How Digital Transformation will Maximize Guest ROE in 2023

Travel predictions and trends indicates a surge in both domestic and international travel for 2023. Some projections indicates that business travel will reach 96% of pre-pandemic levels. But travel spendings will not reach pre-pandemic levels when adjusted for inflations.

According to booking.com 2023 will be the year of reimaging travel.

Digital transformation will help the hotels to reimagine each phase of the guest experience journey. Hotels have to find the silver lining of becoming more cost-effective, innovative and become more data-driven to improve customer-experience.

The key for hotels in 2023 will be to embrace digital collaboration. In this article we will help your hotel with a head start on digital collaboration.

Get the answer before the guest does

Digital collaboration is the gateway to embedded hospitality.

Many hotels are now starting to learn the benefits of collaborating on co-design, co-creation, co-working, co-production, co-marketing, co-distribution, and co-funding.

Embedded hospitality is a new way to work with the employees, guests, and the community to bundle alternative services in an integrated manner.

Hotels now have to collaborate with employees, guests, and the community to get a better understanding of the small things that matter within their experience. They need to understand how perceptions of the small things will make a difference in their total experience.

Start working with employees, guests, and the community and ask questions that help you better understand their wants and needs.

Uncover new guests pain point triggers

It is critical to understand your hotels guests pain point triggers.

Digital transformation is about people and technology working in harmony to identify the best alternative solutions at each phase of the guest experience journey.

Before your hotel start investing in new technology make sure this is something that solve a relevant problem.

When we collaborate with employees, guests and the community several challenges will come to the surface.

We want to focus on creating cost-effective alternatives that solve guests pain point triggers.

To do this we have to start looking at what part of their challenges can your hotel eliminate and what part can you reduce. Here your hotel will focus on elements that the industry competes on.

And then get into innovation by start looking at what can your hotel raise or create to remove any friction point. Here your hotel will focus on raising employee, guest and community values.

Reimagine proactive response through Fair Process

Fair process is the point in the digital transformation where you focus on collaboration, community, and building trust.

Building trust and making friends first will inspire your hotel's employees to use their energy and efforts to the best of their abilities to go beyond the call of duty to help you execute the digital transformation framework.

And three activities are put in place to implement Fair Process and start reimagining new possibilities with your employees, guests, and the community.

1. Engagement:This is about collaborating and involving employees and customers in new strategic decisions that affect them by soliciting their input and allowing them to refute the merits of one another’s ideas and assumptions. It is key to communicate respect for individuals and their points of view. This will result in more effective decisions and genuine commitment from everyone involved in execution.
2. Explanation:ensure that everyone involved and affected understands why the final strategic decisions are made. An explanation of the rationale supports confidence among all the people involved, and that their ideas and input have been considered. This principle serves as a powerful opportunity to learn and help to learn.
3. Expectation clarity:requires that after the strategy is set the new rules of the game must be clearly stated. If you started in the spirit of collaboration and partnership with people through the engagement and explanation principles, they would take ownership of the new rules of the game. When people clearly understand expectations, political jockeying and favoritism are minimized, and everyone involved can focus on executing the strategy rapidly.

Smart alternative digital content

Artificial Intelligence and machine learning will without any doubt play a key role in the future of hotels.

But here we see new ways of digital and interactive guest care.

Hotels is already using chatbots as important competent of the guest experience. Conversational chatbots that can answer simple questions have added a lot of value for guests.

We also see many hotels today using SMS for digital interactions and respond to the things that is important for the guests right now.

Some proactive steps here is to do simple things like welcoming the guests after they checked into the room and ask if everything is to their satisfaction.

Provide them with some simple guest information via SMS. This can be information related to housekeeping, room service, transportation, concierge, engineering, bell service, management, etc.

Let say your hotel have guest that requests extra towels. Verify the request and room number. Go the extra mile and send and SMS with the name and picture of the housekeep that is on the way with the towel. And make sure the housekeeper carries a little goodie bag of extra things guest normally requests.

I also suggest providing the housekeeper with a card where the housekeeper can put their name and tell the guest that she or he was grateful for serving the guest. But the key here is to make sure your hotel uses a digital tipping service. Include a link to this digital tipping service on the care and make it easy for the guest to show appreciation.

Predictive content

One of the growing trends with digital transformation is the demand for closer connections with brands.

The digital travelers ignited a digital disruption within the hotel industry. We are now at a point where hotels can disrupt the disruptive traveler.

Predictive content and analytics represent the future aspects of the hotel sales and marketing cycle by predicting the behavior of new targeted audience during an event based on findings from historical data, machine learning, statistical modeling, and data collection.

And through this smart hotel marketers can lay out the effectiveness of any digital marketing campaign and plan accordingly.

Final thoughts

2023 will provide some unique opportunities for hotels tap into new uncontested markets.

The key will be to focus on cost-effective alternatives that creates leaps in value. And through collaboration with employees, guests, and the community identify how your hotel can differentiate itself to bounce back to a new and bright future.

Just as travelers will adjust their spending due to inflation so will hotels. Make sure your hotels focus is on cost-effective alternatives and not cost reductions.

Want to be part of a unique digital transformation journey for your hotel in 2023? … Yes, I want to learn more…

Are Morch
Digital Transformation Coach
Are Morch, Digital Transformation Coach