By Pamela Carvell, Hotel Marketing Association (HMA) Life President
January 2025
Introduction
Data and AI are widely considered the hot topics in Marketing. Data, in particular, is what sets apart current Marketing from the profession 10 or 20 years ago. We have data that previous generations of Marketer could have only dreamt about, and it is this data, coupled with the array of new platforms available, that enable us to conduct highly-targeted, personalised approaches, as well as testing these to achieve higher and higher returns.
Hotels have always been data-rich, with their guest history and Property Management System (PMS), but as technology has advanced hotels have faced a huge challenge of having data sitting in various un-connected systems. There has also been a sense of being ‘overwhelmed’ by the sheer quantity and type of data available and thus not knowing how to make the best use of this data from a Marketing perspective.
When we launched Marketing Innovation of the Year as a category in the 2024 HMA Hotel Marketing Awards, we didn’t appreciate the diversity of inspiring innovations that would be entered. The winning entry from the Athenaeum Hotel & Residences, called very cleverly Datanaeum, showcased a project that included both AI and data, and it forms the basis of this article.
Note: This article has been written by Pamela Carvell, but all information has been taken from the hotel’s award entry and has been approved by them for publication.
Background
To quote from their entry,
“Datanaeum is a strategic approach, that when executed, allows us to see who our guests actually are and what loyalty even looks like, across Rooms, F&B and other outlets.”
The challenges that instigated the project, led by Yogesh Ram, Head of Marketing, emanated from the independent luxury hotel ending its relationship with the RTL group and so stepping away from certain systems and the data contained in those systems. This produced an appreciation that every system has its own small piece of guest data and tracks metrics in its own unique way.
As a Marketer the most basic information you need at your disposal is a profile of your guests – current and potential. The changes made the Marketing team realise that they didn’t really understand their guest’s behaviour, choices, habits, preferences etc, nor did they have the right business intelligence to track metrics that would give them valuable guest & booker insights. There was much duplication in data processing without the desired outcome.
These challenges are faced by many hotels and a frustration of many marketing teams. The solutions are costly, time-consuming and take many months. But the long-term financial benefits can be significant, especially as it can be a game-changer for Revenue Management as well as Marketing.
The Datanaeum Project
The ultimate aims of the project were to create better guest experiences, produce a better marketing ROI and to enable data-driven decision-making. They were aspiring for a ‘single source of truth’ and knew that they could use AI to great effect to help them achieve this.
There were many disconnected data silos, with each separate system tracking its own small part of the guest experience. Historically you wouldn’t have even known where to start with this mountain of disconnected data, but of course we now have AI, and it is precisely this kind of project where it can perform a task that would otherwise take thousands of human hours to undertake. As one example, as part of this project AI extracted 8 years of email campaign data!
The initial project took over 3 months, with very clear stages and outputs at each stage, that built and layered on the previous stage. These stages were:
System Analysis: Understanding what systems dictate the timeline.
Requirements Analysis: Collecting the questions the teams were asking and identifying gaps.
Solution Requirements: Identifying the solutions teams need.
Supplier Selection Process: Understanding who can help and selecting the best-in-class provider.
Value Funnel: How to get from disconnected data siloes and lack of commercial insights to better guest experiences and making more money.
The Value Funnel was then itself a 9 month journey and continues to this today as a mechanism to increase sales and grow revenue.
Conclusion
Whilst this project was Marketing-led, its scope bridges the commercial team; sales marketing and revenue and has been a complete game changer for commercial insights. They believe that there is no other independent hotel leading the way to understanding guest intelligence in the way this project has. Datanaeum enables them to act and make decisions like a big brand.
The hotel has complete ownership of its data and thus of its guests, and has useable dashboards that enable it to deliver excellent personal service, optimise guest spend, maximise repeat business and adopt a unique approach to lapsed guests. The ability to see the right insights and deliver the right business at the right time has resulted in an ROI for Datanaeum of 6:1, and still counting! The hotel has been able to identify and maximise opportunities that may previously have been missed, and also increase conversions year over year, in some campaigns growing room nights by 66%.
This article may only be reproduced in part or in full, if full credit is given to the Hotel Marketing Association and a link to their site is included.
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