The importance of Google Analytics in the Hotel Industry

 

Customers needs, behaviours and attitudes are constantly in flux. 

Our customers are reacting to geographical, situational and cultural factors and so in turn that will impact their buying choices. So how do we track our customers needs and feelings? 

Good Data Management in the hotel industry allows us to interpret our customers behaviours and feedback to determine positive and negative aspects of our business. See what's working and what's not. 

Imagine losing customers and not knowing why? Good data management helps you to work out which areas of you business need help.

So we need to collect raw data, format it, and translate it into an easy-to-understand summary from where you locate the much-needed “actionable insights” – the trends your business strategy should be aware of. 

By reporting we will present the basic figures in your business, for instance ADR, occupancy, and RevPAR. And then create an analytic strategy. When you use reports, you get to see the actual figures of what you are spending your valuable time and resources on and therefore make informed decisions on how to optimise income.  We then will apply logical techniques to display, illustrate and describe qualitative and quantitative data. 

• Qualitative – which answers the questions why, where, how, and so on. Qualitative data comes from the data you gather from surveys and physically speaking to guests

• Quantitative – which measures numbers/numerical data. Usually, data gathered from your PMS, your channel manager, your website, and social channels

Not only is good data reporting good for the longevity and profitability of your business, but it can also impact other processes positively within your hotel. 

Better Communication

Good internal communication is key! When discussing goals, managers that connect the expectations of the team to the organization-wide strategy ensure that their team members understand how their contribution supports a bigger vision, which leads to better-motivated staff. 

When your business collects helpful information and makes it available to everyone using automated reporting techniques, all staff will always be aligned and working to the same goal.   

  

More Productivity

Improved Accuracy – planning, budgeting, and forecasting processes entirely depend on accuracy. 

Realistic Timelines – proper reporting management systems cut out the time that staff would normally spend compiling paperwork and translating data. 

Improved timelines mean that your operation is more likely to meet its targets on time.

Improved Decision Making

Finding the right type of guests for your property is an important step to making better decisions moving forward.

Business analytics gathers data from multiple sources, and this data is used to create a demographic of your property’s ideal guests, based on your own best-value business case. 

For example, if you notice that double-occupancy always drops off before a certain time slot, you know what to address – and can think of offering different packages that play to this.

In turn, this profile determines what types of services your guests want or need. 

By embedding data analytics into their core strategy, hospitality managers can streamline processes, identify guest trends, monitor emerging risks, and build mechanisms for constant feedback and improvement. 

Better Identification of Problems

With a competent hotel management system, the leadership team will be able to immediately see where the issues are and create quick solutions to solve crises before they even happen. This applies across the industry and includes; staff requirements, food and beverage, security, and transportation. 

Cost Savings and Revenue Generation

An optimized reporting and analytics system can help you cut substantial costs and increase sales. Allowing you to retain guests and not need to depend on converting new guests only for revenue. Looking into grievances, improving customer service and using data to create guest profiles. These profiles can provide insights such as which guests are staying with you, how long they are staying for, and what specific food, beverage, and services they are purchasing. 

Looking at aggregate data, not individual transactions - if we collect all check-in/check-out times of all guests who have booked a “family package” over the past period, we can confidently assume a collective behaviour that “all” families seem to display, and maybe enhance our future packages to accommodate this trend.

Better Guest Service

One way to outpace other hotels is to offer a seamless, engaging, fit-for-purpose, and easy-to-use guest service platform that will bolster guest loyalty. Fast response times are key to a hotels success. Guests understand that sometimes issues can arise, but they want them resolved quickly. And in turn, consistency across channels. You don't want to feel that you are saying the same thing to the customer service operator on the help number, when you have already told the chat bot through the mobile app. Knowledgeable staff in and out of the hotel is key to great customer service. 

To tackle this need, you can use data collection, reporting, and analytics to design staff-training criteria and educate staff to ensure the best guest experience, based on real data from your own business operation. 

So if you want your property to be more profitable and above the competition, then investing time and funds into an effective report management and analysis system is a must. Start small and realistically and you will notice the company wide changes before you know it.