We've all heard it before: data is the new oil.
Data has become an essential resource for businesses in every industry in today's digital economy, and the hospitality industry is no exception. Hotel data analytics has quickly given its adopters a strategic way to increase guest satisfaction and maximise revenue.
What is hotel business intelligence?
Hotel Business Intelligence is the strategic use of software to track, analyze, and understand data gathered from internal and external sources to drive revenue decisions.
With the right tools in place, business intelligence can be a revolutionary tool for revenue managers and hoteliers alike, making their decisions stronger and their data easier to manage. But, it also comes with its own set of challenges. Hotel revenue managers use business intelligence to view their hotel's data comprehensively. Then, they use that information to make revenue decisions, eliminate inefficiencies, adapt to market changes, and ultimately boost hotel profitability.
Why is hotel business intelligence important?
There are three key reasons why business intelligence has become an essential tool for groups of all sizes in the hotel and hospitality industry. It can help you:
Often these long-term benefits are overlooked as businesses are concerned about the need to rework the reporting system currently in place. Not only do the benefits of a working BI system outweigh any costs that might be incurred during this onboarding process, however, but the right customer support team can make this transition a smooth process.
Make better decisions, faster
Hotel business intelligence helps you solve one of the biggest challenges that revenue managers face daily: making the right decisions at the right time. With scattered reports created with disparate reporting standards, it can be hard to make decisions you’re actually confident in. An effective BI tool brings all this data together and makes it easier to cleanly lay it out for analysis.
By consolidating your hotel's data onto a single platform, BI software gives you access to both historical and current data so you can you make smarter decisions. You can instantly classify your customers based on behaviour and demographics, analyze their reservation behavior, and develop pricing strategies based on data-driven insights — allowing you to set the right priorities, in less time.
Build a strong revenue strategy
A strong revenue strategy will help you effectively set room rates and food and beverage pricing and hit revenue targets every quarter.
By capturing key KPIs like revenue per room (RevPar), average daily rate (ADR), and total revenue per available room (TRevPar), hotel BI tools allow you to automatically build revenue reports and look at all of your hotel’s functions in one place. Then you can plan ahead and create a revenue strategy that optimises your revenue and increases your hotel's profitability.
Tip: A good hotel business intelligence software will allow you to create customized revenue reports automatically, saving you time and headache.
Stay flexible to changing industry trends
The hotel industry is always changing, from year to year, season to season, and day to day. Hotels need to figure out how to cater to millennials, keep up with tech advancements, and promote their location as the next big destination. As a revenue manager, keeping up with industry trends makes your job a lot easier.
Hotel business intelligence allows you to easily create industry reports that give you insight into your hotel's competition and consumer behaviour. With this information, you can identify patterns (like the growing push for sustainability) and stay ahead of industry shifts.
What are some challenges of business intelligence in the hotel industry?
Though those who incorporate BI into their day-to-day operations see consistent and enduring benefit from the added insight, making use of this powerful tool is not totally without its speedbumps. There are three fundamental challenges you may run into in hotel business intelligence:
Finding and selecting the correct data to use
Today, hotels are flooded with an immense amount of information about their guests and competitors.
But, more data doesn't always mean better decision-making. In fact, a huge amount of data may leave you scratching your head looking for a place to start.
The data you use will affect the decision you make. Finding the right data and KPIs for your hotel and choosing the right information to include in your reports can be a challenge, But, a good BI tool will make this process a lot easier.
Extracting and cleaning siloed data
Choosing which data you're going to use is one thing, but consolidating it into easy-to-read reports is a challenge in and of itself.
With your data siloed in your Property Management System (PMS), Revenue Management System (RMS), and countless channels, extracting your data so you can gain true insights into the information is no easy task. Each tool provides a unique application programming interface (API) and might not easily integrate with your business intelligence software.
Tip: Using a tool like InTouch Extract, which automatically extracts and cleans your siloed data, can make this process a lot easier.
Organising your data
Once you have the right data in the right format, you still need to arrange your information and build actionable reports. This process can often mean tedious hours managing spreadsheets and take up a large amount of your workday.
Finding a quality BI tool is an efficient way to organize your data can give you more time to gather insights and make intelligent decisions. With the right BI tool, you won’t need to do any manual work.
Turn business intelligence into decision intelligence with InTouch
InTouch offers you the most powerful suite of decision intelligence tools available to the hotel industry. Spend less time in spreadsheets and make reporting, analysis, and collaboration as easy as pressing a button.
Request a product tour today to see how inTouch BI can turn your hotel's revenue management into decision intelligence.
