NASHVILLE, Tennessee — Hyatt Hotels Corp.'s stated mission is to take care of people so they can be their best selves, and Vice President of Data and Analytics Raymond Boyle said the most exciting thing about working for the company is translating data in service of that goal.
Speaking during the 2023 Hotel Data Conference earlier this month, Boyle said the company's "data strategy is really just a mirror of that purpose."
"We talk about advancing care through data-driven decisions and automation," he said.
Boyle said the two topics intersect in numerous ways, particularly when it comes to cultivating talent, personalizing experience and refining operations. He said that all starts with looking for the data and realizing how abundant it is.
"Data is everywhere," Boyle said. "It's everyone. It's every system. It's all the applications."
Tapping into the power of data to build a true "culture of data" comes down to recognizing it's "a team game," he said.
Leaders have to think about "how do you make sure that data flows horizontally across the organization so [the data isn't] siloed or bucketed so people can't use it," he said.
Boyle said understanding data is obviously a key part of building that culture and making sure it's used in decision-making, so Hyatt builds data fluency into its leadership training programs.
"We want to make sure that there's a really broad and consistent understanding of what performance means within the company in a holistic way," he said.
That grows by identifying the "controllable metrics" within an organization then defining how those metrics relate to one another.
"What's the relationship between clean rooms and profit?" Boyle said. "What's the relationship between the loyalty success rate and the cost of getting people into rooms?"
He said identifying how to define success is one of the most important behavioral changes when transforming a business to be more data-driven.
"When I think about changes in culture, the behaviors would be when people get together and say 'We've got to get something done,' they start with an outcome then they understand how they're going to measure that outcome," Boyle said.
He said the combination of that sort of attitude, and an entrepreneurial attitude built around positive change, is helping to accelerate growth for businesses such as Hyatt.
"Data culture is leading to leaders thinking about leveraging algorithms to drive value in new ways," he said.