Predictive analytics is all about collating, sharing, analysing and using big data to create goal orientated business strategies. In-house big data can include guest buying patterns, accommodation preferences, abandoned carts, and cancelled bookings, whilst the third party big data can help identify a specific consumer group to target in a promotional campaign.
Using predictive analytics at your hotel
If you know the demographics of your hotel’s target audience, their interests, and hobbies, as well as where they like to spend their money, you can both promote and optimally price all these activities and ancillary services.
This increases guest satisfaction and hotel loyalty and raises your hotel’s revenue. You can monetise your guest data using our Customer Relationship Management software, dataArc.
There is an enormous amount of data that can be used in predictive analytics including booking channels, country of origin, time and date of bookings, room rates, rooms booked, length of stay, responses to email marketing campaigns, and expenditure within the hotel.
The ability to map booking and spend trends allows you to generate a wealth of information about your guests, helping to build a picture of your guests and tailor packages to their specific preferences. You can drive direct bookings and send out email campaigns using our Email Marketing software – dataArc.mail.
Knowing the source of your bookings can give you a much clearer picture of your hotel’s demand, particularly when you know who viewed your hotel, who booked and who didn’t book online. Often, the information on who abandoned a cart or didn’t even get that far in their online journey is just as important as who placed an online booking.
Using third party big data in predictive analytics
Third-party data sets are one of the huge benefits of using big data in predictive analysis, for example, weather and airport data. Knowing when good weather is predicted in your area can make a significant difference to your occupancy rates, particularly if you are near beaches, golf courses or other outdoor activities.
Knowing when bad weather is predicted is also relevant if you are located near an airport, as it would allow you to email discount offers to business guests on your loyalty list, for example. If they are stuck overnight waiting for the weather to clear, this makes it easy for them to create a last-minute booking.
What days does the airport have their most arrivals and departures? The ability to predict demand when airports are extremely busy can make a big difference to your occupancy rate. You can use our Business Intelligence (BI) software to collate all of this big data.
Social media data sets are fast becoming a major part of predictive analytics, giving hoteliers the ability to track trends and even reviews of their hotels. All of this information helps you to understand where you sit with your hotel’s competition, and why a certain segment might prefer to book with your competition.
This knowledge can help you to design packages that specifically target this group of consumers, allowing you to increase your market share and get an edge on the competition. Our Data Extraction software allows you to extract specific guest data from your PMS and deliver it to your CRM or BI software.
For more information on using predictive analytics for your hotel, contact InTouch Data today.
