When Covid-19 brought much of our industry to its knees, one thing quickly became clear: hotel brands that were willing to innovate and transform their guest journey were at a clear advantage.
The properties that embraced technology and new procedures most successfully were even able to create lasting positive changes in their operations and their profitability.
Sea Containers London is one such hotel. Their creative approach to last year’s challenges stood out to Nonius Hospitality Technology. It inspired them to bring together a panel of hotel technology experts to highlight how the hotel used technology to reimagine their guest journey and get their business through the crisis.
Josef Lapka, Senior Product Director at Mews, was invited to join this panel. First, he showcased the role a next-generation PMS plays in creating opportunities for a new guest journey. He also outlined which developments tomorrow’s leading systems must support in order to help hotels adapt to ever-changing travel trends.
Becoming the center of a competitive yet cooperative landscape
Over the past few years, several common themes have emerged among hoteliers. For example, there’s a growing demand for cloud-based technology that creates frictionless operations and facilitates cross-departmental communication. The desire to streamline guest communication plays into this as well. There’s also a strong shift from looking mainly at RevPAR towards examining RevPAG (revenue per available guest) and finding creative ways to boost a traveller’s lifetime value.
Bringing together the above trends and the other themes Josef discussed is the key to reaching every hotelier’s main goal: creating a seamless guest journey and an excellent guest experience. One of the best ways to do this is leveraging centralized systems that simplify operations and leave teams with more time for personalized service.
Mews offers the basis for such a set-up since it serves and connects the B2C, the B2B hotel tech, and the payments domains. Our open API and our commitment to data access and security put us at the centre of this competitive yet cooperative landscape. As Josef puts it, this takes Mews from a simple PMS to an advanced hospitality system of the future that enables hotels to transform their guest journey.
“A hospitality system of the future must enable you to connect seamlessly and without friction,” Josef Lapka highlighted at Nonius Hospitality Technology’s Reimagining the Guest Journey panel at Sea Containers London.
Looking into the future: new trends on the horizon
Throughout the pandemic, many hotels began using and selling their spaces and services in creative new ways. Josef outlines how this trend is here to stay and will likely blend with other developments in the hospitality industry.
This includes a growing interest in memberships and subscription services in the travel industry as well as catering to a newly emerged type of business traveller. For hotels to make the most of these trends and offer guests the experience they expect, versatile and customizable systems are crucial. This is where Mews’ latest project will offer hoteliers a flexible solution they can fully adapt to their offering.
Watch Josef’s presentation above or via this webinar page to find out what this new solution will look like and how it will benefit hoteliers who are ready to innovate.
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