The research, “Unlocking hotel performance: The power of revenue management technology today,” revealed that 78% of respondents believe that the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in revenue management technology will significantly increase in the next three years.

The report, which was conducted by Benchmark Research Partners, The Caterer and IDeaS, a leading revenue management solution provider, further highlighted that 64% of respondents believe that AI will play a critical role in the future of revenue management.

Among the other key findings:

• 76% of survey respondents believe that revenue management technology will become more important in the future, with 58% stating that it will be “much more important.”
• 72% of respondents believe that technology is “very important” in this process, with a further 21% describing it as “somewhat important.”
• 69% of respondents believe that the use of technology in the hotel industry will increase in the next three years.
• 67% of respondents believe that the use of technology will have a “high” or “very high” impact on the profitability of their organizations.
• 65% of respondents believe that the use of technology will lead to a “significant” or “very significant” increase in the efficiency of their organizations.
• 63% of respondents believe that the use of technology will lead to a “significant” or “very significant” improvement in the quality of their services.
•  61% of respondents believe that the use of technology will lead to a “significant” or “very significant” increase in customer satisfaction.

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Hotels are increasingly relying on next-generation property management systems to provide guests with a seamless and contactless experience while streamlining operations for staff. A PMS is the backbone of a hotel’s technology infrastructure, providing integrated functionality for reservations, check-in, guest services, upselling, housekeeping, and even accounting, keycard and access control systems, kiosks, minibars, entertainment apps, and transportation shuttles. As the Internet of Things (IoT) becomes more prevalent in hotel rooms, a next-generation PMS is becoming even more critical for guest satisfaction and operational efficiency.

A next-generation PMS can provide significant benefits to hoteliers, including improved accessibility, flexibility, scalability, and continuous improvement of guest satisfaction. It responsible for managing core operational functions such as reservations, rates, guest bookings, housekeeping assignments, check-ins and outs, room assignments, guest folios, profile changes, billing requirements, and generating insights into guest preferences.

Because the PMS affects so many aspects of hotel operations as well as the guest experience, it is crucial to select a solution that meets the specific needs of the hotel. Leveraging the cloud allows hoteliers to ensure that their PMS is always up-to-date and accessible from anywhere in the world, providing agility and a competitive advantage.

A next-generation PMS reduces “friction” in guest interactions while meeting growing demands for convenience and personalization. Friction can be interpreted as any factor that impedes or hinders the smooth and seamless experience that guests expect. For example, long wait times, complicated check-in procedures, or difficulty in accessing desired services all create friction in guest interactions.

A next-generation PMS streamlines and simplifies various aspects of the guest journey. For instance, online check-in and check-out, mobile keys, and chatbots or virtual assistants all help to reduce wait times and eliminate the need for guests to interact with staff for routine tasks. Personalized recommendations and offers enabled by the PMS based on guest preferences and behavior can further enhance the quality of the guest experience while giving hoteliers the ability generate incremental revenue through targeted upselling offers.

Not only does a next-generation PMS provide superior management controls, but it also boosts hotel efficiency and reduces operating costs by cutting down on paper waste and improving energy efficiency. By automating mundane activities, it frees up staff time, which can be redirected towards guest service. This, in turn, can lead to higher satisfaction levels for guests and employees alike.

Additionally, guests benefit from more options such as increased access to mobile apps and self-service solutions, which can further enhance satisfaction and loyalty. Another advantage of a next-generation PMS is its integrated revenue and channel management modules, which can synchronize available inventory and rates.

According to research conducted for The 2023 Smart Decision Guide to Hotel Property Management Systems, 82 percent of hoteliers at small- and medium-sized properties, and 92 percent of those at large, full-service properties, said that upgrading their PMS within the past 3 years enabled them to improve revenue performance by a “significant” or “dramatic” measure.

The new Smart Decision Guide is underwritten by the following industry leaders: Agilysys, Infor, Maestro, mycloud Hospitality, and Oracle Hospitality. For a limited time, the 2023 edition is available for complimentary download courtesy of the underwriters.

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The survey, commissioned by digital marketing platform Sojern, found that 81% of hoteliers have seen a lift in revenue from implementing a first-party data strategy. Of the hotel executives surveyed, 59% had already implemented such a strategy, and 62% said it was “very important” to digital marketing.

Meanwhile, 75% of those who had not yet built a first-party data strategy said they wanted to. Of those who had established a first-party data strategy, 73% did so to maximize campaign performance, 67% to build stronger customer relationships, and 67% to maximize overall revenue growth.

Furthermore, 86% of those surveyed saw first-party data strategies as effective in maximizing overall revenue, 76% in increasing campaign performance, 68% in building stronger customer relationships, and 64% in increasing brand value.

