February 14, 2018
The Top Industry Changes for Hotels in 2018: Part One
While predictions are to be taken with a grain of salt, it’s fun to see how the experts think our industry will continue changing in 2018.
The influence of Airbnb will continue to be felt, such as growth in the demand for extended stays, according to industry journal StayNTouch.
Airbnb has disrupted the hotel industry, true, but in a more evolutionary, less revolutionary way, StayNTouch argues, saying it “has made an outside impact on how many of us think about travel – staying in a local neighbourhood, co-sharing, co-working, with more freedom and less formality.”
As a result, “many hotel concepts are staking claim to a middle ground between traditional services and the sharing economy, adapting their current hotel offering or creating new hotel concepts and extending their scope beyond their usual suburban locales,” they say.
This means pitching hotel stays more as lifestyle or community choices. “The phrase ‘a home away from home’ sounds clichéd, but if we can make you feel like you’re at home, that’s what matters.” Robin Chadha, CMO of citizenM, told StayNTouch.
Closely related to that, millennials, who greatly value experiences over material possessions, says SocialTables, are combining business with pleasure travel much more than customers in the past have: The industry journal reports that 55% of millennials extend business trips for leisure travel.
This means “meeting and event professionals are getting wise and expanding the ways they engage with millennial attendees at professional events,” SocialTables says, adding that millennials are “doubling down on more smaller meetings, planned and executed with shorter turnaround times which make it possible to take advantage of a destination’s cultural offerings.” Could your property position itself to take advantage of such trends?
Want help with steering your hotel or motel in 2018? Give us a call on 0800 277 225 or email us at sales@starlinegroup.co.nz and we'll organise for one of our business developement managers to visit you for a no expectations face-to-face meeting.
