GOSTELOW REPORT—”AirBnb has become most searched-for in the accommodation brand, and hoteliers should learn from their experience of disruption,” says Paul Godman, senior industry manager for hospitality at Google Inc.
He was speaking at the 30th annual Deloitte European Hotel Investment Conference last week, and although he cannot predict what the next trend will be, he did share a few more figures. “In general, searches for ‘best’ are up 25% in the past two years, and ‘co-living’ has risen 140% in the same time frame,” he told the crowd.
Just as technology is changing faster and faster, so too are people’s expectations, and those hoteliers that do not keep up will be left behind. The continuous cycle is technological innovation leading to increased consumer expectations and continual business innovation.
“And we need to remember that everyone is more and more time-pressed. My own point of friction has gone from handing over money in the past to today’s annoyance of having to put in my PIN when paying via mobile. Our figures show that 76% of consumers abandon a mobile booking when check-out time is more than one minute,” he continued.
Godman urged hoteliers to let technology lower the friction of travel: Kempinski Hotels, for instance, made a number of changes to its site, including using Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), which led to an 11% rise in conversion.
“But do not forget creativity – 50% to 80% of return in advertising comes from creative, versus only 5% to 35% from targeting. According to Nielsen Catalina Research for the Advertising Research Foundation, May 2017, creativity is the single biggest lever companies have to improve advertising effectiveness. The work they do does not always reflect this,” he said.
The one-day conference, held at The Dorchester, London, was themed “Experience the future.” Some sessions were, admittedly, sobering. Trevor Williams, formerly chief economist at Lloyds Bank plc and now founder, TW Consultancy, saw a European drift toward authoritarianism, especially in Hungary, Poland and Russia; other challenges are continuing crises in the Middle East and, overall, aging populations. But, he said, free trade has delivered more to humanity than any other economic system, billions have been lifted out of poverty, infant mortality has plummeted, and literacy and longevity have increased.
“Despite everything, Pew Research Center’s spring 2018 survey, in 28 countries, showed 63% still want the U.S.A. to be the top global power,” Williams said, though he cautioned that whereas the U.S. topped national GDPs in 1996, today it is second, behind China, and in 2036 it could well be third.
His summary of the short-term impact of Brexit, U.K. leaving the EU, saw volatility in asset prices, political uncertainty and financial markets prices in some long-term costs. The medium-long impact depends on global trade, inward investment to the U.K., migration and labor flows, regulation and domestic reform on productivity.
The following speaker, Robin Rossmann, managing director of STR, concentrated on the growing popularity of brands over independent hotels.
“Today 64% of hotels in North America are brands, up from 37.6% a decade ago,” he shared. “But brands have plenty of opportunity. In Central and South America, only 38.6% of properties are branded; in Europe the figure is 40.2%, in the Middle East it is 42.9%, and Asia Pacific, 53.3%.”
Appropriately for “the future,” conference concentrating on investment had panels geared to both customer experience and talent. There is of course a limit to the amount that can be covered in a one-day session, but the fact that all sessions are plenary, with plenty of breakout time, means that this Deloitte event, with a cocktail party the previous evening, remains an essential calendar entry for interested parties.
“I decided at 11 o’clock last night to come,” said Monaco-based Ilan Rudich of DRI Hotels. Campbell Gray Hotels’ Daniel Johansson shared details of his company’s forthcoming Zurich property: “It was brokered by someone I met at the 2016 Deloitte event,” he smiled.