Until recently, the words “business intelligence” conjured a team of data wonks in a basement room, under poor lighting conditions, hammering away at their keyboards to fill cells and build formulas. Today, accessing and analyzing data to make smarter business decisions no longer requires a data science degree. Business intelligence is available to a wide swath of hoteliers across all departments, not just the data science team, empowering each team member with the information they need to drive positive business outcomes.
Today, nearly every individual within a hotel – from the front desk staff to the accounting team to revenue management – now possesses the tools needed to harness insights from data. The most successful hotel companies are building a culture around data-driven decision-making, empowering team members across the organization with access to centralized data that will help them work smarter and create exceptional guest experiences.
A shift to a data-driven culture within your organization will bring a more collaborative and inclusive approach to data analysis. With the democratization of data, hoteliers are no longer beholden to the expertise of a select few. Instead, they are empowered to take ownership of their data, using it to enhance guest experiences, optimize operations, and drive sustainable growth.
Simply put, hotel business intelligence refers to the process of collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data related to various aspects of hotel operations to make informed business decisions. It involves using software, data analytics techniques, and reporting systems to gather insights into areas such as customer preferences, market trends, operational efficiency, revenue management, and marketing strategies.
In hotels, business intelligence systems gather data from various sources within the property, such as property management systems, reservations systems, point-of-sale systems, accounting systems, Customer Relationship Management software, website analytics, and guest feedback platforms. Typically, analyzing this data required a data analyst to identify patterns, trends, correlations and outliers. Today, with advancements in Artificial Intelligence, much of that analysis can be done by machine, presenting hoteliers with recommended actions based off the data.
The analyzed data is then presented in easy-to-understand reports, dashboards, and visualizations that enable hotel managers and stakeholders to quickly grasp key performance metrics and build strategies to drive revenue and profitability.
As technology, system integrations and data sharing have advanced, business intelligence solutions have become more accessible to a wider group of hoteliers. Now, independent owners and operators with a small number of properties, or even one property, can gain the insights they need to run smarter businesses. In addition, more team members in different departments across your company now have access to a centralized data repository for more informed decisions.
Many BI tools now offer intuitive and user-friendly interfaces that require minimal technical expertise to navigate. This allows team members from various departments, including non-technical staff, to easily access and interact with data dashboards, reports, and visualizations.
In Otelier IntelliSight, for example, users can create custom reports, queries, and visualizations without relying on IT or data analysts. This empowers hoteliers across different departments to explore data, generate insights, and make data-driven decisions independently.
Overall, the increasing accessibility of BI tools empowers hoteliers at all levels of the organization to harness the power of data analytics to drive operational excellence and maximize financial performance.
Undoubtedly, advancements in Artificial Intelligence are poised to drive efficiencies in hotel operations and revolutionize the speed and way hotels interact with guests. But another key benefit of AI is the ability to centralize, normalize and analyze massive amounts of performance and financial data to help hotels run more profitable businesses.
Within hotel business intelligence, AI is driving a shift in analytics from descriptive to predictive to prescriptive by leveraging advanced algorithms and machine learning techniques.
Descriptive analysis primarily focuses on summarizing historical data to understand past trends and events. Predictive analysis takes this a step further by using machine learning models to forecast future outcomes based on patterns found in historical data. Finally, prescriptive analysis harnesses AI to not only predict future scenarios but also recommend the best actions to achieve desired outcomes. By analyzing vast datasets from various hotel technology systems in real-time, AI systems can identify patterns, detect anomalies, and generate actionable insights.
Soon, AI will likely enable a last step, perhaps called delegative, where after one approval click, machines are automatically taking the recommended action for you. Once AI knows enough about our business and what decisions we would typically make, anomalies in data will automatically trigger optimal actions.
Hotel owners and management companies shouldn’t shy away from better understanding their business for fear of needing a data analyst or a data science team. In many ways, user-friendly BI tools can serve as your data analyst, and the democratization of data can empower all your team members with actionable insights to optimize your business.
Let’s talk more about the right BI tools to help you run a smarter business.