Hotelier Middle East collaborates with Arabian Travel Market 2016 to find out how hotels can capitalise on the new digital era of sales
James Osmond: If it’s late notice booking, you don’t have time. If you’re staying in five days’ time you have to make a decision quickly.
Kevin C: I think financially it’s not as big a burden for a lot of these people. If you’re not getting married, buying a car or a house, it’s probably what you spend the most money on. A lot of travellers from the Middle East travel four times a year.
Oscar Herencia: They have the time, they have the money. They want to travel. They want luxury, most of them, in the Middle East countries, and are looking for a minimum 5-star hotel. With GCC people, when they are at the destination, they request for luxury extras. When they are at the destination, they request, ‘For tomorrow, I want a BMW. After tomorrow, S-Class. I need 12 hours of a personal shopper.’ Different kind of traveller.
James: There tends to be quite a lot more repeat business with some of the Middle Eastern large hotels. Same customers going back four or five times. If you’re very familiar, you don’t need to do all the research.
Paul: Is personalisation set to increase?
Kevin C: Personalisation of advertising properly. We built our business of personalisation of content. Now we’re starting to see, there’s so much data around, people who are clever with data can do good stuff. If I know someone’s stayed at Marriott five or six times, do I need to advertise to them at all? We want incremental revenue. Every time we see one of your users, I’m not going to send them the standard message, because they’re probably going to book anyway, but how am I going to get them to book a suite instead?
Kevin T: The biggest challenge is that most of the companies in travel have spent money on digital but on travel, it’s the touch points. Customers may have a great experience online but their expectations are when they talk to you in person, they want a similar experience. A lot of it tends to fall down here.
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