The hospitality sector has taken a hit in recent years. Though travel and tourism GDP declined by 50% in 2020, recovery is underway. Now, the industry prioritizes digital guest experience, safety, and personalization.
More and more aspects of travel are digitized. And mobile apps are at the forefront of that change. Today, we'll examine how a mobile or web app can improve guest satisfaction, promote safe travel solutions, and increase customer loyalty.
Table of contents:
- Personalized, optimized, and secure booking
- Your business in the cloud
- Customer loyalty programs
- Contactless mobile solutions
- Mobile concierge
- Digital guest experience enhanced – wrap-up
Personalized, optimized, and secure booking
When did you last pick up a smartphone and decide on a summer destination? My guess is that it's been a while. In 2022, online bookings made up 68% of all travel bookings, and that trend will continue. It means you have access to even more customer data. What you do with it can set you apart from the competition.
Building your mobile application and software with machine learning capabilities is a natural step towards personalizing and optimizing your buying process. Codete has the expertise to design and implement top-quality analytics software for big data.
With machine learning (ML) processing all your customers' data, you can apply the following algorithms:
- Personalized recommendations – tailors offers based on past behavior and feedback. Knowing past searches and purchases, it can recommend new offers in the same location or suggest room upgrades.
- Dynamic pricing – accounts for demand, seasonality, and guest behavior to offer discounts and personalized experiences, increasing revenue.
- Demand forecasting – enables you to leverage the same data used to offer discounts to optimize your inventory, pricing, and availability.
- Fraud detection – protects both the application creators and users during the booking process by analyzing patterns and transactions.
Embracing machine learning is essential to scaling your operations and staying competitive. Even if you're starting to build your hospitality mobile application, ML can vastly improve the analysis of your "small data".
Your business in the cloud
Property Management Systems (PMS) are the backbone of hotel operations, facilitating the management of guest reservations, check-ins, check-outs, room assignments, billing, and inventory management. They are critical for hotels' smooth operations.
My colleague, who’s responsible for setting up offices around the world, continuously emphasizes the importance of becoming a cloud-first company. That transition, though challenging, is important for hospitality properties too. To delve into this subject further, we recommend our report on how cloud technology powered post-pandemic digitalization.
With your mobile application running on the cloud, your property management app benefit from:
- Accessibility and flexibility – the cloud-first approach empowers staff to work remotely, promotes seamless collaboration across multiple properties, and grants instant access to real-time data analytics.
- Scalability – property owners can adjust resources and scale up or down as needed to accommodate seasonal variations or the acquisition of new properties.
- Business continuity – as data is stored in secure cloud servers, hotels can recover it and resume operations quickly in case of unforeseen events or system failures.
Hotels can prioritize delivering exceptional guest experiences while enjoying the benefits of cloud technology to optimize their property management operations.
Team up with a trusted software provider like Codete to develop a cloud-based application that matches your business requirements and delights your customers.
Customer loyalty programs
Travelers have been using frequent flier miles for over 40 years now. To this day, such customer loyalty programs remain an effective way to engage customers and increase revenue. With mobile loyalty programs, customers earn points and get discounts straight to a smartphone.
The significant attractions of implementing a loyalty program in your hospitality mobile app are accessibility and convenience. Users can check their reward points and redeem them on the go. They'll always be up-to-date with your latest offers, thanks to push notifications. Giving up on physical elements like cards is a recurring theme, creating more space for hospitality technology.
Similarly to booking, loyalty program apps can leverage machine learning to personalize rewards and offers for potential customers. For example, data shows an increased interest in travel sustainability among consumers in a specific customer base. Then, your program can offer offsetting carbon footprint a user would make during the flight. Again, this will reward customers in a way that reflects their preferences, increasing customer lifetime value and turning one-time buyers into loyal, repeat customers. Personalization with which you can build trust is your secret weapon.
Gamification is another reason why mobile apps customer experience. You can engage existing and new customers with features like:
- Challenges and badges;
- Leaderboards and progress tracking.
By implementing a gamified approach, users are motivated to actively engage and accumulate rewards, enhancing user retention and increasing average order value.
Contactless mobile solutions
The pandemic has significantly impacted the hospitality industry. As a result, the hospitality industry needed to adjust to the requirements of social distancing and scrupulous hygiene practices.
Contactless mobile solutions, such as contactless check-in process, check-out, credit card payments, using access codes for apartments, became necessary for maintaining operationality.
Benefits of contactless mobile check-in and check-out
Hotel staff can enhance security using your mobile application by verifying credentials, such as requesting a photo ID, without exchanging physical documents.
After the positive verification, users receive a digital room key for their hotel room, turning their phone into a mobile key. Such a key is encrypted and can be activated at the designated check-in time and deactivated at check-out time. Upon check-out, guests can review their bill, settle any outstanding payments digitally, and provide feedback or ratings about their experience. Private renters can also provide their guests with keyless entry by sharing digital keys after payment.
Implementing contactless check-in and check-out can helps hotels and privately rented apartments to:
- Increase guests' confidence in the implemented safety and hygiene measures.
- Streamline operations by eliminating the need for time-consuming paperwork or long lines at the front desk. Also, by reducing the dependence on manual labor, hotels can optimize their staff resources and allocate them more effectively to other essential areas.
- Future-proof the business by catering to evolving guest preferences and expectations, and providing better service.
Mobile contactless solutions offer customers a great experience, increasing guest comfort and loyalty.
Mobile concierge
Nowadays, we can control temperature, lights, and cameras in our homes. Why would hotels and rented apartments be any different? Again, a mobile device is a great way to maintain that control.
Mobile concierges are another addition to the contactless hospitality experience. They can inform guests about the hotel and dining times, and recommend attractions, activities, nearby restaurants, and current events. These apps can also provide guests with menus (mobile room service), SPA packages, or additional housekeeping requests, increasing customer lifetime value.
Mobile concierge apps can also have room automation capabilities. Guests can control various aspects of their environment, such as temperature, lighting, and entertainment systems, directly from their mobile devices.
Such applications can feature a communication service. It can be as simple as communicator with hotel staff and as complex as Natural Language Processing-based chatbots. Chatbots can unburden hotel staff by answering questions and involving personnel when necessary.
A mobile concierge can make guests feel right at home. They are a useful addition to the guest-facing part of your Property Management System.
Digital guest experience enhanced – wrap-up
From a business perspective, the last few years have been transformative for the hospitality industry and technology. The pandemic accelerated the use of contactless check-in solutions. In addition, machine learning and cloud services fostered the security and personalization of customer loyalty programs and offerings. It's clear that to help hotels recover from the recent pandemic, hospitality mobile apps need to push the boundaries of what's possible to provide an unrivaled experience.
If you want to stay competitive and introduce one or more of these ideas into your upcoming or existing app, contact Codete, and together, we will find the right solution.
