Digital Hospitality in India

By Avijit Arya HOSPITALITY is very unique industry and hoteliers (owners, general managers and the brand or management company) are a very different species. For them, internet marketing is still firmly on the expense side of the balance sheet. My respect to them all, who make hospitality a successful industry, with minimum government support. The mindset which makes all this possible, the forecasts and the sheer hard work to deliver an un-paralleled guest experience, somehow finds a roadblock when confronted with a situation to ’invest’ into something for the very foreseeable future, such as digital marketing. One reason is because technology whether in-room technology to iPad based restaurant table booking tools is introduced to the hotel once the property is ready and all the investments have been made. The hotel is ready to start a balance sheet with a cost vs revenue column and digital experiences and their creation to enhance guest experiences and the costs involved struggle to fit into the 3 to 5 percent marketing budgets fixed at board meetings. If I had a penny for every time we have had hoteliers start to regret the fact that they were late in adopting digital, I would have been a far happier man. The industry that works the hardest and creates the best experiences for other human beings, needs to finally translate these experiences into online and digital experiences before, during and after, their guests check out. These three phases are now interlinked. A hotel might sell their rooms to wedding clients, tour operators or just corporate, but these clients will most probably check out the hotels online presence and read the different guest reviews available online before making a decision of whether to buy or not. India is a country where a good online presence translates into a lot of offline bookings. This is actually easy to measure through various tracking tools such as online vouchers or online only deals. So here is the take-away:

1. A) Digital and technology is best implemented from the planning stages of the hotel to be readying for the tech friendly guest of today.
2. B) -Emphasise in training your teams on digital presence and measure the ROI on every rupee.
3. C) Finally, to adopt the best in digital technology, to be able to make your hotel visible through the best and most cost-effective distribution channels.

The author is Chief Moghul @ Internet Moghuls.