Some important trends a hotelier cannot ignore in 2020

Another New Year has just begun. The year 2020 will not just pass, but will surely make some challenges to the travel and hospitality industries. Though both these sectors are inter-connected, hoteliers may face more challenges in the year. This is mainly due to the fact that guest’s satisfaction levels will leap into some new trends in the days ahead. The concept of mobile housekeeping hotel is rising and more leisure travel is expected in this year, hoteliers need to be aware of the new trends that will be emerging soon which make them to walk on a tight rope in order to balance many things to create happiness in the minds of their guests.

• Google penetration: The Year 2020 will again witness the presence of Google and its domination, as this search engine giant has initiated many new games in the last year. Hope this trend will continue to dominate especially in the travel and hospitality areas. Google will surely bring the price-match promises to the hotel industry, as it has done to the air travel industry in 2019. Hence hoteliers need to cop up with such trends in order to win against the competition. The hotel search functionality of Google search will be enhanced in order to optimize the SEO and PPC strategies and make the hoteliers in the race of competition. Google Ads can become attractive than in the past for the hotels, who can only pay if there is a sale. Hoteliers need to work more with Google in maintaining a relationship and such activities are bound to become critical in the days ahead. 

• Room pricing: As the travel sector is growing fast, it is time for the hoteliers to look into their pricing in attracting new guests as well as retaining their existing customers. Interestingly, solo-woman travellers are rising and hence hoteliers need to work out the best strategies to attract such women by making their properties more women-friendly. As the days ahead, hotel pricing will surely influence the occupancy rate. It is imperative to say that hoteliers in the coming year need to respond fast in implementing the complaint management system software, so that complaints are attended in the shortest possible time as well prevent many repetitive complaints which will directly influence the testimonials in the websites. 

• Growing trends of programmatic advertising: Experts predict that year 2020 and beyond will witness an increase in the concept of programmatic advertising at the expense of SEM and social media. A hotelier needs to use the hotel management software which influences the purchase of the advertising space. This will make the management team to plan as well optimize all the advertising resources. When done in the right way one can have better control over the digital marketing campaign. With this set-up, the software can focus on time-consuming tasks, while the hotelier can focus on optimizing the campaign. Here a hotelier cannot overlook the SEO and social media strategies. 

• Be smart with your data: When it comes to the success of hotel business, data play a critical role in taking the right decision and planning effective strategies. Large hotel chains need to use data for critical decision-making activities instead of working on gut instinct alone. Hoteliers need to focus more on the quality of food and other amenities as perceived by the guests. All one has to use the available data in a smart way, rather than using it only for the sake of marketing and other guest-related activities. Smart hoteliers make use of the data in a smart way to increase the bottom line. Data analysis need to be more guest-centric rather than spread-sheet centric. Hoteliers need to take a clue here while into the further days in 2020. 

• Make Smartphone-friendly website: Gone are the days when people search for data through laptops or tablet devices. Smartphone has become an additional finger in every individual so as busy travellers. Hoteliers need to make their websites Smartphone-friendly in order to be visible for such phone users. Hoteliers need to hire the right SEO experts for this purpose and make sure that their website gets more traffic in the coming days ahead. 

That being said, hoteliers need to be aware of the fact that guest expectations are dynamic in nature with lots of fluctuations and so are customer demographics. When rapid technological progress is happening at a global level, every hotelier is compelled to offer many specialized services or at least blow their trumpets to say that they deliver such unique services. Undoubtedly, guest satisfaction is becoming more multifaceted and becomes an important parameter for the success of the hotel businesses. Hence, a hotelier needs to learn many things besides the ones above referred. Many of these hot trends will take the modern hoteliers by a storm and dictate them in this year 2020 and beyond.