What Do Modern Hotel Guests Really Want?
Ninety-one percent of hotel company executives say mobile technologies are critical to improving guest experiences and cultivating loyalty, according to Oracle Hospitality’s 2019 Hospitality Benchmark — Mobile Maturity Analysis survey. More about modern hotel needs find out below.
Despite the significance hotel execs place on mobile tech, though, only 69 percent of respondents are confident in their organizations’ abilities to adopt and deliver those mobile experiences. Oracle surveyed 199 hotel executives—53 percent of whom were from companies whose annual revenue is greater than $500 million—in August and released the results recently.
Meanwhile, guests’ technology preferences continue to change, according to an online survey of 1,208 adults that market research firm YouGov conducted on Jan. 3 and 4 on behalf of hotel operations platform Alice.
A significant majority of global business travelers prefer to book trips digitally—via app or browser—rather than interacting with human agents, a CWT study found. A poll of more than 2,700 business travelers across the Americas, Europe and Asia/Pacific found that the preference for nonhuman channels holds across booking types and geographic areas.
Sixty-nine percent of business travelers prefer to book flights digitally rather than interact with humans, while 78 percent prefer digital booking for hotels and 71 percent for ground transportation.
The desire for digital booking over personal contact is most pronounced in Asia/Pacific, where 73 percent prefer to book their flights digitally. Americas travelers follow closely at 71 percent, while 61 percent of Europeans prefer digital. Meanwhile, 84 percent of Asia/Pacific travelers, 77 percent of American travelers, and 70 percent of European travelers prefer to book hotels digitally.
Travelers also prefer digital when it comes to travel disruptions, though by a smaller margin; 33 percent say a mobile app is the best method of dealing with disruptions, compared with 21 percent who favor calling an agent.
The study also revealed that eight out of 10 business travelers have used technology instead of traveling for business in the past year, a quarter doing so five or more times.
