A current research by Agilysys, a number one international supplier of hospitality software program options and providers, has revealed a shocking development within the APAC hospitality trade: excessive visitor satisfaction doesn’t essentially translate into repeat enterprise.
In our unique interview, Marshall discusses the components contributing to this paradox, the significance of personalisation, and the ever-growing position of expertise in driving visitor loyalty.
Readers can obtain the complete research right here.
Your research highlights a “rebooking paradox” the place solely 37% of APAC travellers rebook regardless of 86% expressing excessive satisfaction. May you delve deeper into the important thing findings and the explanations for this discrepancy?
Marshall: The ‘rebooking paradox’ we recognized actually underscores the complexity of loyalty in hospitality. The disparity means that satisfaction alone isn’t sufficient to drive rebooking. The rise of OTAs and the convenience of comparability procuring have considerably impacted visitor behaviour. Having a standard loyalty program that simply offer you factors in all probability isn’t sufficient anymore.
To handle this, hoteliers ought to prioritise personalised experiences and supply tangible worth inside their loyalty packages. By leveraging deep knowledge evaluation and a single visitor profile, inns can acquire invaluable insights into visitor preferences and tailor their choices accordingly. As an illustration, spa employees can coordinate therapies with restaurant bookings, entrance desk brokers can counsel focused, personalised, upgrades, and restaurant managers can suggest particular wines primarily based on previous preferences.
This stage of granular personalisation, past simply realizing your title and what number of factors you might have amassed, is essential for constructing robust visitor relationships and fostering long-term loyalty.
To that finish, 73% of APAC travellers spotlight personalisation and loyalty packages as important drivers of rebooking. Do you assume there’s maybe a false impression within the trade in regards to the depth of personalisation required?
Marshall: Sure, I consider there’s a standard false impression that fundamental personalisation, resembling realizing a visitor’s title and loyalty factors, is sufficient. Whereas it is a good start line, it’s clear from our research {that a} deeper stage of personalisation is critical to actually drive rebooking and loyalty.
A first-rate instance is Raffles. They excel at creating luxurious experiences, however their strategy to personalisation typically seems to depend on guide efforts. By leveraging expertise, they might assist streamline their processes and elevate their visitor experiences to even better heights.
It’s not simply luxurious manufacturers that may profit from superior personalisation. Midscale inns also can differentiate themselves in a aggressive market by harnessing the ability of expertise to ship tailor-made experiences.
Do you assume driving loyalty is more difficult for impartial inns than it maybe is for the bigger teams?
Marshall: Not likely, no. We’ve developed software program that may work with each. We work with the massive chains, Hilton and Marriott for instance, however our software program is versatile in order that we are able to work with smaller boutique properties too. It could work simply as properly for the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, with practically 2,000 rooms as it might for 50 room property. We are able to both deploy on premise, or within the cloud, so it’s quite a bit simpler for smaller, boutique and impartial inns to make use of this sort of expertise that it ever has been earlier than.
“The secret’s to strike a stability between automation and human interplay and leverage expertise to enhance, not substitute, the human contact”
Back to your research, it was attention-grabbing to learn that 30% of APAC travellers recognize employees remembering prior conversations. As AI and automation turn into extra prevalent, how can hoteliers stability probably decreasing human-to-guest interplay whereas sustaining rebooking charges?
Marshall: Effectively, automation can streamline many repetitive duties, resembling night time audits, predictive ordering, and yield administration, but it surely’s important to take care of a robust human contact. By automating these duties, employees can deal with offering these memorable personalised experiences and constructing relationships with visitors.
AI can play a major position in enhancing personalisation. By analysing visitor knowledge, AI can predict preferences and tailor choices accordingly. This allows your group to supply extra related and worthwhile upsells. I feel the secret’s to strike a stability between automation and human interplay and leverage expertise to enhance, not substitute, the human contact.
Whereas the research could not have particular age demographics, traditionally, loyalty has been more difficult amongst youthful generations who’re much less brand-loyal and extra price-driven. Is it cheap to anticipate that you could obtain the identical ranges of loyalty from a youthful demographic?
Marshall: The youthful generations, they’re so worth delicate. However additionally they need the posh contact, the personalisation, the experiences. They need all of it they usually need it yesterday.
However I feel you may nonetheless anticipate loyalty, you simply have to talk to the person. Personalisation is that particular person. It’s not about slicing and pasting each supply to everybody, it’s about realizing the person. That’s what actually helps to succeed in Gen Z and Millennials, to satisfy their expectations of instantaneous gratification. I feel it’s attainable to get an additional 10% spend from a youthful visitor, in case you’re hitting the correct buttons with them. So, the correct messaging and the correct platforms too.
And if you get them on-property, that’s the place you may hit them with the personalisation that may actually influence the probabilities of them rebooking.
“All of it comes again to the expertise and that single visitor profile; realizing and actually deep-diving into the info that you’ve, to actually perceive your visitor”
The research emphasises the significance of shifting from RevPAR to RevPAG to realize a extra holistic view of visitor spending. How can hoteliers undertake this strategy and what advantages can they anticipate from specializing in income per accessible visitor?
Marshall: Normal Supervisor’s have at all times been measured on RevPAR. By shifting to a RevPAG (Income Per Obtainable Visitor) strategy, even simply throughout golf and spa, you may develop the income per visitor by 10%, per go to. All of it comes again to the expertise and that single visitor profile; realizing and actually deep-diving into the info that you’ve, to actually perceive your visitor.
All groups, advertising, F&B, golf groups and so on. have to work collaboratively to make use of the expertise and higher perceive upcoming visitor preferences and behaviours. You possibly can then begin to tailor and personalise your packages accordingly and drive that additional incremental income from a way more focused strategy.
In fact, you may section by spend too. You possibly can even begin tailoring packages on your high-net-worth visitors, the highest tier of your loyalty programmes.
Lastly, what’s subsequent for Agilysys in 2025?
Marshall: Effectively, we’re going to be out and about at plenty of commerce reveals, holding our personal seminars and making an attempt to teach and assist the trade higher perceive how they will use a RevPAG strategy with our merchandise to realize a minimum of an additional 10% of income.
And when it comes to Agilysys, there’s plenty of issues occurring and much more to come back! We’ve been spending $40m a 12 months on our R&D, with a group of 1,500 staff, to proceed enhancing our merchandise over the past 5 or 6 years. The distinction between us and a few of the others is that we’ve actually gone again and tweaked our product, by means of a consultative course of with hoteliers, in order that it’s not simply one other off-the-shelf product.
We’ve finished the rewrites to make sure that our merchandise are trade main. Now it’s an ongoing course of to make sure we hold reinventing and hold innovating, with a deal with RevPAG and serving to hoteliers to extend their income.
About Agilysys
Agilysys completely delivers state-of-the-art software program options and providers that assist organizations obtain Excessive Return Hospitality™ by maximizing Return on Expertise (ROE) by means of interactions that make ‘private’ worthwhile. Prospects around the globe use Agilysys Property Administration Programs (PMS), Level-of-Sale (POS) options and Stock and Procurement (I&P) techniques to persistently delight visitors, retain employees and develop margins. Agilysys’ 100% hospitality buyer base consists of branded and impartial inns; multi-amenity resorts; casinos; property, lodge and resort administration firms; cruise strains; company eating suppliers; increased training campus eating suppliers; meals service administration firms; hospitals; way of life communities; senior residing amenities; stadiums; and theme parks. www.agilysys.com