Guest Post: Travel and hospitality luxuriates in data

Guest Post: Travel and hospitality luxuriates in data

Matthew Lubeck, general manager of Amperity, shares why now is the time to put it to work

Wyndham Hotels & Resorts boosted loyalty memberships and increased its direct bookings recently with the help of Amperity.

Customer data is one of the most valuable assets for travel and hospitality brands. It’s essential for identifying high-value customers and personalising experiences across channels. But despite collecting data from reservation systems, mobile apps, third-party booking engines, and more, many brands struggle to make use of it. The data is often fragmented across systems, making it hard to generate actionable insights or optimise marketing efforts. Wyndham Hotels and Resorts operates more than 9,100 hotels across 95 countries. Its portfolio of 25 brands includes Ramada, Days Inn, Super 8 and Travelodge. Having developed a generous loyalty programme and advanced online booking system, the organisation gathers huge volumes of customer data. However, attempts to match and merge thousands of customer profiles - scattered across a range of systems - were laborious and largely ineffective.

To grow its loyalty program and increase direct bookings, Wyndham needed a unified, accurate view of its customers - a single source of truth.

Wyndham was able to consolidate data from every source and build unified customer profiles. The platform it leveraged for this helped surface real-time metrics across loyalty members, mobile app users, online and offline interactions, and reservation data - giving the business a clear, up-to-date view of performance. 

With these capabilities, Wyndham could answer critical business questions faster and act on those answers with more precision. For instance, the team identified frequent guests ideal for a new business traveller card and launched hyper-local campaigns to promote new hotel openings to high-value customers.

Insights that previously took weeks to uncover now take minutes. Wyndham can send more relevant, personalised offers across email and digital media - helping turn repeat guests into loyal Wyndham Rewards members. The company can now create more nuanced audience segments, such as identifying non-loyalty guests who are likely to convert.

The results saw over £1.75 million in incremental annual revenue from newly enrolled loyalty members, a 35% reduction in media costs, 60% increase in conversion rates.

Michael Shiwdin, group vice president, guest engagement, loyalty and strategic partnerships of Wyndham, said: “We're able to become more sophisticated in not only who we reach out to with a particular campaign, but how, where and when we engage them. 

"It’s a win for our guests - who will ultimately see content and offers that are more compelling and engaging to them - and a win for our franchisees, who stand to benefit from that engagement.”

As customer expectations continue to evolve, it’s more important than ever for travel and hospitality brands to build a data foundation they can trust. Even with data flowing in from dozens of directions, the right AI-powered customer data cloud can help brands take control and unlock the value hiding in plain sight.