Investors & Founders Barcelona Group invited us to talk about Hotel Tech Investments.
Note: This transcript is based on the presentation we did last April 16th 2015 at “Investors and Founders” group of Barcelona.
Today I’m going to talk about Local BigData: segmentation and pretargeting personas as a key to increasing ROI in Hotels.
But first, let me introduce our work: what we do in Kukoa is to add value to our client’s tech projects, and we learn with them how to improve to stay ahead their competitors, always regarding their clients.We will see how we use this segmentation and pretargeting in one of our innovation products: HotelSuite 360 collecting data we generate to increase benefits if it is used properly. Benefits for both Hotels and guests.
We also have created a high standard innovation network with 3 more Barcelona based tech companies to innovate in what we think is worth. With Dribba, Miscellaneous and Twinlan, we are grouped under Square BCN and we have crazy ideas that we develop, prototype and see if are interesting for our clients.
So, we are proactive and we like to innovate. And that’s the reason we came out with a new platform idea for both guests and hotels: HotelSuite 360 using our technological experience to integrate guests needs, hotel services and greater profits.
Let me go back in time, in the 19th century, Hotels were the place where innovation happened: the first phones, light bulbs or lifts were installed in Hotels. But, since then it seems they sit back and wait for guests to come in... Since then Hotels hardly have invested in technology to know their guest's behaviour.
With HotelSuite360 we can collect data from Hotel guests to use it to improve quality and offer personalized experiences. The more personalized experiences the Hotel offers, the more likely the guests will be interested in them.
Our platform follows the Smart Tourism Destination that SEGITUR (Sociedad Estatal para la Gestión de la Innovación y las Tecnologías Turísticas) defined in 2012 with four main inputs.
Through innovation, accessibility, sustainability and technology we can lead an increase in Quality Experience.
Since 2008 there has been a change in consumer habits, consumers and tourists have changed to a new proactive culture, optimizing their experience to perceive more value in their stay.
We want to live real experiences that are different to our next door neighbor’s.
Let’s take a look at hotel reservation habits in Spain: Over 50% of reservations were made using internet, and this figure is higher when we talk about holiday tourism.
Pay attention to this 24% in business travel, the lowest rate and maybe a niche signal to develop specific products in hotel reservation for business travelers.
So, where does all this take us? We know that personalizing experiences it’s more likely to increase Hotel sales.
Because we know we want to live unique experiences in thematic hotels like eco hotels, wine hotels… they also have opened a Hard Rock Hotel in Ibiza.
That means if we can get all the data we need to know about all guests interests, we will increase Hotel sales: That’s the segmentation of personas based in local BigData, regarding their behaviour in local area.
Personas it’s a technical term used in user experience to define users with desires and limitations, oriented to goals.
Let’s look at this guests chart from INE in 2014, where mainly guests prefer four star-rating hotels.
Where do they come from? According to reports from 2014, the majority of tourists were Germans, French and British.
At this point we asked ourselves which is the tech culture of this tourists.
This is data from last January report from We Are Social, analyzing Digital habits. Here we can see mobile connections compared to total population. Germans with 111 million mobile connections.
Time spent in media: daily mobile internet compared to social media and computer/tablet internet connections.
So we are dealing with tourists with some technological background culture.
Mobile activities: social media apps, location based search and mobile banking apps.
Principal social platforms in France: Facebook, Google+ and Twitter.
Principal social platforms in Germany: Facebook, Whatsapp and FB messenger.
Principal social platforms in France: Facebook, FB messenger and Twitter.
Principal social platforms in Spain: Whatsapp Facebook and FB messenger.
But all this data is useless, because doesn’t represent our personas, can be used as an approach, but we need to know our guests habits. We need to track them.
We need to track Smith family and Jones family to predict they behavior and offer personalized experiences. The Smiths maybe they start the day in the beach, then have a drink and go to a live music concert, at this point we can predict they will dinner in a tapas restaurant because we have data from other similar profiles.
So we can send personalized offers during the day and we are sure they will be interested in.
We can track users, as the data movistar got in 2012 from Russians using their roaming system. Here we can see Russian connections between 1 and 3 pm.
Between 9 and 12 pm.
Here most of them were sleeping.
And here is a zoom in example, where we can see hotspots in sagrada familia and park guell.
With HotelSuite 360 we can track users and send push notifications depending on their localization, interests and connection hours.
We can send different information to each of our personas, because they behave different, and they want to be different, they want to have unique experiences and we can communicate with them to increase their comfort.
HotelSuite360 it’s a platform that means we can add all functionalities you can imagine, depending on your guests behaviours. HotelSuite360 provides the BigData the hotel needs to know from your guest's.
Let me conclude with a demo video with the first Smart Hotel Experience in Barcelona, in Castro Apartments.