Thanks to Industry 4.0, globalisation and rapid digitalisation, today’s consumers are very connected and mobile. How does this impact the hospitality industry?
According to an Infor report, in 2016, 52% of all travel reservations were made online, with 65% of same-day hotel reservations made from a smartphone. Hospitality organisations that don’t meet their customers’ need for a digital presence and mobile operations will soon become irrelevant.
There are three key challenges to delivering excellent customer experience: internal operations, marketing operations and technology foundation.
When it comes to internal operations, front of the house (property management and guest management) and back of the house operations often aren’t aligned, resulting in inefficient workflow and operational glitches. When these inefficiencies affect the customer, their experience is tainted.
Marketing operations should go much further than the latest promotional campaign. Every interaction with a guest/potential guest should be seen as a marketing opportunity. Yet, many hospitality companies are unable to interact with their guests in a seamless and intelligent way, across all touch points. Systems that enable the users to identify the time of an interaction or pull up an individual’s preferences are essential to delivering personalised guest experiences.
Hospitality establishments often lack the technology foundation that ties all areas of the business together, thus marketing and internal operations cannot collaborate and achieve efficiency. With no common store to collect data on individual customers, and make it accessible across the organisation, opportunities to create unique guest experiences and interactions are lost.
According to Jane Thomson, MD of EOH Infor Services, Infor’s Master Partner in Africa (operating as a Gold Partner), innovative solutions are the answer to overcoming these obstacles. “What is needed is a solution that delivers in-context business intelligence, such as detailed guest history, preference profiles, and recommendations presented at the point of guest interaction. This empowers users to react in real time, and surprise guests with an even better experience than they had imagined.”
Infor has developed a targeted set of hospitality solutions, driving customer experience in a powerfully positive way. Infor Hospitality is already achieving this across the globe, delivering phenomenal customer experiences in over 20 000 hotels, restaurants, and casinos in more than 100 countries.
This solution will officially be launched across Africa, in February 2019, by EOH Infor Services. The strategic set of solutions is tailored to the hospitality industry, giving these establishments the power to delight their guests and increase sales by more than 30%, maximise revenue by as much as 7%, and reduce labour costs by as much as 6%.
Streamlined operations, run in an integrated system for all guest and hotel data, mean employees and management can stay on top of all the intricate details that ensure a superior guest experience.
“Can you ask customers to be your guest, with full confidence that all of their needs and expectations will be met? If not, you’re falling short. With the power of a digitally transformed organisation at your fingertips, why settle for being average?” concludes Thomson.