Each time I visit our San Francisco office, not only do I have a favorite hotel that I stay in, but I have a specific junior suite at that hotel that is perfect for me. I’ve stayed in this same room more than a hundred times.
Yet, each time I call or visit the brand website to book a room at this hotel, they always offer me a standard king room. Why? Why doesn’t this hotel know me by now – at least enough to recognize that I’m most likely going to want a suite?
In reality, I know there are a bunch of reasons why hotels have been so slow to adopt even the basics of personalization. Integrating technology systems that communicate and serve up the data can be complicated and costly, and guest profiles are replicated across multiple systems, often times inaccurately. Cloud computing is solving many of those issues, but hoteliers still spend too much time manually entering data and are often unable to discern which system is giving them the most accurate output.
So one of my major goals for 2018 – and my challenge to our team at Duetto – is to help hotels realize the need for a major overhaul to the traditional loyalty program, and use true guest personalization as the driver of a new, innovative way to look at traveler loyalty.
The Relationship Between Personalization, Loyalty and Direct Bookings
Hotel brand efforts to better understand and reclaim bookings from OTAs took a major step forward in the first half of 2016 when most introduced “book direct” campaigns that enticed loyalty members to book in exchange for a discount.
The campaigns were met with some early skepticism, as hotel owners saw themselves bearing the cost through lower ADRs. Many in the industry thought the premise of discounting its best customers was unsustainable.
