With the appetite for revenge journeys growing rapidly around the world, and consumers craving more and more for the experiences they have been denied since the pandemic began, it is important that Hotels have the skills and digital strategies to capture demand.
As hoteliers are shifting the focus to further training of the workforce in order to take advantage of the demand in the upswing, we are catching up Ben Thomas, Chief Commercial Officer at Penta Hotels, on what hotels should do to support their teams and optimize the online travel and guest experience.
As international travel demand grows and hotel bookings surpass pre-pandemic levels, what should hotels keep in mind when it comes to training their staff?
The qualification of the employees is essential during this time. In the past, our industry has faced a shortage of skilled workers around the world, and this is all the more true now as hotels recover from the economic fallout in 2020.
Although occupancy numbers are steadily recovering, they remain below pre-pandemic levels. The prices have also changed significantlywhich means consumers are spoiled for choice when booking a hotel. Additionally, 2020 events have also made consumers more sophisticated, which means every step of the customer experience needs to be optimized, from pre-booking to check-out and beyond.
All of this increases the pressure on the workforce. Therefore, it is vital for our hotels to ensure that we have the right skills to meet the requirements.
What were your priorities to make sure your hotels are fit to meet the pent-up demand?
We took the opportunity of the downturn to really think about who we are as a brand and whether we would be fit in a post-pandemic world. Over the past eight months, we have carefully analyzed new customers to target them and how we can reach them, identifying short-term digital buying behavior and the increase in younger travelers.
Given the ongoing market uncertainty, we saw a drastic reduction in booking speed from 28 days to just 5 days or less. With mobile bookings on the rise, one of our first steps was to deploy a new mobile-first website. From there, we identified where potential guests were looking for us online and took steps to increase visibility on these channels. All of our efforts have been holistically focused on guiding the customer journey from search to transaction.
From an economic point of view, until travel and hotels are fully reopened, we need to think about how we can continue to attract guests and meet their requirements so that they will come back in the future.
How has Penta Hotels revamped its digital marketing strategy to reach and retain the influx of younger and discerning travelers?
Instead of going to the market with a cheap deal, we really focused on telling stories about our travel destinations. The local market is still critical for us in the short term, so we communicate in a way that inspires guests to dream, to explore their homeland.
We changed our communication with the younger audience in mind, speaking in a more ambitious language through blogs promoting the destination and experiences on offer. We also offer more experiential packages aimed at younger audiences, with live music. We streamed numerous concerts live and created a playlist that this audience really loved.
Managing operating costs without compromising on service is also a high priority for us. In the food space, for example, we’ve teamed up with food delivery companies like Uber Eats to keep delivering culinary experiences while maintaining labor costs. It is vital for us to keep inventing new ways to deliver the best experiences to our guests during these times.
Although the demand for travel is there, the prevailing uncertainty and changing restrictions continue to disrupt consumer confidence and travel. How do you create a workable marketing strategy to build consumer trust and keep your teams motivated during these times?
Ultimately, we are continually looking for ways to keep the customer safe while delivering a great experience.
From a commercial perspective, absolute flexibility in terms of cancellations and bookings on future dates is still crucial. For this reason, we maintain a policy that allows flexible postponement of bookings that extends to small meetings, groups and events. In view of the strict Covid-19 test requirements at various travel destinations, we have also teamed up with laboratories to offer guests in selected hotels an on-site service.
Focusing on the mental health and wellbeing of our employees is essential in these times. For sales teams in particular, watching all of the companies you’ve worked so hard to build disintegrate over the course of 18 months is particularly challenging.
To cope with this, we are currently setting ourselves smaller goals and celebrating the successes along the way. In the worst case, when our business reached the lowest conceivable sales level, we celebrated an occupancy rate of 15%. Despite the lingering barriers and disruptions, we genuinely seek to build resilience by staying optimistic and building our teams’ morale.
In the short term, we must continue to look for ways to overcome these limitations as well until vaccination reaches the required level so that the travel destinations can be fully reopened. I also believe that it is important to remember that travel will resume with a vengeance that day.
For me, this memory arose when I was recently visiting London for a weekend of leisure. For the first time in 18 months I saw crowded restaurants and bars again. As in the US, it was almost as if life had returned to normal and everyone was buzzing with the feeling. Since it was my first leisure break in a long time, price was less of an issue. I came back poorer and heavier, but happier.
above Ben Thomas
Ben Thomas is a commercial and operational strategist who works with sales, marketing, e-commerce, and revenue leaders to make the hotel business financially successful. After spending over a decade in senior leadership positions in the hotel industry, Ben recently moved to a newly created position at Pentahotels headquarters in Frankfurt, where he led the sales team through the ongoing global pandemic and focused on creating efficiency and growth focused on profitability.
When he’s not commuting to the Frankfurt office, Ben is at home in the UK, spending time with his wife, young son, and a growing army of pets. Sport remains a great passion in his life, mostly after soccer and his beloved Manchester United.
Born in the 1970s, Penta hotels stands for a new generation of affordable, lively neighborhood hotels that offer modern private and business travelers comfort and style in a relaxed atmosphere. Known for their unique interior design and attitude, they feel compelled to disrupt a boring mid-range hotel segment that is all about hardware. Penta is all about social interaction and real service. Your teams are the creators and gatekeepers of this unique culture. With 27 hotels under the brand in Europe and Asia, the heart of every hotel is the pentalounge: bar, restaurant, lobby and reception all in one room.
About GuestCentric
GuestCentric is a leading provider of cloud-based digital marketing software and services that help exceptional hoteliers promote their brands, drive direct bookings and connect with customers on all digital platforms. GuestCentric’s all-in-one platform gives hotels the only one-stop solution for managing their guests’ online travel: award-winning, high-impact websites; an integrated, user-friendly booking engine; Social media marketing and publishing tools; a GDS chain code and channel manager to advertise rooms on Amadeus, Booking.com, Expedia, Galileo, Google, Saber, TripAdvisor and hundreds of other channels. GuestCentric is a proud provider of solutions that maximize direct bookings to hotel groups and independent hotels from collections such as Design Hotels, Great Hotels of the World, Leading Hotels of the World, Relais & Chateaux, Small Luxury Hotels and Small Danish Hotels. GuestCentric is featured on Skift Travel Tech 250, a list of the top 250 travel technology companies shaping the modern travel experience.
