Customer Focus or Intermediary Dependence?
If we were to ask them one by one, every hotel would say that its primary focus is the guest. However, we see things that call this assertion into question.
When asked “What is a Distribution Channel?” the answer would probably be unanimous: those through which I get my product to the guest. Rather than the means each guest chooses to reach the hotel of their choice.
When asked “Is it necessary to apply price parity?” Most hotels would very likely say that it is not only necessary, but essential, without stopping to consider that price parity benefits only distribution channels, and that rate parity stems from the incorrect view of distribution channels outlined in the previous paragraph. Is it, after all, illegal not to maintain price parity?
We cannot assume that all guests are alike; not all guests are driven by the same impulses, nor do they react in the same way to certain actions. We often tend to believe that the experiences our guests seek are the same, and we tend to generalise our offerings. This leads many hotels to make terrible mistakes not only in their Marketing and Communication, but also in their Sales activity and Contracting.
True guest focus lies in accepting that every guest is different, and in maintaining a clear commitment to understanding each guest’s real needs in order to evolve our product, its price and the way we deliver it to them, in the form of individual proposals for each of them, regardless of the distribution channel each one uses.
We cannot deceive ourselves into thinking that our hotel’s guest focus is, in reality, an orientation towards the distribution channel, or an orientation towards our product that leads us to enter the market with prices that bear no relation to what our potential guests are willing to pay for it.
Stop managing isolated systems. Start managing the whole hotel.
HotelGEX connects guests, operations, Revenue, F&B, Groups & Events and Management into one intelligent hotel context — so every decision starts with a clearer picture.
Clearly, not knowing our guest leads us to confuse the guest with the distribution channel itself. This happens far too often.
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