Was traveling this week, it is always great to come to a city one doesn’t really know and discover new and great things. One has an idea before arriving, and then discovers things are different, usually better. I guess that’s the beauty of travel.
Best, Martin
About me: I'm a fractional CMO for large travel technology companies helping turn them into industry leaders. I'm also the co-founder of 10minutes.news a hotel news media that is unsensational, factual and keeps hoteliers updated on the industry – also it is the most read hotel newsletter in Europe. See the international edition of the newsletter and subscribe to it here.
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Traveler Satisfaction problems
The airline industry has a problem with customer satisfaction. Unlike (many) hotels, flying is not perceived as an experience. It is a means to an end (quite literally). Surprisingly there isn’t even much of a reviews system to leave reviews for flights. Airline-level reviews are so broad they’re a very weak signal. Flight-number/route reviews could be more meaningful. And good reviews could be a way for airlines to increase margins. Until then, we’ll need to pay for our check-in bags, carry-on bags, seat, coffee and water.
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Phishing and hotel scams
Cyber-security isn’t the hotel industry’s forté. At a recent conference a hotelier was complaining to Booking that his password was stolen and they needed to fix it. I have some sympathy for the pain. But what likely happened is that the night watch clicked on some weird email and now access to the groups Booking account was taken. And that’s an education problem more than an OTA problem. They wont teach cyber-security in schools for another few decades (I think they should). So until then every employer and provider will need to do it. If most of our lives, all our finances, our image and our communications all sit behind a password. Would be good to learn how to use them better. If you were wondering, adding an “!” in your password isn’t going to save your account.
For some time now, Meta (Facebook mostly) had been surprisingly good at AI advertising. Set up the system, set a goal (revenue) and let them manage the placement and frequency etc. In e-commerce this has been a highly profitable model for a few years. If you’re spending enough AI ads are better than manual ads. Amazon’s ad system is similarly good. Google’s PMax is an attempt to do the same. Hotel dynamics are more complex than e-commerce (date selection, limited availability and constantly changing rates) so AI system will have a harder time to find the sweet spot. But I think that’s just a matter of time.
Klook has integrated a book-on-Tiktok system. Amazon did a similar thing. The experience is exponentially better when you can click and complete everything on the original platform. One click shopping in travel isn’t realistic, but that doesn’t mean we need to make everything 100 click shopping either. But if one has a booking engine which can be embedded into a social platforms and people book there would it be a direct booking?
I have lost track of the number of AI travel agents there are today. I believe in the idea, finally replacing the search paradigm, which is absolutely painful unless one is an hotel and flight features analyst in one’s spare-time. But which ones are going to win? Will the incumbent OTAs figure out how to turn their options-based search into a proper AI based search? Saving one’s preferences isn’t quite as easy as it seems. Traveling for work, for leisure, with family, with colleagues with friends, familiar city, unfamiliar city. Maybe an AI can see patterns over time and suggest search sets based on historical bookings. Ask 2-3 key questions to determine a model. Couple that with attribute based selling (ABS) it could be incredibly powerful. Maybe that’s where a newcomer could take the top spots from the incumbents.
There’s a simple solution to a constant problem in hotels, integrated payments. When you arrive in a hotel, no matter if you’ve pre-paid your stay or not, they’ll ask for a credit card for incidentals. It could be for mini-bar consumption, or in case you trash the room.
It isn’t really a pleasant experience. Basically the hotel is telling you they don’t really trust you. This is probably a remnant of legacy businesses (such as cable providers) who make it really hard for the customer to exit. Today, customer-first mindset has become the main way of doing business: Trust first, refund second, question third.
I’m sure hotels could run the numbers of how many guests trash the room, steal the coat hangers, empty the mini-bar and claim they didn’t etc. It is probably less than 2%. And with integrated payment systems, having the card on file is easier than ever, they’ll need to do some work with their payment providers to cater for the percent of dishonest people so they can bill them after. But that is honestly so hard to prove that I’m not sure it is worth the hassle.
Changing the “triple payment” experience of the hotel industry is the lowest hanging fruit in using technology to improve the guest experience. The technology exists could be deployed just on signing a contract with a provider. The harder part will be training the teams to change their habits and informing the guests that the hotel trusts them and everything has already been taken care of with the card on file. If the guest wants to change it, they’ll tell you.
