By implementing AI based data analytics solution, a leading global hospitality brand was able to capture the digital conversation at each hotel location and leverage it to deliver exceptional customer experience.
With almost 3,000 properties globally, ranging from luxury hotels to budget accommodation, brand was able to track global conversations across all media platforms.
In an environment where hospitality is becoming increasingly commoditised, the brand was aiming to to deliver quality service and to deliver top level of service required ongoing feedback and insight into the guest experience.
Whilst formal feedback mechanisms and post stay reviews are helpful, unsolicited feedback can often capture the most useful insights and if that feedback can be captured during stay when it can be actioned, it becomes extremely valuable.
This type of unsolicited guest feedback is readily available in the digital conversations taking place on property on the digital devices such as phones and the tablets. The challenge is to find and tap into them in because most guests (80%) don’t directly refer to the hotel in their digital posts. To address this challenge we choose to use location based technology using GEO Fencing and advanced user tracking, to keep the track of location the guest is staying.
Our solution captures all the public content posted on social media within the geographic location of each hotel adding the location attribute in the backend system, regardless of the hashtags or keywords contained in the text, ensuring the data analysts see the full picture.
At the time of onboarding, nearly 330 properties worldwide participated, and begain stamping the location specific information to the reviews. Using this technology, hotels are able to find the information they need to help them to address location specific service issues or to understand more about their guests so they can tailor their experiences accordingly. Hotels particularly value the ability to see and reply to all the public social media content posted about the property in a single and easy to use interface. They can learn more about their guests and engage with them in one place. Finding advocates, influencers or detractors and building relationships with them becomes very easy.
Publishing the User Generated Content (UGC) collected by us also allows them to showcase their hotels through the eyes of guests and drive online bookings on all their digital channels.
Our solution was flexible enough to be adapted to suit the resources and features of each hotel. At basic level filters can be set-up to send automated alerts when key criteria are triggered, for example if a guest with high social influence is present, or there is a service issue. Beyond receiving alerts hotels may chose to check the content daily or more frequently to identify and engage with posts of interest. Depending on the facilities available it might make sense to set-up rules specific to the restaurant, to identify if a food blogger is present or if it is someone’s birthday for example.
And the results of the implementation can be seen both at Hotel and group level.
Let’s take the example of the 5-Star property located in New Delhi who started to use the platform this summer. Aware of the potential of acting on the digital conversations taking place at the hotel. The General Manager of the property and the Guest Experience Manager identified new creative ways leverage the guest experience signals. Few months after the implementation, the results are already there.
Using this brand new solution, we are able to interact easily with only one click with every guest publishing content localized at the hotel. The first positive effect is to raise awareness among our guests that we have an Instagram account. Within 3 months, we have seen a fast increase of fans on Instagram, this number has more than doubled. On average, system automatically extracts 5 publications localized at the hotel per day. This increases the chances to personalize the stay of our guests by offering them interactive experience.
At a the backend level, system analysed the behaviour of 56,000 hotel guests over a 12 month period at 100 properties globally to assess what was the impact of the platform. The results showed that when there had been digital engagement with the hotel during stay guests were 40% more likely to re-book, recommend to their peer group and to leave a positive post stay review.
In another study, we discovered that over the 6-month period, brands reach in responding to guests nearly doubled i.e is 36% response rate in comparison to 19% response rate in past.
Meanwhile, the volume of posts sourced also surged due to the addition of geolocation data which surfaced over 300% more content from guests. The additional details and accuracy of the provided by unique solution, helped brand to respond to guests on social media 4 times faster than before of what it had been originally and providing more timely assistance to their guests.
As a result of their increased customer engagement strategy, we were able to reach over 11 million people via social media per month. Engaging with highly influential visitors and encouraging them to post has helped boost loyalty and expand the hotels’ reach to a wider audience.
