Travel and hospitality brands have made significant strides in utilizing traveler preferences to create tailored experiences, but there is untapped commercial value in taking these efforts to the next level. As an industry, we must prioritize keeping traveler preferences at the forefront of our strategies.

In our latest survey, eight out of 10 travelers expressed a willingness to spend "significantly more" with hospitality brands that effectively catalog, safeguard and most importantly, make use of their personal travel preferences. In the same survey, seven in 10 travelers said they are “much more likely” to choose and remain loyal to the hotel brands they see as being preference-led.

Results are even more affirming for travelers needing a hotel two or three times per month — the real road warriors and heart of the travel industry. The strength of the commitment they are willing to make to the hotel brands they see as preference-led jumps by roughly eight times.

Clearly, there is still a very real commercial impact tied to how hotels are thinking about and using traveler preferences.

If the topic of customer preferences rings true but tired, we believe all signs point to the work just beginning. As the hotel industry faces headwinds that will make it simultaneously more important to capture and use traveler preferences, they will also make it more challenging.

Supply-chain disruption and staffing challenges brought about by the global pandemic have been causing nightmares for leaders, who are tasked with maintaining consistency in the fundamentals, let alone delivering them in a personalized and purposeful manner.

Meanwhile, it's no secret that we are all more expectant consumers. As travelers, we are more demanding, better informed and more discerning about where we spend our dollars. In today's landscape, the least we expect from any lodging experience is an adaptable response to our ever-evolving preferences. And rightfully so. If my preferred hybrid hospitality brand and the myriad unique options offered by short-term rentals can meet these expectations, shouldn't the hotel I'm staying at for this conference step up its game?

Despite the rapid evolution of preferences, travel brands have not kept pace in capturing, interpreting and leveraging insights to understand them. Instead, we continue to witness fragmented, stagnant, and one-dimensional approaches to research and customer analysis.

“We invested in research a few years ago so it’s relevant.”

“It’s just not a priority since our loyalty program has all of that information.”

“The strategy is already set. No real reason to learn something that would change it.”

We suspect it was lines of thinking like these that caused the 4,000+ CEOs in PwC’s annual survey to claim “staying on top of consumer expectations and preferences” as the No. 1 challenge to the profitability of their companies.

Top-performing brands understand that unlocking real opportunities means truly knowing their customers inside out, carving out a niche and engaging in an ongoing dialogue to validate, enhance and evolve their offerings and relationships to pave the way for sustainable, long-term growth.

To remain competitive and relevant, hospitality brands must consider real drivers versus perceived ones. They need a fresh perspective on loyalty and brand equity. The industry has made great progress in these arenas, but the next generation of engaging insights about traveler preferences sits at the intersection of four dimensions:

1. Rapid: Insights must be rapid, fresh and readily accessible, not sluggish, stagnant and incomplete. Travel brands should establish a customer analytics and insights ecosystem that focuses on asking carefully targeted questions, yielding valuable answers within a useful time frame.
   
2. Iterative: Modern insights projects cannot be siloed, one-and-done experiences. They must be constructed in rapid iterative phases, propelled by collaborative real-time refinement as each edition of results becomes available.
   
3. Ruthlessly actionable: Too many insights projects die as slide decks on someone’s cloud drive. Any insight analysis uncovers should immediately lead to a clear to-do list of next steps and ideas. Travel brands can do this by being ruthless about two things. First, don't use stock photos or ego answers; do not settle for unusable, generalized insights that tell you more about yourself than your travelers. Second, eliminate the fog of assumptions by substituting the darlings and biases with insights that empower you and your teams to take action, even if it means challenging long-held company traditions and beliefs.
   
4. Customers at the table: Travel brands need to change their internal culture around customer insights and invite customers to have a seat at the decision table, right next to budgets.

As traditional sources of brand value face increasing pressure, it’s more important than ever for our industry to develop a deep, near-real-time, dynamic understanding of what consumers want and need. We cannot afford to make assumptions that categorize travelers and travel influencers into homogenous groups with uniform needs. Consumer data red herrings are a dime a dozen, constantly fueling debates and excuses not to pursue ongoing analysis.

To effectively meet the ever-changing expectations of consumers, it is crucial that we invest in agile approaches. This requires us to foster a culture that is open to experimentation and willing to embrace what we learn. As leaders in the industry, it is our responsibility to recognize that truly personalized experiences can be crafted by evolving our methods of listening and responding to travelers.

Brian King (ISHC), is founder and CEO of The MODIV Group, an award-winning professional consulting and managed services firm.

The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Hotel News Now or CoStar Group and its affiliated companies. Bloggers published on this site are given the freedom to express views that may be controversial, but our goal is to provoke thought and constructive discussion within our reader community. Please feel free to contact an editor with any questions or concern.

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