How does your hotel gather data about guest preferences?

As would be expected, the Property Management System (PMS) is the number one data gathering point for guest information, with 64% of hotels surveyed by h2c GmbH having PMS systems that are fully integrated with the central guest profile, and a further 27% in total having some level of integration. This is followed by the IBE, with 38% of hotels enjoying fully integrated online booking solutions. 
 
After this, things start to deteriorate, with between 20% and 27% of hotels included in the study having no integration whatsoever for the remaining data gathering points, including business-critical and guest-facing systems such as the website, ORM and Point of Sale (POS) solutions. This is worrying. Dr Michael Toedt, CEO of dailypointTM, explains why.

“The 2023 h2c GmbH Global Study found that, on the whole, general levels of integration with the PMS (not just related to gathering guest preferences) are much improved from 2017 levels. This is illustrated in the slide. 

“However, there is still a great deal of work to be done to improve integrations, especially in the three systems highlighted above: the POS, Sales & Catering Module and services such as Spa and Golf. The lack of integration here is not only hindering the hotels’ ability to create and maintain the all-important central guest profile. It is also affecting their capacity to use the data gathered from the various apps within the IT stack to create valuable guest insights that enable the provision of highly personalized services, communications and experiences.” 
 
Indeed, there appears to be some confusion around how many hotels are actually achieving central guest profiles at all. In the 2023 study, 70% of hotels claimed that this is the case. But when h2c GmbH asked the same question of the hotels’ tech vendors, the figure dropped 13 percentage points to a disappointing 57%. 

Putting this discrepancy aside for now, we must ask ourselves: why is it seemingly so difficult for hotels to integrate all – not just some – of their systems with the PMS and / or central guest profile? And why, where integration does exist, is there is such a huge amount of discrepancy between the integration levels of individual systems? The results from the 2023 study offer some of the answers:

As we can see, limited system integration possibilities were cited as the biggest challenge for 73% of hotels when it comes to optimizing their digital operations, followed by cost at 60%. The fact that 46% also mentioned limited software functionalities, and a further 24% were hampered by the unavailability of systems and /or a lack of standard operating procedures (SOPs), shows that there are multiple issues within hotels’ existing tech stacks and IT processes. Says Dr Michael Toedt: “Whatever problems hotels are facing with optimizing and integrating their IT stacks must be overcome – and soon. Right now, the hotels are winning market share back from the OTAs, but this trend needs to continue if the sector is to continue its post-COVID recovery and successfully overcome the challenges of the cost of living crisis.