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According to the research, less than half (37%) of hospitality professionals say they are fully prepared to respond to cybersecurity attacks and threats. A majority of hospitality/travel IT executives report being either unprepared or only “somewhat prepared” to respond to major threats, such as identifying and mitigating threats and areas of concern (60%), recovering from cyberattacks (65%) or preventing lapses and breaches (59%).

Other key research findings:

• Over half (56%) mentioned operations downtime and 46% reported loss of intellectual property/data, not to mention damage to brand reputation (50%) and revenue loss (31%).
• Over half (69%) say the frequency and severity of cybersecurity attacks have a seasonality with a peak early in the year that diminishes over the course of the 12 months.
• 72% of hospitality/travel organizations say there has been an increase in board visibility for cybersecurity over the past five years, while 74% cite increased investment in cybersecurity due to better collaboration between the security team and members of the C-suite.

When asked to name the top three cybersecurity challenges their organization is facing, migrating and operating apps to the cloud led the way (44%), followed by a shortage of workers with cybersecurity skills (40%), and a lack of visibility of vulnerabilities across all infrastructure (37%).

Despite the economic challenges brought about by the pandemic, organizations show no sign of decreasing their investment in cybersecurity, with 69% of hospitality/travel organizations reporting their cybersecurity budgets have increased over the past three years.

The leading recipients of this new investment are cloud native security (55%), data security (43%), consultative security services (43%) and application security (40%). According to the survey, cloud native security is also the area where organizations are most likely to rely on an outside partner for expertise.

These investments align closely with the areas where hospitality/travel organizations perceive their greatest concentration of threats, led by network security (58%), closely followed by web application attacks (55%) and cloud architecture attacks (50%).

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The study, which was conducted by Oracle Hospitality in partnership with Skift, finds that travelers are also looking to personalize their journey even more by picking their exact room and floor and paying for only the amenities they want – and even wanting to pre-screen properties in the metaverse (68%). Moreover, 74% are interested in hotels using AI to better tailor services and offers, such as room pricing or food suggestions and discounts. Nearly 40% of hotel executives see this ‘unbundled’ model as the future of hotel revenue management.

Other key findings:

• 73% agree that they’re more likely to stay at a hotel that offers self-service technology to minimize contact with the staff and other guests.
• 38% want a fully self-service model, with staff only available upon request.
• 39% want to order room service from their phone or a chatbot.
• 49% are also looking for contactless payments (only 5% want to pay in crypto).

The labor shortage remains a top issue in the hotel industry, but hoteliers are working hard to onboard new tech to ease the strain on guests and staff:

• 65% of hoteliers said incorporating new technologies for staff best describes their strategy to weather labor shortages and attract new talent.
• 96% are investing in contactless technology, with 62% noting “a fully contactless experience” is likely to be the most widely adopted tech in the industry in the next three years.
• 54% added that their highest priority is to adopt tech that improves or eliminates the need for the front desk experience between now and 2025.

Travelers are mixed on how patient they are willing to be in this transition:

• 39% said they want a fully contactless experience for all basic hotel transactions (check-in/out, food & beverage, room keys, etc.).
• 34% said a staff shortage, and resulting slow service, would be their #1 deterrent to rebooking a hotel. However, just 23% noted that a lack of daily room cleaning is an issue, showing consumers have accepted (and 17% welcomed!) that this pre-pandemic mainstay is never coming back.

The study also found that travelers want the ease and convenience of home while traveling:

• 45% said on-demand entertainment access that seamlessly connects to their personal streaming or gaming accounts is their #1 must-have during their stay. Likewise, 45% of hotel executives said this in-room entertainment set-up is what they’re most likely to implement by 2025.
• 77% of travelers are interested in using automated messaging or chatbots for customer service requests at hotels.
• 43% want voice-activated controls for all amenities in their rooms (lights, curtains, door locks, etc.).
• 25% want room controls that auto-adjust temperature, lighting, and even digital art based on pre-shared preferences

The study surveyed 5,266 consumers and 633 hotel executives across the world in the spring of 2022. Click here (registration required) to download the full research report.

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Hotel revenue management solution provider Duetto surveyed hoteliers worldwide to gauge the hotel industry’s sentiment and priorities regarding revenue management, revenue tools, and technology innovations. The survey was conducted among its software users and other hospitality industry professionals, including revenue consultants and educators, from across the globe from January 14 – February 11, 2022. A total of 210 responses were received.

The overwhelming response was that automation and integration are seen as key to future success by the majority of those working in a hotel revenue function. In fact, 77.6% of respondents expect to increase their hotel tech investment in the next three years.

