The Rebooking Paradox: A Deep Dive into APAC’s Hospitality Problem With Tony Marshall

A current examine by Agilysys, a number one international supplier of hospitality software program options and providers, has revealed a shocking development within the APAC hospitality business: excessive visitor satisfaction doesn’t essentially translate into repeat enterprise.

Regardless of constructive experiences, many travellers aren’t returning to resorts they’ve loved. This “rebooking paradox” presents a big problem for hoteliers within the area. To delve deeper into this challenge, we spoke with Tony Marshall, VP Managing Director APAC at Agilysys.

In our unique interview, Marshall discusses the elements contributing to this paradox, the significance of personalisation, and the ever-growing position of know-how in driving visitor loyalty.

Readers can obtain the complete examine here.

Your examine highlights a “rebooking paradox” the place solely 37% of APAC travellers rebook regardless of 86% expressing excessive satisfaction. May you delve deeper into the important thing findings and the explanations for this discrepancy?

Marshall: The ‘rebooking paradox’ we recognized actually underscores the complexity of loyalty in hospitality. The disparity means that satisfaction alone isn’t sufficient to drive rebooking. The rise of OTAs and the convenience of comparability purchasing have considerably impacted visitor behaviour. Having a standard loyalty program that simply provide you with factors in all probability isn’t sufficient anymore.

To deal with this, hoteliers ought to prioritise personalised experiences and supply tangible worth inside their loyalty applications. By leveraging deep knowledge evaluation and a single visitor profile, resorts can acquire invaluable insights into visitor preferences and tailor their choices accordingly. As an example, spa workers can coordinate therapies with restaurant bookings, entrance desk brokers can counsel focused, personalised, upgrades, and restaurant managers can suggest particular wines based mostly on previous preferences.

This degree of granular personalisation, past simply understanding your title and what number of factors you’ve gotten gathered, is essential for constructing robust visitor relationships and fostering long-term loyalty.

To that finish, 73% of APAC travellers spotlight personalisation and loyalty applications as vital drivers of rebooking. Do you suppose there’s maybe a false impression within the business in regards to the depth of personalisation required?

Marshall: Sure, I consider there’s a typical false impression that primary personalisation, akin to understanding a visitor’s title and loyalty factors, is sufficient. Whereas this can be a good start line, it’s clear from our examine {that a} deeper degree of personalisation is important to really drive rebooking and loyalty.

A first-rate instance is Raffles. They excel at creating luxurious experiences, however their method to personalisation typically seems to depend on handbook efforts. By leveraging know-how, they may assist streamline their processes and elevate their visitor experiences to even larger heights.

It’s not simply luxurious manufacturers that may profit from superior personalisation. Midscale resorts also can differentiate themselves in a aggressive market by harnessing the ability of know-how to ship tailor-made experiences.

Do you suppose driving loyalty is more difficult for unbiased resorts than it maybe is for the bigger teams?

Marshall: Not likely, no. We’ve developed software program that may work with each. We work with the massive chains, Hilton and Marriott for instance, however our software program is versatile in order that we are able to work with smaller boutique properties too. It might work simply as properly for the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, with practically 2,000 rooms as it could for 50 room property. We will both deploy on premise, or within the cloud, so it’s rather a lot simpler for smaller, boutique and unbiased resorts to make use of this type of know-how that it ever has been earlier than.

“The secret’s to strike a steadiness between automation and human interplay and leverage know-how to reinforce, not change, the human contact”

Back to your examine, it was attention-grabbing to learn that 30% of APAC travellers recognize workers remembering prior conversations. As AI and automation change into extra prevalent, how can hoteliers steadiness probably decreasing human-to-guest interplay whereas sustaining rebooking charges? 

Marshall: Nicely, automation can streamline many repetitive duties, akin to evening audits, predictive ordering, and yield administration, however it’s important to take care of a robust human contact. By automating these duties, workers can deal with offering these memorable personalised experiences and constructing relationships with visitors.

