Curious about hotel data collection, what exactly they collect, and why it’s relevant to their operations? This article takes a look at the data journey from user and guest to hotel operations and back, from the hotel guest experience journey data to hotel profitability data and insights. To understand it all, it’s helpful to start with data science, then we’ll take a look at your average day in a hotel and what data is generated and how it’s used.
Data scientists are becoming increasingly popular and necessary as industries realize the need to manage data points and understand how to collect and breakdown their data to better advance their business. Data scientists are experts in collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data and can make educated decisions on what to do with and how to use that data. Within the hospitality industry, data scientists are crucial to understanding the hotel’s data and how to use it to benefit the overall business of the hotel. However, data scientists cannot analyze data without the help of hotel operations staff members who are doing the groundwork of collecting daily data – it doesn’t take a data scientist to be an integral part of a hotel’s data journey.
Data operations, or DataOps, is a data management practice that allows an organization to maximize the value of their data and is a growing discipline across all businesses.
As more and more businesses are becoming data-driven, according to Nexla, a data operations platform, 73% of companies are planning to hire in DataOps in the next year.
The roles of data professionals are becoming increasingly significant to all businesses and the hospitality industry is finally catching on to its true value.
Every action and task in a hotel generates data, whether you know it or not. When a housekeeper finishes cleaning a room and inputs the completion into a software, that’s data. When a front desk officer checks a guest into their room, that’s data. When a guest orders room service and informs you of their food selection, that’s data. Now how exactly can hotels benefit from the valuable data being generated and collected on a daily basis?
Data goes through a journey and ultimately ends with the data scientists who translate the data into actionable insights. However, in order for the data to make it safely and securely from the beginning to the end, there are many roles to be played by the hotel staff members to ensure its delivery.
11:00 am – Housekeeping
Whether the hotel guest has checked-out or is remaining another night, it’s time for housekeeping to get to work! With different rounds and shifts, it’s important for a hotel to use a system to keep track of which rooms are being cleaned for check-out, simple room cleanings, replacement of toiletries and towels, and changing or making up of the beds. While the housekeepers might not realize it, they’re actually greatly contributing to the data journey of the hotel. Once they indicate that a room has been cleaned or that there has been a decrease in inventory for toiletries, they are generating data.
Role: Data Generator – A staff member whose job functions immediately generate data.
Data Types: Guest check-out patterns, housekeeping communication, cleaning time
Risk: The guest experience is everything to a hotel’s business. Unhappy guests could bring down your entire organization. Details are crucial to a hotel and one tiny mistake could affect the entire guest experience. If housekeeping doesn’t properly record whether or not a room has been cleaned or when the cleaning took place, this could lead to guests having to wait longer to get their room or to complaints that the room hadn’t been cleaned in several days. Proper scheduling and communication are of the utmost importance to guest satisfaction. If housekeeping cannot communicate within their own team or with the front office, they risk providing guests with a subpar experience.
Hotel Data Collection Solution: In order to ensure smooth housekeeping operations, hotels should install automated systems, or better yet, an internal system to set immediate tasks and reminders to be integrated with your PMS. In-house messaging applications like ALICE or HelloShift allow teams to collaborate across departments and communicate with one another through online mobile platforms.
12:00 pm – Concierge
It’s lunchtime and a guest has asked the concierge to recommend a restaurant for lunch and make a booking for them. Here is an opportunity for the concierge to gather guest specific data on their preferences and expenditures. By taking note of the type of cuisine, the price point, and the level of interest in F&B, the concierge can build more onto the guest’s profile, and in turn generate data on the guest and build loyalty.
Role: Data Gatherer – The team member who collects data from various collection points and inputs the data into systems.
Data Types: Guest information, F&B preferences, price point ranges
Risk: If your hotel doesn’t already have a built in CRM program, front desk officers will have to manually input information on the guests. This is as ancient as making notes on a piece of paper! Your hotel risks losing valuable data about a guest’s preferences for future stays and chances of loyalty decreases greatly.
Hotel Data Collection Solution: There are a handful of great CRM systems available to store this type of guest data where you can even share the information between properties. Chains would definitely benefit from a CRM program that allows different properties to pull up data on a customer from stays at other hotels. For instance, if a guest stays at a chain property in New York City and the staff there keeps records of the purpose of their stay, the amenities used, their room temperature preference, what dish they ordered and how they liked it cook, etc., they’ve already started to build a guest profile. When the same guest arrives to the hotel’s sister property in Shanghai, the rooms can be pre-set to the right temperature, more of the guest’s preferred amenities can be placed in the room, the chef will know how to cook a certain dish, and so on.
3:00 pm – Check-in
The time has come to check-in returning guests and new guests to the hotel. Here is where most of the data is collected on the guests as they are required to give certain details of their personal information. Whether they have been to the hotel before or not, the front desk officers can take advantage of the situation by inputting new details or updating old records.
Role: Data Gatherer – The team member who collects data from various collection points and inputs the data into systems.
Data Types: Guest details, payment methods, loyalty level
Risk: Just to reiterate the large risks of not using a proper CRM system to store guest profiles, we’re listing it again here. By not creating detailed guest profiles, hotels are not only losing valuable data, but also loyalty. As competition grows in the hospitality industry with new brands being announced on a regular basis, loyalty is crucial to a hotel’s success.
Hotel Data Collection Solution: CRM, CRM, CRM!
5:00 pm – Events
Cheers! A wedding reception begins to take place in one of the hotel’s ballrooms and guests begin to stream in to the hotel. Given that the event is on a larger-scale, a lot of event planning has gone into the reception, including the catering, decorations, music, and service staff. Here you take count of the number of guests, the number of plates, and the time the event begins and ends. By recording these numbers, the events team is collecting data on this event, but also allowing for budgeting and forecasting for the events to come. From this event, there could be future events from the current attendees and thus, even loyalty is being built from events.
Insights. Delivered.
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