The mobile device every day achieves greater importance for the hotel industry, more and more users are using it as the only means of contact with a company.
by Glenn Withiam
The Cornell Center for Hotel Industry Research recently held the second Cornell Hotel Industry Research Conference.
Some of the most popular presentations dealt with the ongoing efforts of the hotel industry to get the most out of social media and mobile devices.
A study by Expedia, presented at the conference, pointed to the fact that people access the Internet more through mobile devices than through laptops or desktops. In addition, two-thirds of Americans sleep with their mobile device at hand.
Expedia anticipates that the current number of bookings made via mobile devices, which currently stands at 16 million, will double by 2016.
So, apart from sleeping with them, what are people doing with their mobile devices? Many of them are booking a hotel for tonight. Expedia found that a considerable number of the bookings it receives via cell phones are for stays the same night as the booking.
What's happening is that people start a journey and then decide to stay in a certain town, that night, at the last minute. Most people who are using their phones and tablets in this way are under the age of 30.
History with cell phones repeats itself for restaurants. People looking for a restaurant at the last minute tend to be their younger customers, who expect the technology to be there for them. They want to have the ability to review the menu and wine list, to make a reservation or maybe just to place an order and pay online.
Mobile guest counts
A study by the U.S. National Restaurant Association confirms that these mobile guests are reviewing customer review and feedback sites when making their decisions.
Customer reviews and feedback are also important to the hotel industry, but hotels have differing opinions on how to interact with people who post reviews.
One study, to be published next year in Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, looked at some hotels' view of social media. This study, conducted by Sun-Young Park and Jonathan P. Allen, found that most hotels' management reviews comments posted on social media.
As might be expected, some of the managers respond to such comments in public, but others almost never do. Those silent managers believe that TripAdvisor and other social media posts represent the extremes, i.e. those customers who are very pleased and those who are very upset, just as you would expect to find in customer satisfaction surveys.
However, that doesn't mean such managers won't take note of or correct any issues identified in the posted comments.
To conclude, I have no doubt that the hotel industry and its allied businesses will continue to expand their interaction with mobile devices and social media. We know things are going fast, but we can also be sure that we will see new and unexpected innovations coming.
