Radisson Hotel Group has entered the next phase of its digital transformation with the launch of a customer-first and digital strategy based on immersive and localized experiences. This makes Radisson one of the first hospitality companies to adopt technologies to drive customer engagement and booking conversions.
With the help of advanced hotel digital replicas, guests can get a virtual tour of the group’s hotels from their phones, laptops and VR headsets. Guests can see how the rooms look like, move around, explore the hotel spaces virtually and also interact with surrounding objects through 3D virtual venue tours from their devices. Guests can also book the particular property they see on their screens through a seamless booking experience.
Radisson’s localization strategy includes online journeys in 29 languages, personalized for over 60 regions.
Over the last three years, the group has established its digital transformation strategy to provide a localized and personalized digital experience by adopting new technology innovations and experiences.
IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCES
Radisson introduced its first immersive experiences pilot in 2020 to elevate its customer-centric approach by offering guests new ways to experience its properties. The project was led by the Digital Experience Center of Excellence, a multicultural in-house team of digital experts responsible for bringing the online experience of the group’s portfolio to life.
So far, 86 hotels have added hotel tours to their hotel web pages which have delivered a +279% increase in the number of clicks, +3.85% rise in average time on page and +20.91% interactions in 2022 compared to 2021 when the web pages only featured static images.
Radisson plans to add immersive experiences across 100 hotels by the year’s end.
Immersive content has contributed significantly to the group’s meetings and events business. In 2022, Radisson debuted its meetings and events booking engine, integrating immersive experiences that enable meeting planners to look for an event venue, explore the meeting rooms and the set-up, book directly or send a request for a proposal for that specific space.
The immersive virtual tours provide floor plans, dollhouse views and an exact digital replica of the property. Planners can assess if the spaces are suitable for the events and book directly. Immersive experiences have generated increased qualified M&E inquiries (+35%) and booking conversions (+12%).
LANGUAGE SUPPORT
Radisson currently offers 29 languages and aims to extend this to 31 languages by the end of this year.
Visitors can interact with the company’s website and app in their native languages, which has boosted income as some pages in local languages attract more bookings per hotel than webpages in English.
Radisson also developed a strong personalization roadmap to reach out to guests using their customs, societal codes, color and values on top of translation. Based on their location, guests can see local, relevant content about destinations and hotels. The personalized features are available in over 60 markets and have increased website conversions by 33% and lowered bounce rates by 24%, the company said.
“In 2020, we decided to shift our business focus from international to domestic and to adapt our digital experience to be more interactive and localized by translating the full booking funnel of our website and app into key strategic languages. The next phase included the roll-out of our Immersive Experiences. This technology has been invaluable, especially to our meetings and events business, as it allows us to show busy meeting planners the different flexible and customizable options we offer across our portfolio,” said Raul Alvarez Barrera, vice president global digital experience, Radisson Hotel Group. “Localization and immersive experiences have helped us to strengthen the trust and relationship we have with existing customers and have proven to be great long-term investments, as they have contributed to increased customer satisfaction and higher conversion rates.”
As part of its ongoing digital investment and online transformation strategy, Radisson will reveal more new features for the website and mobile app, as well as broader digital technology plans.