Briefing: Illuminating all accommodation options

A new report from Savills found that only 8% of UK consumers can name a serviced apartment or aparthotel brand.

Although alternative accommodation sectors like serviced apartments, vacation rentals, and hostels have been growing, largely thanks to the opportunities online, there is still a lack of awareness of these products compared to hotels.

To rectify this, companies have been investing in marketing campaigns and launching TV adverts.

In these videos, four experts discuss awareness of hospitality products:

Savills’ European Serviced Apartment report states that 41% of UK consumers don’t know what a serviced apartment is and 57% don’t know what an aparthotel is. Awareness of serviced apartments was better among business travellers, although only 52% knew what an aparthotel was.

HostelWorld put out a new TV advert this year, aimed at young travellers looking for an authentic experience and inviting them to ‘meet the word’. This booking site features campsites, self catering accommodation, B&B’s, and budget hotels as well as independent hostels, and currently lists over 27,000 properties in more than 180 countries.

HomeAway, a vacation rentals model based around people renting out their second homes to holiday makers, has put a significant investment into its marketing budget this year. According to HomeAway’s second quarter reports, the company spent $100,887 on sales and marketing in the first half of 2015. This is up by about 25% on the same period in 2014. They have put out a 2 part TV campaign aimed at families.

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Video clips produced by yBC for the Hospitality Channel, including interview from industry conferences such as the IHIF conference as well as specific Hospitality Channel shoots.

Briefing: Good data management brings insight and development

Our reliance on digital technology means that data is building at an increasing rate. According to IBM we currently create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data everyday and 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone.

Much of this data is irrelevant but where businesses are identifying the correct data sources and taking the time to analyse them they are finding value. Hospitality business should also think about making accurate data available to guests and clients.

In this briefing four hospitality experts discuss data management and analysis:

Many disruptive businesses have digital and data front and center of their strategy.

In hospitality Airbnb employs ‘data scientists’ to analyse things like the likelihood of a host accepting requests from potential guests. This analysis can help them increase the amount of successful matches.

In other industries, companies like Uber have invested in clever data analysis to be able to make predictions about its customers’ behaviours outside of the cab.

Established hospitality brands are also investing in digital and data. In October last year Accor announced plans for its digital transformation, which involves a €225 million investment plan and focus on two ‘pillars,’ IT infrastructure and data management.

Much of the data used and produced today is on mobile devices. According to Accenture ‘50 billion devices will produce actionable data by 2020’.

Research by Ericsson found that mobile data traffic increased by 55% from 2014 to 2015.

If you’ve been sent to this page and you’re not yet on the circulation list to receive these regular briefings and you would like to sign up, you can do so here. It’s free.

Video clips produced by yBC for the Hospitality Channel, including interview from industry conferences such as the IHIF conference as well as specific Hospitality Channel shoots.

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