A guest arrives at a hotel. They look for the fitness room they saw online. But they only find a locked door. This is not an isolated incident. It is a symptom of a deep, systemic ailment.
NB: This is an article from Shiji
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Our industry suffers from content fragmentation. For too long, we have accepted this broken world. The information guests use is disconnected from reality. This disconnect erodes trust. Trust is the very currency of our business. This is why accurate content is the first amenity guests notice. Its presence signals reliability. Its absence signals a broken promise.
This data disconnect creates friction everywhere. It causes tension between hotels and their partners. Most importantly, it affects their guests. To move forward, the industry needs more than just another tool. A philosophical shift is required. We must change how we approach information itself. Building a future on a foundation of trust is essential.
The anatomy of content fragmentation
The problem of “content chaos” is easily understood. The source of the problem is the evolution of hotel technology. No single department is at fault. It is simply a consequence of growth without a blueprint. Legacy systems were adopted for specific problems. The PMS managed rooms. The CRS managed reservations. Each system became a silo of data. They were effective on their own. But they were not designed to speak the same language.
This historical framework is our main challenge. Think about a hotel’s internal language. A room type might be coded as “DBL” in the PMS. This is meaningless jargon to a traveler. Does it mean double beds? This ambiguity is a point of friction. It begins at the start of the booking journey. Now, multiply that single data point. It spreads across dozens of OTAs and distributors. Each platform interprets and displays it differently. The potential for error grows with each new channel.
The result is a costly cycle of miscommunication. I often discuss this with industry colleagues. A simple change on-property can get lost. The fitness center moves to a new floor. But this update fails to propagate online. This failure then triggers a guest complaint. It leads to an OTA refund. This creates a difficult conversation for the hotel. The financial cost is obvious. The true cost, however, is the erosion of brand integrity.
