Research from Deloitte shows that four out of five companies that take a strategic approach to data management outperform their peers and exceed their business goals. Data is the lifeblood for businesses in the tech sector. It seems like these companies are so much more professional than small and midsized hospitality companies. Even if there are some hurdles to get over, it is not that difficult to use the same best practices in hospitality companies.
Many hotel organizations struggle to get value from their data despite capturing substantial amounts of data from their customers and guests. Leveraging this wealth of data to drive business results is essential to long-term success.
Fortunately, the hospitality industry can learn from leaders in the technology industry that already have demonstrated that data-driven decision making is a path to success. The importance of data will increase during this new decade when artificial intelligence, 5G, and the Internet of Things will be developed further. Let’s find out what hotel companies can do today to enhance their decision-making as well as be prepared for the future.
1 Build a data-driven culture
Develop an organization in which everyone — leaders and employees—makes decisions based on data. This means that all decisions should be based on “the truth”. When everyone gets a full view and understanding of an opportunity or a problem, decisions about actions tend to become the right ones. When team members see the impact of data-driven decisions, they would want to find more answers and become even more data-driven.
2 Create a single source of truth
Start by eliminating data silos that hinder communication and collaboration between team members in all departments in the hotel. Create one scalable source of information that everyone in the team easily can access. Just access to raw data, however, will not help much and probably create more frustration than reducing workload and stress. In hospitality, access means access to easy to understand pre-analyzed information. Agree on the major metrics that will support your business goals and let everyone that can contribute to the success of the hotel access the information.
3 Invest in data quality
The first part is to explain and convince all your team members that in order to be able to make the hotel a success you need access to accurate data to make the right decisions. You must foster a culture obsessed with data quality. Build and invest in the adoption of a data governance framework to help ensure future business success. This will not only improve data quality but also improve guest satisfaction since you will have the right information about the guest and everything that the guest has ordered that you have committed to deliver.
These three steps will enable all team members to make data-driven decisions based on high data quality stored in one place accessible to the whole team.
Help along the way to become data-driven
Demand Calendar enables best practices that hotel companies need to make insight-driven decisions.
One platform, one copy of data
Demand Calendar eliminates data silos so that everyone in the team can access and concurrently work on virtually all the data in a single, globally available platform.
A modern data infrastructure
Demand Calendar delivers virtually unlimited performance and scale to hotel companies that want to leverage the latest technologies, such as AI and machine learning to empower their data.
Secure data sharing
Demand Calendar enables hotel companies to avoid the risk and hassle of having to copy and move old data. Instead, hotel teams can securely access live, governed shared data sets, and receive automatic updates in real-time.
