MANCHESTER, England — Trends to watch out for in the hospitality space include multipurpose guests and subscription models, according to a panel of industry leaders.
Speaking at the Annual Hotel Conference (AHC) taking place at the Manchester Central Convention Complex on 4 October, the group initially discussed booking trends in a discussion moderated by Andrew Sangster, editorial director of Hotel Analyst.
Justin Reid, director of media, destinations, hotels and growth at Tripadvisor, agreed with previously identified pent-up demand, saying that “pent-up demand is there in spades”.
“People are not going to sacrifice their holidays… they really want to travel and experience life again,” he added.
“[Consumers] are desperate to make up for lost travel,” agreed co-panellist Simon Calder, travel correspondent at The Independent; while Hubert Viriot, CEO of tech-driven hotel brand Yotel, agreed that while traditionally travel would have been considered a ‘non-essential cost’, it is now “an essential expenditure”.
“If your product is well-positioned and targets a certain type of customer, 2023 could be a very good year,” he said.
However, Reid said that in the last three months, customers looking at domestic accommodation had dipped below 2020 levels (“they want to go overseas”), with signals indicating that international interest in the UK is expected to exceed 2019 levels.
The weakness of sterling against the dollar is having a particularly big impact in terms of both lookers and bookers, he said, and “that is really where the financial recovery is hopefully going to come”.
Despite this, attendees were reminded to be cautious and that, faced with the escalating cost of living, customers “will pause a little bit before pressing that button,” said Reid.
Calder was optimistic, although he added that he didn’t think we have yet seen “the full horror of Brexit” and warned of the “damage” to inbound tourism by not allowing EU tourists into the UK with ID cards.
Viriot, meanwhile, said the pandemic “accelerated the trends we’re already working on”. He said the group “never really believed” in business travel as a concept and pointed out that people are increasingly travelling longer and adding leisure activities to their business trips, describing them instead as “multipurpose” travellers.
He also said that on-property technology such as robots was an “obvious solution” to drive productivity – during the pandemic the group discovered hotels could break even at 20% occupancy because operating costs, in particular labour, were much lower. Although, he added that technology was not “just to cut costs, more importantly it’s to try and improve the guest experience”.
In the US, he said Yotel’s properties were very technology-driven, but that this has been a slower development at its European properties.
Earlier this year, Viriot spoke to Hospitality Insights and said that Yotel’s “key differentiator” was that it can integrate new technology more rapidly than older brands but that it has to make the experience better for guests – and be reliable.
Saurabh Chawla, CEO of Selina Prop Co, the real estate entity of hotel brand Selina, spoke earlier today of how the group acquired Remote Year in 2020, a remote working online travel agent, which has seen package sales increase from almost 1,000 to half a million in 2021.
“The shift has been exponential,” he said.
The lifestyle and experiential hospitality brand which targets millennial and Gen Z travellers is expecting to go public before the end of this year.
The group also sees opportunity in subscription-based models and Chawla said Selina’s remote working package had been successful. “That’s the future,” he concluded.