Business Intelligence for a Competitive Advantage

Technology has changed the way hoteliers sell their rooms.

On a daily basis, hotels generate large quantities of data, and this information is highly important to not only one department, but many. Therefore, by expanding business intelligence (BI) to all departments, hotel´s can improve their hotel’s marketing strategy and revenue management.

Business intelligence is not only capable of collecting and transforming data and providing useful information to your hotel, but if applied early on, in the analysis of work processes and registration, the amount of labor involved in serving customers can be significantly reduced. BI technology can help hoteliers perform more detailed and accurate segmentation of users. By segmenting your customers, your hotel can improve customer service and increase customer loyalty and retention. At the operational level, it is important to be clear about what information you want to get and how you will obtain this information, especially if you want to avoid creating millions of types of reports when in reality a few, but useful reports, will suffice.

Competition is tough in the hospitality industry. Hence, hoteliers who want to succeed in the hotel world are turning to business intelligence solutions. This way, hoteliers can assess existing risks and make realistic decisions. BI software helps you gather, analyze and leverage a wide variety of data to gain a competitive advantage and improve visibility in a market full of competitors.

Here are 10 reasons why business intelligence tools have become a reality for all hotels in the tourism sector, regardless of size:

• Increasingly competitive prices. Technology lowers costs and therefore facilitates the labor involved in acquiring a new customer, for different types of customers. The solutions are standardized and prices are influenced by competition in an increasingly competitive market, the same occurring with technology.

• Easy access to large volumes of data. The integrations for the accessibility to data and information are regulated. In addition, we have large volumes of public data to facilitate market knowledge.

• Increasingly accurate information. Automated systems, outside of human reach, reduces time, duplicity and errors.

• Achieve faster response times. By using business intelligence systems, Revenue Managers can count on real-time reports about their competitors. It is no longer necessary to wait long periods for these reports.

• Decision-making more in line with reality. When data analysis processes improve in availability and are easy to understand, business decisions can be made quicker and more efficiently.

• Easier to identify areas for improvement. With the information your hotel gathers with business intelligence, you can identify and detect areas of your business that are in trouble, providing you with the possibility to directly deal with the problem.

• More efficient inventory control. BI tools facilitate key hotel actions by improving performance in supplier evaluation, expense tracking, performance measures, and purchase analysis. You can also conduct an in-depth financial analysis, and develop strategies to reduce spending.

• Boost marketing strategy. You can now benefit from business intelligence the same way that commercial giants like Amazon do and make decisions about your marketing actions immediately and effectively. With BI, you can measure and determine the success rate of paid ads, email campaigns and launched promotions, helping you be more competitive in the market.

• Improved customer experience. By integrating BI systems into day-to-day operations, you can enhance the guest experience by ensuring that all digital interactions are user-friendly, thus helping create a long-term relationship with your guests. You can create the ideal persona profiles by using detailed information about your guests, such as their travel behavior and interests. Having this information on hand, lets you anticipate customer needs so that you can offer a more personalized and satisfying service.

• Optimize price and availability strategies. The information gathered from historical data makes BI a key element for making revenue management decisions. Your hotel´s rates and availability will be optimized to reflect the existing demand with the objective of maximizing benefits.

So far, you have been presented with a number of compelling reasons why business intelligence should drive your hotel’s marketing and distribution strategy. In the current market, it’s fundamental to stay up-to-date with technology, even more so if it directly affects your hotel´s profitability. Therefore, take advantage of all the information your hotel accesses on a daily basis to help you offer the best guest experience possible.