NASHVILLE, Tennessee — Experts from industries adjacent to hotels say hoteliers can learn how to better treat guests by better using data and information available to them.
In a Hotel Data Conference session geared toward learning from leaders outside the hotel industry, panelists said the key to winning over customers is using data to challenge assumptions.
During the "Commercial strategy beyond hotels" general session, Alexander Koch, vice president of development and asset management for Eureka Casinos, said listening to and synthesizing feedback has been key for improving customer satisfaction.
He used an example of his company crunching available data to determine what would make a good Mother's Day gift for 200 of their highest-spending regulars before landing on luxury purses. But immediate feedback helped them course correct when "about 20%" of those loyal customers voiced obvious displeasure.
"A couple of them said, 'Well, I would never be caught dead wearing a brand like that. You know, even though my house is 8,000 square feet, I like to be a little more demure. I like to blend in with everybody else. So while it's very nice, can I please just have $500 in free play,' which of course I'm very happy to give them," Koch said.
Similarly, Elizabeth Mullins, president of Orlando-based resort company Evermore Hospitality, said quickly reacting to data on how guests were acting on property at the Evermore Orlando Resort and the demographics of those guests allowed them to quickly pivot their operating model after making some incorrect assumptions during development.
"We thought that living in Orlando and being literally adjacent to Walt Disney World, living that close to the mouse would mean that we would have like normal homeshare a four-day length of stay," she said. "That came true, but we also thought that we would only get a day to a day-and-a-half of that visit. We ended up getting three days of the visit. Evermore is very special. Three days of the visit and only one park day. What that meant was a rush to reprogram so that there was enough to keep people engaged throughout their entire experience."
Ernie Anderson, CEO of Anderson Parking, said similarly feedback helped his company reorient how its employees interact with valet parking customers to boost satisfaction. Feedback from staff also helped inform how often valet is the first in-person interaction at the end of a long, harrowing journey for travelers.
"They're coming in here in Nashville or in Atlanta. They've been fighting the traffic on [Interstate] 285 or what have you," he said. "You can kind of get a sense that their shoulders are tense, and so we like to take that down by just being present on the ramp to show them where to park, to greet them, to make eye contact immediately. And we're letting our staff know that people are assessing an operation and them before they drop into the ramp."
Koch noted that hospitality companies can do a better job leveraging technology to deliver better guest experience. He said there is now a wave of slot machines that will notify a casino to deliver guests their favorite drink from the second they scan their cards.
Translating notifications from tech systems that a high-valued guest is on property are valuable, but only if operations teams can follow that up with immediate action, Koch said.
"We kind of try and be situationally aware of what's going on, so that we can be there for them when they want us to how they want us to," he said, noting Eureka Casinos staff react to those notifications within "the first minute and a half of when someone walks into the building."
Koch said if he could give any advice to hoteliers, it would be to expand how they think of profitability away from just rooms.
It's about "measuring total profit per guest, total profit per stay," he said. "We're trying to get that entire picture of that entire guest journey. So when you try and look at how the profitability flows from each piece, it really tells the full story."
Anderson said companies like his and hotels both need to be finding better ways to leverage artificial intelligence.
"There's dynamic AI that can have conversations right there at the garage or the point of entry to answer questions in real time," he said. Employees "will take information that they're learning and be able to apply that to the guest interaction in real time."
Mullins noted hoteliers need to pay keen attention to guests as parties, including the varying demographics, instead of just as a single booking, and that will help inform how to better serve them on property.
"That's really different, understanding a travel party versus a travel person, and it makes you think of other things along the way, such as if the restaurant has the ability to accommodate the large parties that we sell in our homes," she said, noting multigenerational and friend group travel is one of the biggest trends across all of the travel industry.