a highly competitive marketplace. Armed with the right information, today’s decision-makers can better understand risk, performance, and the impact of decisions at property, region and group levels.

Upgrading revenue management capabilities means not only implementing the right technology solution and integrating the right data sources — ones that have been shown to improve forecast accuracy and pricing decisions — but also putting the right organisational resources in place and creating a revenue-focused culture. Following are a few recommendations for hoteliers to keep in mind. 

The demand for next-generation revenue management solutions has increased with the proliferation of online travel agencies (OTAs) with differing pricing and commission structures, shrinking booking windows, ever-more intense hotel competition in high-demand destinations and ever-increasing pressure to drive profitable growth.

As disruptors like Airbnb is transforming the entire hospitality industry with a wide range of services, not just lodging accommodations, the industry C-suite and decision makers have to move away from the traditional revenue management strategy in order to better maximising their profit.

One definite thing about the hospitality industry is that the customer’s behaviours never stay the same and that they are easily affected by many factors. For customers, the new era of digitalisation has fundamentally transformed the customer experience. 

In this day and age, it is crucial for hotel businesses to adapt to disruptive trends such as personalised customer experience, IoT, and blockchain. Advancements will also bring new challenges to the hotel finance and accounting team, who must evolve to take on new responsibilities and provide key insight for the CFO’s decisions in the following critical areas.

Advanced technologies provide hoteliers with full-scope support and benefits, from front desk to back-office operations. Cloud technology, for example, has played the key role in improving the end-to-end experience from booking to post-staying of guests, reducing cost and resource demands, increasing ROI, and hence, improving the overall business management capability of the business.

It is estimated that by 2020, the world will have more than 20.4 billion connected devices, creating one enormous intertwined network called the Internet of Things (IoT). In hospitality, IoT can be the key to achieving a complete personalised guest experience at an optimised operating cost. Embracing IoT’s endless possibilities can certainly help hoteliers create a good head start in their digital transformation journey.