First-party data is the data that any company or organization has collected directly from the audience or consumers. First-party data is essential as it directly conveys the collected information about your unique customer base or audience. It can include details catering to demographics, psychographics, social media impressions, subscription-based emails, customer feedback, survey data, or the customer’s purchase history.
Hotel marketing agencies have always believed that first-party data is crucial for ensuring hotel owners invest well in targeted communication. It is used for returning to the same target audience of guests through advertisements. It also helps in studying what a particular best-fit guest for a hotel would be. It even tells us how to reach them and make them our customers repeatedly.
There are other kinds of data, such as second-party data, which is the information that the company did not collect themself, and you are using it secondhand. Even third-party data is collected by a business without any direct link to your business or audience. This means that it has a much broader scope than the other two kinds of data: first-data and second-hand data.
In this blog, we explore what first-party data is, further applying it by establishing its importance for hotel owners and how they can maximize sales and reduce wastage through it.
Before leveraging the concept of first-party data to hotels, let us first understand what first-party data exactly is as certified by the hospitality marketing agency.
First-party data is the data that comes directly or straight from the audience or customers. Hence, it holds the most value for the organization. The best part is that it is cost-effective as it is direct and cheap, overcoming transactional losses. The other perk of collecting first-party data is that it is easy to collect, analyze, and manage while reapplying it to manage your audience better.
There are some problems in collecting first-party data as well. Although we know exactly where our audience comes from, there could be some data errors or problems that need to be overcome by further analysis. This comprehensive data should be used in an excellent way to scale valuable audiences, enhance engagement with the audience, and improve the return on investment across your marketing efforts.
First-party data differs from second and third-party data as well. Second-party data is the data that you use secondhand. That is, you using someone else’s first-party data. Hence, this second-party data comes from a source that is not your audience. Third-party data is the data you gain or take from outside sources that may not be the original collectors of the data. This is brought to you by data aggregators that themselves take it from various platforms and sites.
To collect first-party data, you should enable a pixel on your website. This tool will receive data about your audience or visitors' activity on the site that can come from various other sites. A hotel marketing agency helps you with the provision and analysis of data in a synchronized manner.
You can also take data from other databases that could be CRM systems, which are customer relationship management systems. Customers can also give you favorable information when they sign up for your email list, buy a product from your website, or decide to visit your hotel.
You may even get first-hand data from mobile applications. The activity of your organization on the mobile application will help you track the behavior of the customer. You can check the engagement rate by reviewing the open rates, bounce rates, and click rates of emails and SMS you send to your customer base.
Further, you may tie in with call centers where you can use data to understand the feedback of the customer who has used your product. This will add to your demographics, which will additionally facilitate you in comprehending the nature of your customers.
You must ensure you correctly collect, manage, and store the data in one base. Once you have added it and managed it in one place, you can finally analyze it and activate it to understand your customers holistically.
Like all other industries, hospitality marketing agency realizes the importance of first-party data. It is essential to know who our probable guest would be and how we can ensure that he or she is satisfied with his or her stay. It is undoubtedly the goal of hotels to make sure that they also revisit the hotel and refer it to other probable guests by word of mouth.
First-party data for hotel owners proves to be a boon in many ways –
Knowing the demographics and psychographics of your guests will help you better tailor personalized marketing efforts. Analyzing your first-party data from the above sources will help you know more about your guests. It also describes who your frequent guest is and how you can tailor marketing for him or her. This helps in driving them back to your hotel.
Tailored marketing or targeted marketing deals with a targeted approach applied to the specific individual with a higher probability of being converted. It also drives a higher conversion rate. This can be applied through targeted campaigns that drive more traffic but in a personalized way. When you understand the preferences and behaviors of your guests, you will better know where you need to invest in your marketing strategy.
To understand this, there is a simple way; for example, the demographics of your hotel reveal that your guests are generally young adults who prefer to visit your hotel due to some work purposes. With this information, you now know that you need to target these people through email campaigns because they are working professionals and will check their emails. You also need to ensure social media promotions, as young adults are pretty active on their social media. So, the hotel marketing agency that targets them well on social media will help you create a better marketing mix.
Hospitality marketing agency believes that first-party data for the hotel owners are generally the detailed profiles of the guests, which ensures that their room service orders, activities they did, their preferences, and the specific targeted needs, should be maintained like a log.
This will help you to personalize for the guests better. For example, if you know that your guest requests frequent gym services, you can curate a personalized package with discounts as per these gym activities. This will not only sell your service but also enhance or personalize the experience of the guest, which will make him or her frequently visit your hotel.
Personalization is the need of the hour. Who does not like his or her name etched on the product you buy? Personalization helps you create a picture of consuming or enjoying a luxury product that matters. Hence, this will ensure the number of repeat customers or guests in your hotel will increase. These efforts will create memorable experiences and help them bring other such guests to relive the moment as per their nostalgia.
The hotel marketing agency ensures that this first-party data is leveraged well for operational excellence. This helps the hotels in many ways, as follows –
You may be aware of the phenomenon that once you check your Uber prices and decide to close your app and get back after a while, you notice that the price of your cab has either gone very up or has changed by a few numbers. This falls under the dynamic pricing strategy. The company is well aware of when you really book a cab as per your frequent first-party data collection and then dynamically sets their price according to your booking pattern, peak period, or your preferences.
