Q3) Latest Trends and New Development about Hotel Business

Fast Growing Customer Segment - Millennials

The millennials, which people also called generation Y has grown up and become one of the major customers of hotel business in recent years. According to Cornell Center for Hospitality Research, millennials represents 32 percent of all US travelers nowadays, and it will be increased to over 50 percent of all travelers by 2025. These reveals that the millennial is a potential market with high profitability for hotel business. Instead of focusing only on enjoying a cheap trip for travelling, millennials ask for exploration, interaction and experience for their lodging at reasonable price. Millennials prefer hotel with practical uses than the one with many useless luxury items because they would like to spend more on adventure and exploring the places they traveled to. Hotels change their service and design on facilities in order to fulfill their needs in the above 3 aspects. For example, new hotels focus more on building more common areas such leisure rooms, bars and lounges for the millennials to interact with traveler around the world in the same hotel. Instead of providing luxury furniture and room design, hotels target more on providing basic needs for millennials travelers in the hotel rooms like beverage outlets, grab-and-go food, etc. Millennials also expect services provided by hotels to be supported with high technology, so they can easily access to hotel services or information by scanning QR code or using Apps on their own devices such as tablets and smartphones. Some hotels even provided service of lending of free bicycles for millennials to explore the area around hotels.  Hotels aim to provide a more comprehensive experience to achieve higher customer satisfaction of the fast growing generation Y.

Stable and Free WiFi 

Providing a stable and free Wi-Fi everywhere in a hotel become an importance element for customers to choose a hotel for lodging. According to Amba hotel, two thirds (67%) of interviewees said free Wi-Fi would make them more likely to choose accommodation, followed by location (65%), fast Wi-Fi with unlimited downloads (34%) and near to travel hubs (34%). The survey conducted by Thistle Hotels Group also revealed that lack of free WiFi ranked third for annoying the travelers the most about a hotel. People want WiFi to keep their connection with friends and family even when they travel to different part of the world. They also need WiFi to enjoy videos online in the hotel or search for different kind of information for traveling such as attractions and transportation for the place they stay. Businessmen also need good connection to WiFi with their phones, tablets or notebook for video conferencing or handling business issues. Customers, especially for the young generation avoid to choose hotel without free WiFi or with poor WiFi service because they consider it as extremely inconvenient. 

               

Increased Importance of Reputation Management

In recent years, reputation management becomes a crucial issue for hotel management. Social media become a common and popular platform for people to share their review on hotel service during their travelling. There are also more traveler sites for people to communicate their experience on various hotels and hostels. If the hotel performs well and fulfills the customer expectation, their praise will help the hotel to attract their friends or readers to become the hotels' customers. If not, travelers’ poor word of mouth will spread over the Internet and discourage other travelers from choosing the hotel for stay, which become a nightmare for the hotel. Hotel’s management level thus pay more focus on reputation management for hotel especially on Internet to grab more business opportunities or to avoid loss of customers.

There are many different social media such as Twitter, Facebook, Weibo for people to publish their comments online and it is difficult for people to manage all these platforms at the same time. Therefore, they try to seek help from some reputation management Software-as-a-Service, like Revinate, TrustYou. These company provides different review monitoring service which helps hotels over the world to do reputation management. For example, one of the service Revinate provided is social media monitoring, which means hotels are able to know how customers comment on their service once related comments have been posted on any social media platform. This service enhances the efficiency for hotel to manage their social media account and give responses to comments on online platform.

Poshtel

Poshtel is a new type of hostel with luxury amenities which arise in Europe recently. Poshtel is a combined word of Posh and Hostel, which means a deluxe edition of hostel.  As more young travelers want to have fun and stay in unique accommodation with a limited budget during their travel, they choose to stay in Poshtel which provides travelers with 6- to 18-beds dorm and ensuites with relatively low and attractive price. Different amenities such as swimming pool, parties, free WiFi provided by Poshtel is another attraction. Poshtel usually located in the central area which give great convenience to their customers for shopping, finding a restaurant for their breakfast or visiting different attractions around the city. They always provide their customers with high-tech key and equipment. The design for Poshtel is fashionable and charming, which gives surprise to their customers.  More and more young travelers aims on choosing these hotel as their accommodation during traveling.

Here are some examples of popular Poshtel in Europe. 

GENERATOR in Paris

Clink78 in London

King Kong Hostel in Netherlands

Evaluation:

Although many different kinds of hotels were already introduced in the lecture, I still find there are many different style of hotels around the world. I believe that there will be much more different kind of hotels appears according to the changing of demand and needs of the coming generations. It is interesting  to know new type of hotels and I think it will be a new and fun experience for staying in those hotels.

Reference:

1.  http://www.4hoteliers.com/features/article/8736
2. http://www.smartmeetings.com/news/trends/74256/top-10-trends-impacting-hospitality-industry
3. http://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/ey-global-hospitality-insights-2015/$File/ey-global-hospitality-insights-2015.pdf
4. https://www.revinate.com/company/about/
5. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/young-entrepreneur-council/5-new-hotel-trends-busine_b_6670482.html
6. http://reknown.com/2011/01/a-round-up-of-social-media-and-reputation-monitoring-tools-for-hotels/
7. http://www.amba-hotel.com/corporate/about_us/press_office/research_shows_fast_free_wi-fi_is_top_of_the_wishlist_for_uk_travellers.html
8. http://www.digitaljournal.com/life/travel/no-free-wi-fi-biggest-hotel-guest-complaint/article/371150
9. http://www.hotelaquaeductus.it/free_wifi_connection_available_for_all_our_guests_hotel_emona_aquaeductus_13en3803en.htm
10. http://www.lonelyplanet.com/budget-travel/best-of-budget-travel/content/travel-tips-and-articles/the-irresistible-rise-of-the-poshtel
11. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlAhpZR-bkw
12. http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/poshtel_posh_hostel/
13. http://www.businessinsider.com/poshtels-are-the-new-travel-trend-2015-7
14. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jPopsAaRS0