In order to survive in the current climate, hotels need to fully understand the travelers’ journey and make their offering relevant and valuable in order to both retain customers and generate revenue, finds a new study.
Only 26.7% of Hotel businesses currently provide customers with benefits packages, according to new research carried out by incremental revenue specialists Collinson Latitude. The study indicates that the Hotel industry is falling behind other sectors in recognising the potential for these products to increase their customer base and business revenues.
The study also revealed that 85.7% of respondents in the Hotel sector viewed acquisition of new customers as ‘very important’ to their business – more than any other sector. Retention of existing customers (73.3%) and extending brand partnerships (16.7%) are regarded as important to fewer respondents.
Over 180 marketing and brand professionals from a range of industries, including airlines, financial services, hotels, publishing, retail, telco and utilities, took part in the survey, which sought to identify what value-add processes brands have in place and whether brands believe that these are beneficial to their customers.
The study also found that 68.8% of hotel brands offer add-ons or enhancements, such as transfers and car rentals, to core business to help them sell products and services, with 63.6% of respondents believing that these ‘very much’ differentiate them from the competition. This compares with 54.5% of airline brands that believe these add-ons ‘very much’ differentiate them from the competition, 50% of financial services and 46.7% of travel brands.
Janet Titterton, Business Development Director, Collinson Latitude comments: “The Hotel sector is clearly concerned with acquiring new customers and generating additional revenue, and some – such as Best Western for example, do this very well. However the majority of businesses are failing to recognise the important role that benefits packages and loyalty programmes play in helping achieve this.
In order to survive in the current climate, hotels need to fully understand the travelers’ journey and make their offering relevant and valuable in order to both retain customers and generate revenue.”
The research also found that 70% of all businesses offer enhancements or add-ons to their core products and services to help sell them. Overall, of those businesses that do offer enhancements, 49.6% cite adding extra value to the customer proposition as the main reason; followed by creating additional revenue for their business (25.4%).
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