Trends In Hospitality

Trends in the Hospitality Industry

Nowadays trends are everywhere. You can find them in every industry and they play a huge role. The retro trend in clothing, the SUV trend in the car industry, but nowhere else are trends more important than in the hospitality industry. But what exactly is a trend? A trend describes usually the time measurable course of a development into a certain quantitative and/or qualitative direction. In economics, trends are changes of the behavior of the society. In marketing research this describes the change and development of the consumerism and consumption behavior.

In old days it was okay for a hotel to have only rooms and a restaurant. Today a hotel has to have a recreation centre, a beauty farm, a shopping arcade etc. The guests want it, even if they just stay for one night. Hotel managers have to deal with a lot of wishes and expectations of the guests, so they have to have a look of the hospitality industry from two sides - from the industry specific and from the guest specific. So where are the trends heading to? I will start with the industry specific trends.

1. Changing customer profile

Health Care and medical treatments help elder people to life a longer and more active life.

Horst W. Opaschowski predicts that, because of the demographic development, the market "new seniors" will double. So hotels will start to create special menus, treatments and activities for those guests.

Also the business travellers have changed. Less business travellers are more often less travelling.

This graphic shows that the length of the travel is raised 10 %. But if we have a look at the amount of national business trips within the United States, they will have grown back:

It is no surprise that the international amount of business travellers is growing. We will have a global market and therefore people travelling for the company, have to go to foreign countries more often. The hotels are preparing themselfes for that. Staff which speaks all kinds of languages, the guests can have food from their home country and they can even watch their favotite TV channels. The amount of international trips raised about 2%.

A lot of business travellers want to stay in well known hotels like Mariott or Hilton. Only 16% want to stay in individual hotels. So for the industry it is important to have a very good reputation. Of course the people try to get the best price for a room and most hotels have company rates which are below the normal rack rate. Also important for a booking is the location of the hotel and the bonus programs. For 26% of the guests Airline milage is important. So the hotels have to work with airline companies and they want special conditons as well.

Because of the fast going world today the guests have no time to wait long for the check-in or check-out procedures. They expect Express service. Also 68% want complimentary transportation to the airport. The Opryland Hotel Convention Center in Nashville, Tennessee, developed a system to avoid long check-in or check-out times. You can check-in or out via credit card. The system checks the data and the credit range and the guest is checked-in in seconds.

2. Shifting consumption pattern

American business travellers take more and more their kids on the trips. In 1995 out of the 193.2 million business trips 7% were with children. In 1997 the trips decreased to 192.8 million trips, but the amount of kids raised to 12%. And in 1999 out of the 196 million trips 31.6 were with children, which is 16%.

3. Growing Segmentation

The hospitality industry realizes that the market is segmentating and the relevant target groups have to be advertised with concentrated marketing. For example the W Hotels, which belong to Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, offer the young and modern business traveller a special surrounding. The hotels offer modern design, a cd collection, DVDs, 27" TV with internet connection, modern phones (two-line, wireless, dataport, conference calling, voicemail etc), a 24/7 business service and at least 15% of the rooms are so called W-home-office-rooms equipped with video or dvd, fax, printer, scanner, copier etc.

Another good example are the Design Hotels International, which work together with artists. These artists are designing the rooms. Their target group are the designorientated guests.

4. Increasing influence of the internet

The development of the internet, which is now more than 30 years old, is rapidly. According to a study from comScore the amount of people who have access to the internet is 694 million. This is a huge target group and the hotel industry realized it. Every hotel has its own website where you can get information about the rooms, menus and activities the hotel offers. And also you can book a room online. Most of the time you will find special offers which are only available online and are much cheaper than if you book by phone.

The amount of people booking a room online doubled in the last few years and is today the most popular way to get a room. A lot of hotels are enlisted in so called GDS providers. GDS is standing for Global Distribution Systems. The most popular ones are Amadeus, Galileo,