What’s in Store for the Hospitality Industry in 2024?
The last couple of years have been a roller coaster ride for the hotel industry worldwide. The sector has witnessed everything from a complete business halt to a spike.
This year, the travel and hospitality industry saw a great recovery, but as we move to 2024, the frequency of travel is expected to spike even higher despite the economic slowdown and rising costs.
According to a report, The global travel and tourism industry is set to reach just 5% below 2019 pre-pandemic levels this year with a GDP contribution of $9.5 trillion.
Furthermore, new travel trends are expected to show up in 2024. Health and wellness tourism, sustainable travel, nostalgic escapes, workation, staycation, etc. are to name a few.
However, the trends aren’t limited to these, there is a wide array of travel trends that are expected to emerge in 2024 and beyond.
Check out our 2024 travel predictions to have a clearer picture of what to expect.
Even though people have traveled tremendously post-pandemic, the urge to step out of the home and explore is still as alive as it was back then. It’s just that the preferences of exploration have changed.
Things to Change and Improve in a Hotel in 2024
This brings us to address the elephants in the room — Are you upgrading your hotel to keep up with the trends? Have you worked on your hotel to cater to guests’ new needs and wants?
If not, it’s time to take a different approach and look for changes to make in your hotel:
Here are all the areas of a hotel that must be improved before entering 2024:
1. Operational methods
As I said above, travelers’ preferences have changed. Today, people want everything quick and seamless. And if hotels want to cater to such travellers, operational methodologies are one of the things to change in a hotel.
For example, if your guests want to order some food, your frontdesk shouldn’t say, “sir/ma’am, please get in touch with our kitchen/restaurant staff and place your order.” Rather, every department in your hotel should be connected seamlessly to the frontdesk.
Hotel operations are complex, with several interlocking pieces and dependencies.
There are times when hotel staff may go from dealing with unhappy guests to welcoming new ones to the hotel, attending to their requests, and even checking on other aspects of the property.
Now, the bitter truth here is that these complexities cannot be an excuse to comprise the guest experience.
So, if you have been facing similar troubles lately, then it’s time to change your operational methodologies and turn to new ones.
2. Communication strategies
If you’re wondering what’s there to improve or change in terms of communication, then it’s the channel.
Gone are those days when you’d have an in-person conversation with your guests to update them about their booking, the services they can avail of, and upsell to them.
And by including WhatsApp in your hotel’s tech stack, you can level up your communication strategy. You can simply integrate WhatsApp into your hotel’s property management system and connect with guests the right way.
With auto-response, FAQs, and a chatbot, guests can instantly get their queries raised and resolved even if no staff is available.
#Fact: A majority of guests today prefer WhatsApp to communicate with a hotel. Not to mention, WhatsApp messages have a better open rate compared to traditional emails.
3. Marketing approach
The way you market your hotel also needs to be changed in 2024. People are more inclined toward hotel brands that have a much better connection with their audience.
What I mean by that you must switch from generic marketing activities to human behavior-backed marketing.
When you understand human behavior, you understand what exactly intrigues your potential and existing guests. And accordingly, you can create effective marketing materials and campaigns.
Social proof marketing is a great example of attracting more guests to your hotel. What this phenomenon means is that “people develop a notion that since others are doing it, I should be doing it too.”
Now, talking about marketing, channels are also important. It is crucial that you determine where your ideal guests are hanging out. If you can figure that out, you’ll be able to generate quality leads and convert them much more easily.
Further, if you want to know what’s more in store, you can check out our blog.
Read: Hotel Marketing Trends to Increase Bookings in 2024
4. Sales strategies
If you want to be a profitable hotel in 2024, you also need to look into your current sales strategy. To be specific, I am talking about improving your sales cycle as it directly impacts the way you turn a lead into a guest and repeat the success by acquiring repeat reservations.
And if you’re clueless about this whole concept of the hotel sales cycle, then I am afraid you have a broken strategy in place.
The first and foremost thing to understand before getting into details is that “you cannot sit idle and wait for guests to come to your hotel.”
You need to create a system through which your hotel gets discovered, intrigues people, turns them into leads, and makes them your guests.
So, if you haven’t checked on your sales strategy yet, then it’s time you do so and take the dust off it.
5. Revenue management
I cannot emphasize enough the importance of revenue management. If your hotel is not betting on it, then it is indeed lagging.
Now, I have two types of hotels to point out here:
- A hotel that doesn’t believe in revenue management.
- And one that is doing revenue management completely wrong.
For both types of hotels, the following is going to be helpful.
Revenue management is a necessity for hotels worldwide as it enables accommodation businesses to become significantly profitable. However, revenue management is much more than just increasing prices; rather, it is more about determining the right opportunity, the right target guests, and the right prices.
Here are three resources that will help you take your hotel revenue management game to the top:
- The right hotel revenue management system for your hotel
- In-house vs outsourced revenue management
- How to Do Hotel Revenue Management the Right Way?
6. Ambiance
Ambience has always been paramount for hotels to attract guests. And in 2024, it is going to be even more prominent.
If you want to offer a positive experience to your guests, consider relooking at your hotel’s ambience and finding opportunities to make improvements.
Now, changing an entire theme or design might not sound practical. But that doesn’t mean you can’t tweak around with certain elements.
After all, it will put guests in a good mood, make them comfortable and relaxed, and turn your hotel into a fast favourite.
Be it a small hotel or a massive chain of properties, the ambiance must be aligned with both the hotel brand and what guests expect. If you can pull this off successfully, you’ll be able to enhance the overall guest experience and drive more reservations.
7. Amenities
Guests want amenities, that too variety of them. As a hotelier, keep this in mind.
The general psychology behind this is the value mindset. When people pay for a stay in a hotel, they judge the value of it by other things that are on offer. And this has been a constant factor for years.
So, even in 2024, you’re going to have guests who would expect a lot more from your hotel than just a room to stay in.
But again, are all amenities necessary? Absolutely, no.
Then how do you pick the right ones for your hotel?
Well, I got your back again. Here’s a blog on “choosing amenities for hotels”.
Do give it a read to understand everything that goes inside picking the right facilities to enrich the experience of your guests.
8. Guest-facing technologies
If you remember, I talked about how guests’ preferences have changed over the years and now they want everything seamlessly. And whenever I address it, guest-facing technologies always come to mind.
Now, when I say guest-facing technologies, I specifically mean three of them — mobile app, contactless hospitality, and self-service kiosks.
These technologies will help reduce your guests’ dependency on your hotel staff. Guests can avail of any services all by themselves — be it checking into the hotel, making payments or raising a query. Everything becomes guest-centric and streamlined.
If you are planning to make a great impact in 2024 and make your hotel stand out, having these technologies at your disposal will be great.
9. Hotel management system
When it comes to a hotel management system, the first and foremost thing to look at is whether the system covers everything — end-to-end.
If it misses out even on a single area of your hotel operation, then switching is the right thing to do.
Bet on a hotel PMS that not just manages bookings but also allows you to interconnect every department and lets you run your hotel with ease, and from a single dashboard.
Furthermore, a hotel management system should also be able to help you manage your point-of-sale outlets.
Not to mention, the system should also allow you to understand your hotel’s performance through essential reports. That too, whenever you need it.
Entering 2024 sans the proper hotel management is the last thing you want to do. If you haven’t audited your system yet, it’s time to do so and switch to one that makes hoteliering actually simple.
