Question

List and discuss three factors that you would take into account in developing a digital strategy to engage clients of a hotel chain such as AccorHotels. Write at least 2-3 sentences about each factor.

Answer 1

ANS. Six Ways to develop a digital strategy to engage clients of a hotel chain such as accorhotels are as follows:-

1. Building an agile IT infrastructure
Bailly said one of the challenges of adapting the company’s IT infrastructure is to get away from systems solely designed to deal with selling roomnights.

These infrastructures have to be “able to move from a model based on selling hotel rooms to, in our case, a model offering enhanced hospitality experiences, including rooms, co-working, private rentals, and a variety of travel services,” Bailly said. “Your IT infrastructure also needs to be agile, integrating new services much faster and being able to constantly adapt to a fast-moving technological environment.

“Services provided by IT—central reservation systems, revenue-management services or payment solutions that are secure, efficient and match geographical and cultural specificities—must be almost ‘plug-and-play’ so that hotels can integrate them quickly (and) efficiently and at minimum cost.”

2. Making data the battleground
Data remains at the heart of AccorHotels’ digital strategy, Bailly said.

“Our challenge is to collect, process, analyze and aggregate data in order to better know and interact with our guests.(If data is) collected and processed in respect (for) customer privacy and put into the hands of ‘guest-passioned’ people, (it) becomes an amazing lever of personalization, satisfaction and, consequently, business,” she said.

3. Putting IT and data at the service of personalization
Bailly said any digital strategy to compete with OTAs must have the right muscle, which must be ultimately structured to provide better guest experiences. AccorHotels is using its Accor Customer Digital Card to put IT infrastructure, 130 terabytes of data and its expertise in terms of digital experience at the service of hotel staff, she added.

“Because ACDC aggregates and synthesizes all the customer information the group has, this General Data Protection Regulation-compliant tool and its ultra-fluid interface allows hotel staff to better know our customers and then better welcome, delight and surprise them,” she said. “Artificial intelligence has a key role to play in delivering such a hyper-personalized service. As we are moving from the interactive to the predictive era, AI can react to the search terms a guest enters online, push the most relevant offer regarding customer preferences and the history of their stays.”

Bailly said the platform’s algorithms can provide hoteliers with relevant messages and actions, such as wishing the guest a happy birthday and giving a golfer a list of nearby courses.

4. Turning loyalty programs into loyalty ecosystems
In the current era of consolidation, diversification and acceleration, Bailly said hospitality groups cannot merely have a loyalty program.

“Our 50-million-member loyalty program will always remain the key vehicle of the bond we have with our guests,” Bailly said, “(but) it is crucial to embed it within a limitless ecosystem of brands and touchpoints. … A wide ecosystem of brands must be supported by an (equally) wide ecosystem of touchpoints: website, mobile app, chatbot, digital marketing, call centers and last, but not least, hotels.”

5. Bringing simplicity, clarity and speed
Bailly said one major aim of all AccorHotels’ digital transformations and customer touchpoints is a simple one: to make customers’ lives easier.

“Simplicity, clarity and speed are the top priorities driving the revamping of our digital platforms,” she said. “For instance, making bold choices, we divided the speed index of our home page by four on mobile and by two on desktop. We also drastically reduced the number of displayed rates for a booking from 20 to a maximum of four based on customer’s most important drivers.”

6. Creating an agile culture
Bailly said that to enable true transformation, hotel employees need to work differently, anticipate tomorrow’s trends and react to them faster than competitors by accelerating the decision-making process.

“In other words, become agile,” Bailly said. “This includes reducing the number of layers in the organization but also introducing a culture where we constantly test and learn, collect real-time feedback and develop partnerships with all types of companies, from Asian tech giants to French startups.”

AccorHotels is striving to develop an innovative entrepreneurial mindset in which its staff are not afraid of failing, she added.