SAN FRANCISCO—The digitization of the hospitality industry has been underway for decades, but the past two years have accelerated tech adoption in hotels across the globe. Duetto surveyed hoteliers worldwide to gauge the hotel industry’s sentiment and priorities regarding revenue management, revenue tools, and technology innovations. The overwhelming response was that automation and integration are seen as key to future success by the majority of those working in a hotel revenue function. In fact, 77.6 percent of respondents expect to increase their hotel tech investment in the next three years.
“Tech adoption in hotels has been increasingly accelerating as hotels seek greater efficiencies in both front and back of the house,” said David Woolenberg, CEO, Duetto. “It’s promising to see that more industry leaders are focusing on tech adoption, tech upgrades, and creating an integrated tech stack.”
Most respondents (67.6 percent) currently use a revenue management system (RMS). Of the remaining 32.4 percent, 50 percent sought to invest in revenue technology in 2022, with a further 23.4 percent looking to invest in the next two years.
When asked to identify the most important trends in revenue management for 2022, technology came out on top, with 58.6 percent of respondents citing integrated systems as most important, followed by 54.8 percent naming automation as critical.
The top five responses were mixed between technology trends, revenue trends, and guest behavior:
- Integrated systems (58.6 percent)
- Automation (54.8 percent)
- TRevPAR (36.7 percent)
- Digital guest journey (31.4 percent)
- Ancillary revenue (29 percent)
On a scale of one through five, with five being “extremely important,” 56.2 percent said automated processes in revenue management would be “extremely important” in 2022, and 59.5 percent said this had increased from 2021.
Approximately 55.2 percent of revenue managers surveyed also reported they’ve increased their focus on strategic revenue management as automation has helped reduce manual tasks such as data entry, reporting, and other time-consuming efforts.
