This is an article from Ritesh Gupta, a writer for TravelDaily China.It appears as part of the tnooz sponsored content initiative.

It isn’t easy for a hotel company to engage a traveler on an ongoing basis. Travel as a product isn’t consumed daily,  weekly or even monthly.

Still, when a booking is confirmed, hotels can capitalize on a few opportunities to leave an impact during the various phases of the journey, starting from the pre-stay mode. Even if it is a first time guest, a hotel can leverage first-party data (such as behaviorial data) and make the most of their own touchpoints (email or even offline interaction at the property) to build the relationship.

For this to work, hotels have to blend data and analytics, marketing technology and a superlative mobile UX to have a say in the guest experience. Focusing on the same, Singapore-based Yearth Alliance has initiated a couple of offerings that focus on collecting details around what a guest would like to experience at the property, facilitate guest behaviour analysis, promote more customised recommendations and also enable hotels to optimise their respective products.

Joseph Xia, founder and CEO, Yearth Alliance, said:

“There is solid data that can be acted upon post-booking. If hotels don’t act, guests will not have their stays as the way they planned. It is clear that guests today, especially from China, are mobile-centric. So streamlining information via a mobile site would help them to plan and transact. This digitization of hotel’s content, promotions, payment methods would help guests save their time.”

Digitizing what all a hotel has to offer

Before approaching a guest, a hotel company has to ensure that they are able to consolidate all that a hotel has to offer in a way that it is simple for a traveler to comprehend, with just a click away to take a desired action.

For instance, if a guest is fond of fitness and spa, how can a property assimilate information about the same, and add value?

One challenge today is that a hotel’s facilities and non-room products are not digitized on a guest-centric platform to deliver information. Xia said:

“Guests do not know enough about a non-room product to purchase. Non-room products only exist as physical products or services and are sold mainly offline.”

Being ready for the guest

Even though hotel companies try to garner information about preferences or interests, it is a huge challenge to entice users to share such personal information.

Xia explained that by automating the communication plan during the various phases, hotels can capitalize on the data they have and use digitized content to the full. During the pre-arrival phase, there is a provision for guest experience survey for guest personalization. Plus there is an option to automate email campaigns using PMS integration. By working with TripAdvisor, hotels can garner feedback and reviews about a guest’ stay. “Building on this, hotels can convert their satisfied guests into returning ones by sending discount codes for direct booking via our automated email campaigns,” shared Xia.

Leo Tan, cofounder and CTO of Yearth Alliance, is confident that hotels can excel in this arena by acting on relevant data about users, using a touchpoint as per the utility/ stage of guests’ journey and being ready with easy-to-use information about a property.

“Hotels can work out the interaction strategy at various phases of the stay. “During the pre-stay stage, an email is sent to the guests with a personalized message and there is updated information about the non-room products. A guest is also encouraged to update their preference. At the time of check-in, guests will be notified via email of the current top promotions that are running based on our backend machine learning algorithm.

Hotels have access to analytics via our dashboard to view data on each guest and their preferences. This data is collected via our platform throughout the guest journey.”

This way the probability of every interaction with a guest becoming more meaningful goes up.

For instance, a well-crafted pre-stay email can persuade a guest to share data about preferences. Hotels can also get signals about the intent for the stay by looking at behavorial data from the hotel’s mobile site or clicks on the email.

Tan explained:

“If a guest clicked on spa offers or is a fitness freak, then the staff can work on a special offer. It could be facilitated by scanning a QR Code or via the hotel’s WeChat account….Non-room products are converted into purchasable vouchers for redemption by guests. Voucher-based system draws attention to specific non-room products.”

Assured steps

There is a lot of authentic data that can be acted upon once a booking is done by a guest with a hotel.

The offerings of Yearth Alliance come into play once a booking is done, so they enable a hotel company to be prepared in an earnest manner. Also, by streamlining what a hotel has to offer, the team is offering an opportunity for hotels to present their assets in a meticulous manner.

Xia acknowledged that the more data a hotel can garner, the better its targetting can be. This can help in individualized messaging. But for now, the communication initiative is based on segmentation, rather than sending a tailored message for every booker.

• Joseph Xia, founder and CEO of Yearth Alliance, is scheduled to attend the 2018 TravelDaily Conference on September 19-21 in Shanghai, participating in the panel on How to Gain Traction in the Fragmented Global Tourism Industry.This article by Ritesh Gupta for Travel DailyChina appears as part of the tnooz sponsored content initiative.

This is an article from Ritesh Gupta, a writer for TravelDaily China.It appears as part of the tnooz sponsored content initiative.