- December 23, 2019
- Posted by: robert
- Category: Article
Hospitality Industry is generally understood as hotels, resorts, and travel agencies that’s all! Though it’s vast and has got different aspects. The marketing tricks for the Hospitality industry that every business should include in their activities are covered in this article.
The hospitality industry includes hotels, motels, restaurants, inns, B&B, bars, clubs, pubs, travel transportations, food and beverage, tourism and the list goes on. Accordingly, several work-models, departments, sections, people and their roles under the hospitality industry, ranging from hostel owners to front desk managers, revenue management specialists and much more.
Hospitality Industry has a bigger contribution to a country’s economy. A country gives importance to this service sector for enhancing their economy. Maintaining guest experience is a vital element of any hospitality business. Every key detail is noted if the client is an avid traveler. The trends and technology are changing quickly; also people are traveling more than earlier.
In prior time traveling was only for leisure cause but now it has become a passion. Hospitality businesses must cope up and adapt to these emerging trends to evaluate guest experience and satisfaction. 2019 was a booster for travelers, explorers and hence for the hospitality industry. Subsequently, 2020 has got amazing trends to hike the hospitality business. The stakeholders have got many opportunities and competitive reasons for the coming year.
We will discuss them one by one, before that we will shortly discuss the predictive threat to the hospitality industry.
Travel is usually associated with positive attributes, like enrichment and culture exchange, but 2020 and years to come may see travel become controversial. Things like stricter visa requirements, trade wars, and travel bans can be used as a means to shift and control travel habits that result in lost wages, jobs, and revenue for local workers and businesses. Not expected by all countries but by some.
Tricks for Hospitality Industry 2020
The benefits that the Hospitality Industry is going to enjoy in 2020 are as follows:
- Preference to Health, Wellness, Eco-tourism & Sustainability
- The trend of Artificial Intelligence
- The smartness of Smart Rooms
- Influencer Marketing and Social Media Platform
- Government Interest and Initiatives
- Gen Y Mindset
- Uniqueness by Personalized Solutions
- Inbound Travelers
- OTA as supernova
1. Preference to Health, Wellness, Eco-tourism & Sustainability
Whether it’s the UN’s initiative or by Countries, the current climate change and environmental threats necessitate the practice of Eco-friendliness and sustainability in day to day life. All industry adopting it and the Hospitality Industry is no different.
These concepts are going beyond past hospitality industry trends of simply adding healthy food, gym facilities or a spa center to a property. Now health, wellness, and sustainability efforts are being incorporated into properties’ ambiance design, transforming common spaces with tranquility-inducing inclusions like air purifiers, therapeutic lighting, and Yoga or meditation spaces.
There are various initiatives by nature-lovers not to leave their carbon footprint. Hotels should be thoughtful for ways to be as carbon neutral as possible and take proper care of waste-management. People are looking for peace and good air to inhale; they want to take a break from city-crowd and pollution. Hence, travelers are heading towards niche places.
2. Trends of Artificial Intelligence
Every industry, sector, business is willing to opt for Artificial Intelligence. AI is in the trend and is growing every day and its impacting every field. AI is the acute element of Big Data. If implemented correctly AI can strengthen any hotel performance. Tools like revenue management & chatbots, hotels will increase the guest satisfaction index and their revenue drastically in the coming years.
In previous years we saw emerging technologies becoming more available and more popular in the hospitality sector, including Google Home, Alexa, Siri, AI bots for hotel rooms, robotic concierge service, voice search, virtual reality, augmented reality, etc. Including before-mentioned technologies in business activities may boost sales growth, using such tricks in the Hospitality industry will be helpful in the future to remain competitive
3. The smartness of Smart Rooms
Today Technology is a game-changer. Most people are tech-savvy now and want to stay in a tech-friendly atmosphere. Hospitality Industry getting ready for equipping the room with gadgets and toys such as tablets, voice assistants, motorized curtains, automatic lighting, and much more. Many of them have already implemented.
4. Influencer Marketing & Social Media Platform
Adding value to the brand is the concern. Face value increases word value and hence the branding becomes easier. In this era of YouTube, Instagram and Twitter Influencer Marketing are one the opted marketing platform for business, and importantly for the Service sector. Influencer marketing reaches the right market.
Social Media marketing is booming these days and there is no business and individual who is not using social media. Social media is the platform people are using for all sorts of information. For sharing experience, looking for options, asking for recommendations the crowd is using social media.
The hospitality industry makes the best use of social media. For branding, this is the best platform in the trend, which is cost-effective and result-oriented.
5. Government Interest and Initiatives
As discussed earlier, the Hospitality Industry has a prominent impact on a country’s economy. The government promotes tourism for native and foreign tourists. Tourism enhances the prominence of a country in the global market. Hence, the interest and initiative by the government in the Hospitality industry will be more and there will be a rise in e-visas.
6. Gen Y Mindset
Generation Y or Millennial travelers will enter their peak earning in the coming 10 years. And this group is more enthused about travel. Asian Millennial Travelers expected to spend $340 billion on International travel by 2020.
Gen Y is more likely to break the traditional barriers. They are driving the concept of a shared economy as they seek authentic experiences. They spend money in a curated way, trying to discover the actual character. Homestays and B&B business may rise.
7. Uniqueness by Personalized Solutions
Everyone likes special attention and it feels the warmth. Personalized solutions in the hospitality industry are very important. It leaves a good impression on the guest’s mind and comes back to becomes easy. Hotels are moving more towards loyalty to attract customers.
8. Inbound Travelers
Incoming tourists or travelers is also known as ‘inbound traveler.’ Likewise, Incoming Tourism is also known as Inbound Tourism. An incoming traveler is a valuable source of income for the country and the local economy because it’s not just the hotels and attracts the benefit from the spending power of tourists.
Not only in the Hospitality Industry but every trade practices Globalization has a greater impact, it unites nations. People are traveling and will travel more to different nations in the coming time. Subsequently, the competition among airlines has risen, airline services are offering the best of the best flight fares and are making easier for travelers to travel anywhere at cost-effective prices. 2020 is going to be another benchmark year for international trips.
9. OTA as supernova
Online Travel Agents (OTAs) are third party booking websites; they are seen on the web only. OTAs have increasingly gained market share, currently capturing 39% of the US online digital booking market. Forecasts expect this trend to continue, reaching 41% market share in the US for OTAs in 2020. The leading OTAs are Expedia and Priceline.
OTA offers its traveler an easy-to-search database of travel providers along with offers and facilities. These players invest a lot in advertising, offering reward incentives and gaining the top slots in search engines.
Since OTA is trending the majority of travel and hospitality providers offer their inventory via OTAs.
As the New Year coming close, we can observe how these hospitality industry trends shape up and develop. It is always advisable to monitor and evaluate your business’s progress and measure how your property is keeping up with your market. After all, in the hospitality industry, good service goes way beyond “the customer is always right.”
Of course, travel trends come and go, but see if there are any changes you can make to better align yourself in 2020 to stay ahead of your competition.
Lake Global Reach Inc. is there with you to support reaching your target market.