Today there are many distribution and advertising channels that can help a hotel to be stronger against its competitors, but successfully make a presence in them requires strategies and hard work.
by Glenn Withiam
Hotel companies want to identify the channel that leads customers to make a purchase. The problem faced by analytics managers is that the last website customers visit before making a reservation is not necessarily the true distribution channel.
On the contrary, they may have made their decision while viewing a previous web page. Thus, the origin of a business can be a search engine, a social network, or even the hotel's own website.
On sites like Google Analytics it is possible to find useful information. These tools allow an analysis of the user's navigation flow, that is, the sequence of web pages that a person visits in the reservation process in a hotel.
However, it may be necessary to analyze this navigation flow in more detail. For example, you may encounter the curious phenomenon that customers are navigating from site to site and suddenly stop. They may have dropped out because they didn't find what they were looking for, but it's equally likely that they've disconnected from the network and picked up the phone to book a room.
So far, all the studies we've done at the Cornell Center have found that the phone is still a fundamental channel for making reservations, both for hotels and restaurants. At the same time, it is evident that customers who make telephone reservations are using the network to obtain information and compare.
Therefore, it may happen that you do not get to know the thought process of customers, although the navigation flow does offer you a strong indication about it.
A hotel may, for example, discover that a customer has browsed several sites before making a reservation, including the search engine, an online travel agency, a review site, and the hotel's own website.
Many navigation flows show repeated visits to the same site. Perhaps the guest is reconsidering their decision or is trying to check again and again to find a better rate.
Analysis and mining
We can't read people's minds, but we can get a sense of what our customers are thinking from what they post on social media. The latter constitute an extensive database, but the information contained therein has no structuring and must be subjected to analysis.
A possible conclusion from the analysis of comments posted on social media may evidence which website has a real effect on guest behavior. One of the goals of such an analysis is to find ways to attract customers to your hotel's website, rather than allowing bookings to be made through intermediaries.
At a panel discussion hosted by Cornell in India, Kelly McGuire, executive director of the SAS Institute's Global Travel and Lodging Practice, proposed a way to structure and analyze social media. A fundamental component of his proposal is textual analysis, a process that begins with the quick reading of the comments published on the network and continues with the organization of that material, according to a topic.
With this information it is possible to start a text mining process, in order to discover related concepts that are occurring in numerous conversations.
The text mining process can, among other things, allow you to understand the behavior of your guests and, perhaps, even predict how they will react to different promotion or branding initiatives.
Textual analysis also allows you to manage your brand reputation. If you want to know the proceedings of this roundtable, called "Linking Customer Values to Social Media Strategies: The Case of India," you can download them at no cost on the Cornell Center for Hospitality Industry Research (CHR) website: chr.cornell.edu.
Another factor that further complicates the analysis of the online distribution flow is the increasing use of mobile applications. Again, it seems that people use them enormously often to get information about where to eat or stay, often at short notice.
Once this information is obtained, guests may well make a phone call. However, the way customers are using mobile apps from companies like Google Places, Yelp Check-in or TripAdvisor is changing rapidly and more online bookings could arrive in the future.
In conclusion, there is nothing to replace the analysis of the navigation flow of your customers, their publications on social networks and the use they make of their mobile applications. All of these channels will help you be much closer to your guests, but remember to be ready to answer the phone, because that's still a critical channel too.
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