A key challenge of luxury hospitality is living up to the demands of the guests. They are, rightfully, discerning. To retain loyalty in a booming, competitive market, businesses need to ensure they are providing the perfect service. This means designing every detail, no matter how small, to reflect the guest’s desires.

Yet understanding those desires is not a simple matter. Luxury hospitality is a varied suite of offerings - as well as traditional forms of luxury, guests seek high-end experiences within urban, boutique, eco-conscious, wellness-focused, experiential, even barefoot destinations, among endless others. In each, there are a variety of demographics to cater for also.

Providing guests with their perfect experience means being precise, it means speaking to them in their language, and in detail. Data is key to executing this at the highest level.

From data to desire

The theory is simple enough: either you guess what people want, or you use data to know what they want. And there’s a wealth of data available, from who people are (demographic), what they desire and how they live (psychographic), as well as how they engage with your brand, website, and other touchpoints (behavioral).

This data gives you the insight you need to craft experiences your guests will desire. Often the insight is surprising. A luxury wellness retreat brand a couple of hours’ drive from a major US metropolitan area thought their target age demographic was 45+ but our data team looked into data relating to household income, drivable distance, and a combination of psychographic factors for the area, and showed us that the target guest should be much younger.

We refined the brand and brand messaging to align with younger clientele. While other luxury wellness-focused offerings in the area relied on instinct over data, and are struggling.

Stay fresh

Given how effective data can be, why is it so rarely used in hospitality? In part because it’s labor intensive and an expense, but more likely because companies don’t see the potential of how data can elevate their offerings.

Instead, they stick to the things they think they know work. There is an over-reliance on instinct. That is dangerous: work can become stale, a little off the pulse. To stand out and offer guests the best, investing in planners and strategists is imperative. These will provide you with numbers and meaningful interpretations of those numbers which allow you to get to know your guests as precisely as possible.

For an urban luxury hotel brand in NYC at the tail-end of COVID our team’s work confirmed much of what we already knew, but it did show us that we could expand the geographic radius of our marketing – we could be more international. Upon doing so, we achieved a 20 percent higher average daily rate (ADR) than initially forecast.

Data was a revelation. It helped us to isolate demographic groups more precisely. Doing so means the brand can ensure it is always being relevant, never losing focus on the ‘right’ guest. You can also use data (alongside the creative) to help train client's staff, helping them understand the guest more also. Ensuring they know how to accurately deliver the experience desired.

Instinct plus data

Of course, data is only as good as what you do with it. There is a genuine skill to successfully interpreting this information, and from there making real decisions based on it. This all requires instinct. For those who have been helping the most prominent hospitality brands without the use of data for decades, data will most often be used to confirm the instincts honed over time as opposed to informing them.

Data is only as good as what you do with it. Outside of the numbers, instinct, creativity and experience should govern everything. But complacency is bad for business. It’s better to blend both. Those perfecting the luxury hospitality experience, those who stand out, who create memorable experiences which guests return to, already are.