AI can play a big position in enhancing personalisation. By analysing visitor knowledge, AI can predict preferences and tailor choices accordingly. This allows your group to supply extra related and useful upsells. I feel the bottom line is to strike a steadiness between automation and human interplay and leverage know-how to reinforce, not change, the human contact.

Whereas the examine could not have particular age demographics, traditionally, loyalty has been tougher amongst youthful generations who’re much less brand-loyal and extra price-driven. Is it cheap to anticipate you can obtain the identical ranges of loyalty from a youthful demographic?

Marshall: The youthful generations, they’re so value delicate. However additionally they need the posh contact, the personalisation, the experiences. They need all of it they usually need it yesterday.

However I feel you may nonetheless anticipate loyalty, you simply have to talk to the person. Personalisation is that particular person. It’s not about slicing and pasting each supply to everybody, it’s about understanding the person. That’s what actually helps to succeed in Gen Z and Millennials, to satisfy their expectations of prompt gratification. I feel it’s doable to get an additional 10% spend from a youthful visitor, should you’re hitting the best buttons with them. So, the best messaging and the best platforms too.

And if you get them on-property, that’s the place you may hit them with the personalisation that may actually impression the probabilities of them rebooking.

“All of it comes again to the know-how and that single visitor profile; understanding and actually deep-diving into the information that you’ve got, to really perceive your visitor”

The examine emphasises the significance of shifting from RevPAR to RevPAG to achieve a extra holistic view of visitor spending. How can hoteliers undertake this method and what advantages can they anticipate from specializing in income per obtainable visitor?

Marshall: Basic Supervisor’s have at all times been measured on RevPAR. By shifting to a RevPAG (Income Per Out there Visitor) method, even simply throughout golf and spa, you may develop the income per visitor by 10%, per go to. All of it comes again to the know-how and that single visitor profile; understanding and actually deep-diving into the information that you’ve got, to really perceive your visitor.

All groups, advertising, F&B, golf groups and many others. must work collaboratively to make use of the know-how and higher perceive upcoming visitor preferences and behaviours. You possibly can then begin to tailor and personalise your packages accordingly and drive that additional incremental income from a way more focused method.

In fact, you may phase by spend too. You possibly can even begin tailoring packages on your high-net-worth visitors, the highest tier of your loyalty programmes.

Lastly, what’s subsequent for Agilysys in 2025?

Marshall: Nicely, we’re going to be out and about at quite a lot of commerce reveals, holding our personal seminars and attempting to coach and assist the business higher perceive how they’ll use a RevPAG method with our merchandise to achieve a minimum of an additional 10% of income.

And when it comes to Agilysys, there’s quite a lot of issues taking place and much more to come back! We’ve been spending $40m a yr on our R&D, with a group of 1,500 staff, to proceed bettering our merchandise over the past 5 or 6 years. The distinction between us and a few of the others is that we’ve actually gone again and tweaked our product, via a consultative course of with hoteliers, in order that it’s not simply one other off-the-shelf product.

We’ve performed the rewrites to make sure that our merchandise are business main. Now it’s an ongoing course of to make sure we hold reinventing and hold innovating, with a deal with RevPAG and serving to hoteliers to extend their income.

About Agilysys
Agilysys solely delivers state-of-the-art software program options and providers that assist organizations obtain Excessive Return Hospitality™ by maximizing Return on Expertise (ROE) via interactions that make ‘private’ worthwhile. Prospects world wide use Agilysys Property Administration Methods (PMS), Level-of-Sale (POS) options and Stock and Procurement (I&P) programs to persistently delight visitors, retain workers and develop margins. Agilysys’ 100% hospitality buyer base consists of branded and unbiased resorts; multi-amenity resorts; casinos; property, lodge and resort administration firms; cruise strains; company eating suppliers; larger training campus eating suppliers; meals service administration firms; hospitals; life-style communities; senior dwelling amenities; stadiums; and theme parks. www.agilysys.com