Customer experience driving hotel marketing

What are the more relevant trends for this year? Xotels, company for hotels management and services, investigated on the 2020 trends in the hotellerie marketing sector – or rather, which trends should be followed and which can be ignored (for example, according to them, influencer marketing).

Thinking about the customer experience as a path, everything starts with a research. Customers want to be informed, they do some research, and then – hopefully – they book. It is then foreseen, following the growth of mobile, that hotels should focus on developing mobile interfaces of their own platforms and websites, gradually putting aside the desktop view.

The importance of having a good CRM goes with this. The name is self-explanatory: Customer Relationship Management. Keeping track of the tourists preferences and habits – from the booking process to the review – is fundamental in order to retain a customer and to build customer loyalty.

Operators will then have to guarantee the personalisation of the tourists experience itself, according to their preferences, also making use of A.I..
The hotel room must be an experience: it became the core of the hotel stay for tourists, that now have higher expectations.

Talking about the payment process, the future is dominated by APMs (Alternative Payment Methods). A frictionless payment process, in fact, can enhance the customer experience. Xotels also recognises the potential of blockchains, even if their development in sectors which are not closely related to payments is still believed to be distant.

At Twissen we noticed that there is a strong fil rouge in the hotel marketing field: the customer experience. In order to make it as profitable as possible, it is helpful to make use of some tools, technical or not: from a proper use of CRMs, to the personalisation of the stay. Whether their usage is now reality or not, experience for the tourist is increasingly being put to the centre of the attention.

Martina Baldo

She graduated in Intercultural Development of Tourism Systems and she has a passion for foreign languages and cultures. Since 2016 she works as administration and tourism project manager at Twissen.