Business Intelligence (BI) for the hospitality industry is a tool that encompasses a range of processes and technologies allowing organizations to collect, analyze, and interpret any type of data to make informed strategic decisions and optimize business performance. The data available today is vast: operational, financial, quantitative, and qualitative data such as texts, images, and behavior can all be transformed into valuable information.
It integrates with various functionalities introduced by IoT systems and Artificial Intelligence: from optimizing consumption and resources to improving Customer Experience, and even achieving more ambitious goals typical of the green economy (as discussed here regarding ESG for hotels).
Let’s explore in detail the goals that can be achieved, the tools used, and the necessary steps.
Objectives of a Winning Strategy for Hospitality
To be considered effective, a winning strategy in the hospitality sector must aim to achieve multiple goals: ensuring a strong market presence, delivering superior customer experience, and managing resources efficiently.
Key objectives of a comprehensive and well-structured strategy can be summarized as follows:
Ensure Positive Customer Experiences: this involves identifying and offering personalized services, responding quickly to requests, providing comfort and security, encouraging positive reviews, and loyalty programs. Achieving this requires technological integration and digitization of many processes: implementing online booking systems, advanced PMS systems, mobile applications, integrating Chatbots, and advanced data analytics. For instance, the use of Mixed Reality (MR) in hotels is among the technologies that significantly impact customer experience, using devices (headsets) that combine virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) to create a mixed-reality experience where virtual objects interact with the real environment.
Build a Strong Brand and Effectively Position the Business in the Hotel Market: this involves creating a consistent brand narrative, investing in digital marketing, collaborating with influencers, promoting unique values, and managing online reputation through proper review management, taking customer feedback into account for improvements, and maintaining high service standards. Here too, advanced analysis and Text Mining tools are the differentiating factor that provides access to otherwise invisible strategic insights.
Demonstrate Commitment to Environmental Sustainability and Social Responsibility (ESG): meeting customer expectations and contributing to the community requires tools like IoT and AI solutions for resource optimization (e.g., energy savings) to implement sustainable policies, reduce environmental impact, and engage the local community.
Identify New Investment Opportunities: this includes acquiring or developing properties in promising markets, collaborating with other operators or brands. Predictive analytics play a crucial role in making short- and long-term decisions.
Invest in Talent and Staff Skill Development: to ensure exceptional service and company growth, regular training programs, career development, and employee engagement are crucial. This involves both individual skills (e.g., process digitization and fostering a shared data-driven mindset) and strategic aspects (aligning the entire team with a customer-centric vision, regardless of hierarchical levels).
BI Tools and Solutions for the Hospitality Sector
A comprehensive strategy breaks down business success into various macro aspects for analysis and optimization. For each area, dedicated tools exist, such as Property Management Systems (PMS), Revenue Management Systems to optimize room rates based on market demand and maximize revenue per available room (RevPAR), CRM systems for managing customer relationships, and more.
Adding to this are AI-based tools like Chatbots for virtual assistance, IoT sensors for resource optimization, Augmented Reality technologies, and other innovations. These tools not only maximize the performance of various functions but also enrich the company’s informational database with valuable data (Big Data), which can be defined as the raw material needed for any type of analysis. Consider the numerous improvement areas that can be identified through data analysis with such technologies.
Advanced Analytics enable linking data from various sources, discovering new connections to generate new knowledge, which is then transformed into actionable insights with a positive impact on the profitability of hospitality establishments.
Thus, alongside basic tools for operational and financial management of a hotel, Data Visualization, Advanced Analytics, and Business Intelligence solutions come into play.
Data Visualization and Data Analytics
These are essential software for in-depth analysis of operational, financial, and customer experience data for the hospitality industry. Among the most well-known are Microsoft Power BI, Qliksense, Tableau, and Dataiku. These tools are highly useful for creating interactive and intuitive dashboards.
Advanced Analytics and Business Intelligence
Advanced analytics go beyond data visualization and single analysis; they are the core of Business Intelligence: linking data from diverse sources, structured and unstructured, even seemingly incompatible, to open new analytical and knowledge scenarios.
To conduct Advanced Analytics, it is necessary to integrate AI technologies (e.g., virtual assistants) and develop a data science project that combines various technologies and expertise (from data warehouses to data analytics and visualization software) with BI software (Microsoft Azure and Power BI, as well as Dataiku and others).
Developing a Sustainable BI Project
Where to start with such an ambitious project?
Some prerequisites are:
- Digital Maturity: a BI project works where the organizational structure has reached a level of digital maturity that allows for the introduction of such technologies. This includes human resource skills, IT infrastructure, and a data-driven process management approach.
- Integration of Various Components: a BI solution is the result of integrating various platforms, software, IT components, and data science expertise. Organizations rarely possess all these resources internally, so choosing a competent partner is crucial. This partner should also guide the selection of suitable software and infrastructure (there’s nothing worse than investing in a solution that proves inadequate or limits growth instead of fostering it).
- Clear and Concrete Goals: no tool can replace human judgment in setting strategic objectives; therefore, starting with clear and concrete (S.M.A.R.T.) goals is important. Advanced Analytics provides guidance, new scenarios, and solutions, but it is up to people to use these insights to make better decisions.
- Leadership and Team Engagement: BI solutions do not replace good leadership. Engaging the entire team (from executives to operational roles) is essential for high adoption rates and maximizing potential, which leads to economic growth.
- Maturity for Data Scientist and Engineer Teams: only at this stage can the organization consider itself mature enough to develop a BI project with dedicated data scientists and data engineers to create the most suitable solution, which should:
- Address business needs effectively,
- Have a positive impact on revenue and profits,
- Optimize resources (human, time, and financial).
Next will be the selection of software and technology to ensure the best fit with the established goals (where product benchmarking becomes indispensable to avoid wasting effort and resources).
A very useful step is planning project milestones up to and beyond the release phase.
Optimizing Resources and Time in BI for Hotels
We realize Business Intelligence & Advanced Analytics solutions to transform simple data into information of freat strategic value.
