Hotel brands are seeing lower satisfaction
rates from their mobile efforts according to EyeforTravel’s new report, likely
as a result of not being able to reach guests as effectively as other verticals
through the channel.
As part of EyeforTravel and SAP Digital
Interconnect’s new Driving Intelligent, Interconnected Mobile
Engagement Throughout the Travel Journey report, an industry survey
asked whether mobile messaging services were effective at driving satisfaction
amongst customers. While 72% of hospitality and accommodation brands said that
their messaging services were effective, a much higher 90% of respondents from
other travel industry verticals reported success through messaging.
But why is this? The report
points out that one potential explanation is that hospitality brands are
utilizing the most personalized and effective elements of messaging channels to
a lesser degree than other verticals. This is leading to them not getting the
maximum utility out of their messaging services and not building up the same
relationship with their customers than other companies surveyed.
The research finds that although hotel
brands are good at pushing booking confirmations and welcome/check-in messages
to travelers, they fall behind when it comes to more complex and data-reliant messages.
Hospitality brands are using push notification at half the rate of the rest of
the sample (35.3% versus 16.7%), despite 31% of accommodation companies having
an app, and are way behind for upsell notifications, with just 32.3% of
messaging-capable hospitality brands sending personalized upsell messages versus
51.2% for the remaining respondents. They therefore have less ability to become
useful to the consumer and implant themselves with travelers as a trusted
source of local information.
Hospitality brands low deployment of
push-notifications is illustrative of this mismatch, as push notifications were
found by the survey to be by far the most effective form of in-app advertising.
Push notifications were chosen as the most effective form by 44% of
respondents, followed by display banners at 25%, videos at 15%, native display
at 14% and interstitial at 3%. Therefore, without these capabilities, hotels
cannot communicate.
Hospitality and accommodation companies
therefore need to build up their technological capabilities in order to reach
out to consumers wherever they are with relevant and targeted messages.
“Brands need to be present where the
customer is present, rather than forcing people to pick the channels or means
or tools that the brands want them to use,” says Rohit Tripathi, general
manager and head of products, SAP Digital Interconnect. “Today, if your
customer is residing in social channels such as Facebook Messenger or WeChat,
then build bridges into these mediums.”
Amro Khoudeir, global director of digital
& distribution, Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts, notes that they have
deployed several tools to better cater to guests on mobile: “Before arrival we
send our guests an invitation to check-in. The guest provides us with all their
details and they get their barcode on the day of arrival, scan and receive a
key and to go straight to their room. Post-booking, there’s an opportunity to
start identifying guests who come in to the hotel through geolocation or
beacons. We do some geolocation marketing and social marketing and are
expanding this to more hotels in 2018.”
Get ahead of the competition now and download this
completely free mobile market report to access:
- A major industry survey of all travel verticals uncovering their mobile strategies and technology deployments.
- Analysis of how consumers are using the mobile channel.
- Projections for mobile’s growth across travel.
- Where you should be investing to reach the mobile consumer.
- How you can ensure mobile-focused communications are effective.
- An overview of how you should be measuring and overseeing an m-commerce operation.
