Are technology advances helping hotels see the bigger picture?

Independent hotels and groups as well as emerging hybrid models are looking to their technology to boost revenue streams.

Changing consumer behavior with guests no longer looking for just a room is one factor alongside recognition from companies that they’re not making full use of assets.

Discussing the general hotel services trend during Phocuswright Europe 2024 in Barcelona last week, Paul van Meerendonk, senior director of emerging solutions at IDeaS, acknowledged that a combination of factors such as technology readiness as well as hotelier mindset have contributed to why it hasn’t happened before.

“First of all it’s cultural," he said. "A lot of hotel traditional approaches have been split between rooms, food and beverage and other areas of the hotel. I think that’s changed a bit over time, but that was originally one of the challenges and along with that came the technology challenges.”

Van Meerendonk was joined in the PhocusWire studo by Rebecca Suiker, director of performance at The Social Hub, who said the company’s approach is to think about the community it is trying to bring together and “how we can facilitate that for all the guests that we have because that varies quite a lot.”

“Then we look for the right technology partner. That’s definitely our approach, but being a hybrid hospitality concept, it’s not easy because there are not a lot of off-the-shelf products that we can leverage.”

The conversation moved on to the changing mindset of hotel operators with van Meerendonk highlighting that advances in technology and improved integrations with smaller technology players have driven the change in attitude.

“The integration between systems is much better than it has been ever before. I think that allows a lot more innovation to happen in smaller pockets. And I think [not only] the smaller groups, but the bigger hotel chains are also experimenting that way and trying to address innovation in smaller pockets, rather than trying to boil the ocean in a two- or three-year-long, or even 10-year-long project.”

Hoteliers are also increasingly embracing revenue management concepts and technologies. Suiker pointed out it’s a “difficult transition” to go from looking at more traditional metrics and KPIs (key performance indicators) to optimizing all of the space in a property.

“Our goal needs to be what is the customer lifetime value and how can we monetize and optimize that. In our financial reports we’re still looking at those KPIs, but I think a good addition to that is the revenue per square meter that we're going to see.”

Watch the full discussion below.