“Tech adoption in hotels has been increasingly accelerating as hotels seek greater efficiencies in both front and back of the house,” said David Woolenberg, CEO, Duetto. “It’s promising to see that more industry leaders are focusing on tech adoption, tech upgrades, and creating an integrated tech stack.”

Most respondents (67.6%) currently use a revenue management system (RMS), such as Duetto. Of the remaining 32.4%, 50% sought to invest in revenue technology in 2022, with a further 23.4% looking to invest in the next two years.

When asked to identify the most important trends in Revenue Management for 2022, technology came out on top, with 58.6% of respondents citing integrated systems as most important, followed by 54.8% naming automation as critical.

The top five responses were mixed between technology trends, revenue trends, and guest behavior:

• Integrated systems (58.6%)
• Automation (54.8%)
• TRevPAR (36.7%)
• Digital guest journey (31.4%)
• Ancillary revenue (29%)

On a scale of 1-5, with five being ‘Extremely Important,’ 56.2% said automated processes in revenue management would be ‘Extremely Important’ in 2022; 59.5% said this had increased from 2021.

55.2% of Revenue Managers surveyed also reported they’ve increased their focus on strategic revenue management as automation has helped reduce manual tasks such as data entry, reporting, and other time-consuming efforts.

The full report is available for download (registration required): Re-booting Revenue: Refreshing Strategies for 2022 and beyond.

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Further results revealed that approximately one in five respondents had felt they had been put in an unsafe situation or felt unsafe in general at work because of failure to connect quickly over radios. When dealing with malfunctioning radios, whether communication was out of range or an employee wasn’t able to connect on the right channel, among other issues, more than 70% of respondents resorted to using their personal smartphones at work to maintain operational efficiency.

The lack of confidence with workplace radios among employees comes at a time when the nation’s hospitality industry is facing a critical labor shortage brought on by the pandemic that has extended through two tourism seasons to date.

“It’s become clear that traditional radios often cause more operational problems than they solve,” said Chris Chuang, CEO of Relay. “Increasingly though, innovative workplace technology is gaining greater appeal as a driving factor of retention, and it’s essential that these employees can perform their responsibilities, safely and without any shortcuts.

The results are findings from a nationally-represented survey of 250 U.S. participants that are 18+ years old who work in the hospitality industry that have shared their experience with company-issued walkie-talkie radios. Other additional survey discoveries include:

• Slow front of house operations: Almost 40% of employees have had an operational issue or guest request take too long because of failure to connect effectively over traditional radios.
• Guest satisfaction scores suffer: More than a third of employees have admitted that guest satisfaction scores have suffered because of slow response times over faulty radios.
• Consensus to upgrade: Nearly 90% of employees stated they would feel better if their current employer updated their radios to something more reliable and capable of increasing guest satisfaction

Relay is building the next generation of voice-first technology for the deskless workforce through an innovative, durable, and highly adaptive platform accessible on demand across the device, mobile app and desktop dashboard. The company delivers voice-enabled technology for frontline teams to quickly connect to the people and information they need to get their jobs done safely and more efficiently. Relay has experienced a 1600% growth over the last six months, and recently launched its breakthrough panic button feature to maintain on-the-job safety for workers in hospitality and facilities management as an increased number of state and local panic button mandates come to pass.

Relay is a communications platform for frontline teams that replaces the smartphone and makes the walkie-talkie obsolete. A product of the team behind Republic Wireless, the push-to-talk, voice-first hand-held Relay device is easier to use than a simple walkie-talkie, has nationwide range with 4G LTE and WiFi, and is built upon a powerful and flexible software platform that can rapidly adapt to the needs of virtually any team. Relay’s vision is to empower frontline teams with technology that allows them to safely and quickly connect to the people and information they need to get their jobs done more efficiently.

Full details on the survey can be found here.

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The study gathered sentiment from more than 50 COOs, CTOs, CIOs, and other senior operations and technology leaders in North America, Europe, and Asia at hotel brands with between 10-500 properties.

Because of the central role the PMS plays in hotel operations and within the hotel technology ecosystem, the research authors wanted to learn more about how hoteliers viewed this piece of technology as the industry begins recovery from the pandemic. 

Interestingly, most of the respondents expect the PMS to retain or increase importance moving forward.

Other key research findings:

Question: How do you consider the importance of the PMS to change relative to other technologies in the hotel tech stack (CRM, RMS, etc) over the next 5 years?

If the importance of this technology is increasing, what do hoteliers want it to provide? According to the study, it’s integrations:

Question: What is most important to you from a PMS?

