2020 Hospitality Trends
Hindsight is 2020: Using Our Experience to Predict the Future
The Dragonfly team is composed of senior level executives, each with more than 15 years direct experience working for some of the world’s top hospitality brands. Through this experience, our team is able to help our clients anticipate issues and market trends. Here’s what we think is ahead for 2020 and some additional 2020 trends articles we recommend.
Rise and Importance of Call Centers with the Growth of Mobile Devices
The entire travel booking trend has been rising for mobile since 2016 when more people started searching on their mobile devices than desktop. Mobile bookings have also increased and now many guests want the convenience of using their same mobile device to make a call to complete a booking. This also might be attributed to the rise of voice-assisted devices like Alexa and Siri. Properties who have their front desk staff double as their call center agents will be missing out on major revenue. A multi-lingual call center experience is also important to consider for guests who want to make the booking in their native language.
Attribute-Based Selling and Pricing
Distribution and revenue systems will begin to support attribute-based selling and pricing. This will require enhancements too many systems that hotels use to manage their pricing and inventory. The benefit is that it will both enable guests to choose the exact room configuration and amenities they desire all while ensuring hotels make more revenue for the discerning guest who wants specific attributes for their travel (and is willing to pay for it). Each attribute requested will add an incremental price to the base rate, but hotels will be required to honor the specific attributes the guest requests.
ADA – Accessible Room Types and Accessible Website User Experience (UX)
We were amazed to find that many hotels still do not have their Accessible ADA room types separated into separate room type categories and available to book online. Accessibility compliance is critical in making sure hotels are available to all travelers including those with different abilities. Likewise; we were amazed to find that some hotels who claim ADA compliance on their website do not pass many key ADA compliance tests like higher contrast and alt tag attributes. Hotels’ are facing ADA litigation for both online booking room type selection and website design compliance. We recommend a complete room type and website audit to ensure your property is compliant with current laws to avoid potential lawsuits.
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The Rise of Alternative Accommodations
One of the key trends and hype of 2019 is the continued surge of "alternative accommodations", which shows no signs of slowing down given the list of new startups and impressive growth metrics from some of the current main players: Airbnb/VRBO/HomeAway. Some of our clients are wanting to dip a toe and starting to experiment on these platforms.
The lines have definitely been blurred since anybody can obtain global distribution now and it's interesting to watch companies like Sonder, Guild, Why Hotels, and Mint House capitalize on this space. Some hotels are diversifying by creating a model with some traditional hotel rooms, some residential units, and some units for Airbnb/Homeaway. This way all types of traveler preferences are being catered to and overall risk is mitigated.
Sustainability
Sustainable practices are becoming vitally important from both a guest experience and property management perspective. Hotels are seeking ways to be both environmentally friendly and to reduce costs and carbon footprint. We see systems evolving to include this as a choice for environmentally conscious traveler beyond the water savings by not changing linens and towels each day. From reducing food waste, paperless experience and sustainable architecture, this is a rapidly evolving area.
Guest Experience Focus
Hotels that evolve to encompass the evolving needs of guests will be poised to reap rewards in the future. Experience focus is becoming more important to the traveler including social spaces to gather, work spaces to work remotely, amenities that are guest driven and localized as well as designs that communicate a message. A component of social responsibility woven into the experience also will enhance the desirability to the next generations of travelers.
Activating Diverse Revenue Opportunities
As hotels attempt to drive higher revenues to cover higher operating costs many are turning to different models to activate new revenue opportunities. These new revenue opportunities present an option for locals and also enhance the guest experience. For example, selling pool cabanas via Resort Pass or activating unused spaces for social media and revenue opportunities is becoming more common place with the savvy hotelier with eyes on revenue.
Responsive and Mobile-First Website Design
We were shocked to discover through comprehensive website audits that some of our clients still don’t have fully responsive mobile optimized websites. When Google switched these properties to mobile-first indexing last year, their SEO fell off the cliff and it had a devastating impact on revenues.
We recommend that your website is fully responsive for mobile phones or designed to be Mobile First. Use Google PageSpeed Insights to gain some insights into what is going on with your website pages mobile speed .
Other interesting 2020 Hospitality Trends articles:
The team at Dragonfly is voracious readers, here’s some of our other top trend articles to glean ideas from:
Hotel Tech Report’s 100+ Hotel Trends to Watch in 2020
From Smart Rooms, Going Green to Traveler Preferences, this list curates some great trends to be aware of.
Skift’s Bold and Outrageous Predictions for the Travel Industry in 2020
From consolidations of some major OTAs and hotel chains to Airline industry trends, this article has some trends to watch take shape this year.
Hotel News Now 3 Tech Trends for Hotels in 2020
From personalization to data and privacy, these are some good trends to keep in mind when it comes to technology and hospitality.
Hotel Technology News Who is the Hotel Guest of 2020?
This infographic is a great way to share upcoming trends with your team to understand the changing preferences of guest experience and technology.