Your roadmaps for hotel technology success in 2019: The following are a few key takeaways from Starfleet Research on next-generation hotel technologies, based on research conducted with more than 450 hotel executives, managers and staff.

Forward-thinking hoteliers may wish to keep these insights in mind as they look to implement technology-enabled business initiatives in 2019 (and beyond).

Offering roadmaps for hotel technology success, the Smart Decision Guides and reports are currently available for complimentary access.

Follow the roadmaps and you won’t get lost!

1. A next-generation PMS delivers cost savings and revenue growth.

According to the latest research, the positive impact of an advanced property management system (PMS) on hotel operations, guest satisfaction and employee satisfaction is often apparent right out of the gate. Streamlining operations across the organization and providing better management controls leads to increased staff efficiency.

Enhancing guest relationship management capabilities improves guest satisfaction, loyalty and retention. These improvements should reflect in guest satisfaction surveys as well as the all-important guest reviews in social media, leading to more repeat guest stays — and, ultimately, increased RevPAR and profitability. Better data integration and accuracy improves revenue management.

The ability to automatically synchronize inventory and rates across all sales channels also improves revenue results. Robust data analysis and diagnostic tools for identifying emerging market trends, analyzing guest behaviors, etc., generates actionable insights that also lead to better financial performance. Read the Smart Decision Guide.

2. Advanced business intelligence (BI) tools result in faster and better access to critical information and insights.

By being able to visually explore, prepare and transform data into personalized performance dashboards and customized reports, revenue managers can get the answers they need at a glance and make smart, timely pricing and distribution decisions. The best of the new breed of hotel BI solutions seamlessly integrate with the hotel’s existing revenue management platform.

In many ways, the two solutions are two sides of the same coin; both are needed to progressively increase RevPAR through profit optimization. Business intelligence can also inform the decisions also made in multiple other departments and functions across the organization. The insights can have benefits ranging from improving marketing, sales and customer service effectiveness to generating competitive intelligence.

3. Targeted personalization enhances the guest experience.

The future success of many hotels and resorts will rest squarely on how well they can gain a deep understanding of their guests on an individual basis. Importantly, success also rests on how well they can act upon that understanding to improve the overall quality of the guest experience.

According to the research, 89 percent of hoteliers “agree” or “strongly agree” that targeted personalization – i.e., presenting guests with highly relevant messages, offers and services at the right time – is one of the most effective ways to improve the guest experience and, ultimately, guest satisfaction, loyalty and favorable brand advocacy. Guest personalization is about data. It is a function of capturing and leveraging a vast ocean of guest profile information.

Ideally, this information should include hundreds or thousands of data points gleaned about a guest’s activities, from hotel booking to hotel checkout and everything in between.

4. Artificial intelligence (AI) will vastly improve guest relationship management.

While it’s still early in the game, AI-enabled devices are already proving out their value in hotel settings in ways that would have been all but unimaginable only a few years ago, they will assume a greater share of responsibilities. This is particularly true in the area of hotel guest services.

By being able to respond to guest inquiries far faster than their mere mortal service rep counterparts — and by being able to field any number of inquiries simultaneously, with virtually no capacity constraints — the devices are shortening guest wait times in very significant ways while providing immediate access to information and services. Faster service response time and faster problem resolution time are, of course, top drivers of overall guest satisfaction.

Having the ability to improve guest satisfaction by even a few percentage points may be reason enough for any hotelier to embrace the promise of AI-enabled guest response systems. Artificial intelligence has already been shown to dramatically reduce the need for human assistance when it comes to answering questions (owing to a vast repository of information, both internal and external, at their digital fingertips) and resolving problems that commonly arise during a guest stay.

Read the full report.

Starfleet Research is the leading provider of best practices IT market research for the hospitality industry. Each year, we benchmark best practices in technology-enabled business initiatives across thousands of hotels and resorts. Tens of thousands of senior executives read our premium content assets, including our popular Smart Decision Guides, to gain actionable insights and make smarter business decisions.