Another interesting takeaway from this data is the number of hoteliers looking to change their property management system in the next year. 

Question: How likely are you to change your PMS in the next year?

One in five said they are planning to change providers, a surprisingly high number given the importance of this technology and how integrated it typically is with other systems. 

To learn more, visit Hotel Operations.

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SiteMinder’s research underscores heightened expectations among consumers with pent-up demand for travel experiences, after a year of travel disruptions and restrictions. Compared to pre-pandemic times, 78% of travelers in the U.S., 61% of travelers in the UK and 60% of Australian travelers say they plan to travel the same amount or more, which SiteMinder says illustrates the need for hoteliers to remain optimistic about business but also work smarter in order to meet the higher standards now expected of them.

“While the last 18 months have been challenging for accommodation providers, our findings show that traveler demands over the coming year will be unrelenting and hotel guests will not be forgiving of dropped or otherwise average standards,” says SiteMinder’s senior director of global ecosystem, James Bishop. “There are material consequences for hotels that aren’t prepared, including lost business, a tarnished brand and the dreaded negative online review, which is the last thing hoteliers need after the year they’ve endured.”

Positively for accommodation providers, SiteMinder points to the many travelers who support their personal data being used to better their stay. Roughly four-in-five American (80.52%) and Australian (79.23%) travelers, and more than three quarters of those from the UK (77.59%) are not opposed to their personal data being used to improve their stay, which SiteMinder says provides an open opportunity for hoteliers to meet the new highs in standards that are now expected.

“To keep pace and ensure their reputations remain intact, hoteliers must continue to elevate their offering and look to technology to help them through such things as automation and guest data, which gives the ability to understand guests better and personalize communications,” says Bishop. “Importantly, hoteliers must consider their customers’ end-to-end experience, which means assessing every touchpoint, from their website and payment gateways, to their check-in process, to the minute those guests leave the building and tell their family and friends all about it. Those hoteliers that lean on technology to remain diligent, are the businesses that will be rewarded during this critical time of recovery.”

Direct bookings continue to rise, but trust remains a challenge

When it comes to booking preferences, SiteMinder’s research reveals the continued growth of direct bookings – a trend first found through SiteMinder’s recent study of the world’s top hotel revenue makers. Consistent throughout the U.S., UK and Australia, direct reservations via a hotel’s website, phone and email remain the most popular booking methods, with a notable year-on-year increase in popularity of 11% in the U.S. and 6% in Australia.

Despite this, only 31% of American travelers, 15% of those from the UK and 12% of Australians say that they trust their accommodation provider “a lot” while paying for their stay.

“For hoteliers today, there’s a growing need to offer a seamless experience online and think about their brand presence holistically. It isn’t enough to have a compelling hotel website if the payments portion of the booking process doesn’t feel secure. Hoteliers need to solve for every point of friction and this is the critical role of technology that applies best practice in online commerce for hotels,” says Bishop.

Access the reports here: United States, United Kingdom and Australia.

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Notably, according to the company, the survey found 90% say it is very important the facility they visit enforces COVID-19 safety policies, while almost 80% have avoided staying in a hotel, casino, or resort specifically due to COVID-19. In addition, nearly 90% prefer that the hotel they visit has a mobile app offering the ability to completely manage their stay without having to interact with a person – and 86% would choose one hotel over another if one offered the option of a mobile application offering a fully contactless mobile check-in, concierge, check-out and facility reservation services.

Metova’s Fall 2020 Hospitality Survey:

• 78% have avoided staying in a hotel, casino, or resort specifically due to COVID-19
• 90% say it is very or extremely important that the facility they stay at enforces COVID-19 safety policies
• Nearly 90% prefer that the hotel they stay at has a mobile app offering the ability to completely manage a stay without having to interact with a person
• 86% say other things being equal, they would choose one hotel over another if one offered the option of a fully contactless mobile check-in, concierge, check-out, and facility reservation app
• 60% have stayed in a hotel, casino, or resort in the past 6 months
• 82% feel the COVID-19 pandemic will bring about changes to the onsite lodging experience that will last well into the future
• Mobile check-in and alerts for on-site amenities (68%), access to room via mobile app (61%), and online concierge services via mobile app (55%) are the changes of most value to in a future hotel stay

“COVID-19 has accelerated customer demand for technologies such as mobile check-in apps, keyless entry, and mobile concierge services that enable a contactless experience while adding convenience that did not exist in the past,” said Jonathan Sasse, chief strategy officer at Metova. “And not only are these technologies a deciding factor when a customer has the choice to pick one hotel, casino, or resort over another, but the overall desire for them is here to stay.”

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