So is the case with hotels. The hotel marketing agency makes sure that this first-party data is used in leveraging dynamic pricing strategies. After we know the probable guests, we can analyze their booking pattern and which period they are booking the hotel most. For example, the booking period of hill stations’ hotels in summer would generally be higher because of normal human behavioral tendencies. We also review their preferences regarding what particular room they like, what particular view they like, or what particular meals they take.
This analysis can further be implemented to adjust the room rate per the demand. This ensures that revenue is maximized during the high-demand period or the peak period. It will also ensure that your bookings are stimulated during other slower periods, which will help you better cater to your guests through dynamic pricing strategies.
Each and everyone loves personalization a lot. So, if we analyze our guests' spending patterns and preferences, we can sell personalized opportunities. All the customers love these personalized opportunities, especially the repeat customers.
Upselling opportunities can include packages that are tailored for the specific guest or specific probable guest. The packages could include services that cater to the guests as they like. Similarly, discounts can be given on the services that they love; for example, they might love the spa, so you might curate a tailored package that includes the spa specifically that benefits both the customer and the hotel in general.
Hospitality marketing agencies make sure to align the amenities of the hotel with the individual interests of the guests. This will make them realize that you are going the extra mile to provide them with an experience they will never forget. This will increase the revenue per guest and their bounce rate, or say that the repeat rate will also increase.
Now, you know what resources are generally needed by your guest. For example, what are the popular room types and the amenities and services guests need through first-party data analysis? So, you can efficiently allocate these resources to cater to these demands, enhancing the overall guest experience and minimizing your inefficiencies, which could have popped up due to operational errors.
Efficient inventory management involves efficient allocation of resources but also prompts us as hotel managers to minimize wastage and optimize our supply chain to another level. The sources are the bigger problem of achieving the right balance between provision and wastage.
Hospitality marketing agency uses this data analysis to forecast whatever errors or lesser things can pop up, especially concerning perishable goods. For example, if you need some specific perishable goods, you can coordinate with the suppliers through your data-driven insight to make sure you have the optimal stock level, not less, not more. This will reduce your costs and enhance your supply chain efficiency while making the customers happy with what they want.
All these marketing efforts by hospitality marketing agencies are targeted at bringing back the customers; that is, we need to make sure that customer loyalty is built through our regular and consistent marketing efforts. As we all have understood, by identifying our guests' preferences, their patterns, and how they spend on particular amenities, we can change the game plan by personalizing rewards as per their spending behavior.
Such efforts will make sure we encourage repeat business. This ensures that loyal guests attain exclusive offers and discounts and choose the same hotel for their next stay. This will also lessen the cost of marketing on a particular individual who claims to be our loyal guest.
Further, building the loyalty of customers rests on utilizing their feedback for continuous improvement. Through various surveys, reviews, or short-term interviews, we can garner feedback from our guests. This will address their concern promptly and help us improve our services and ensure more guests in the future do not face the same issue.
As we saw, collecting and handling first-party data is quite simple and easy, there are also a few steps we need to be careful of while utilizing it. The very first concern is data privacy and security. We need to comply with data protection rules and regulations and ensure that all the data collected is through white methods.
Any brand works on trust, so trust should be built through transparent policies. We must ensure that ethical practices are followed and data is collected per our guests' wishes. Nothing should go against the mood or choice of our guests. Otherwise, our brand image goes down.
Hospitality marketing agency ensures that first-party data is regularly collected, is accessible, free from the risk of errors, and is of top-notch quality. We should also prevent bias in data and collect them from verified sources only. For example, the guest's experience should be recorded directly.
All this can be ensured by correctly maintaining or training staff. The staff should be educated about the importance of data quality and why and how it should be maintained and utilized. There should be a good culture that ensures they understand the importance of first-party data, which will encourage them to use it better All these efforts by the hospitality marketing agency will help lessen the challenges or minimize the issues and ensure good quality first-hand data collection.
Conclusion
Through this blog, we understood the meaning of first-party data and how it has emerged as a changing force for hotel owners. We understood the importance of first-party data as it directly links the preferences of the guest to the hotel owners' business.
First-party data ensures the guest experience is positive and changes how the hotel operates. The services through targeted marketing campaigns further enable personalization and customization, boosting customer satisfaction.
Minimizing wastage ensures efficient resources are allocated, and inventory is better managed. Informed decisions through these parameters will ensure the hotel's functioning as a whole is seamless, the customers are happy, and they keep coming back to the same hotel. This brings us back to the tag of customer loyalty, which seamless services and exclusivity should ensure.
We also went through the challenges faced while collecting first-party data. Hence, privacy concerns and data security issues should be better analyzed. This can be tackled through transparent policies and coping with data regulations and rules, regular staff training, and better investments in such tools.
This sums up our discussion on first-party data and how it can be applied to the hospitality business, leveraged explicitly by hotel owners. Hospitality marketing agency makes this complex process super easy, driving in business.
The journey with first-party data is still evolving, so we should keep track of the technological advancements to ensure we, as hotel owners are committed to excellence.
If you are a hotel owner whose booking rates are declining and the overall revenue is decreasing, you should definitely consult a quality hotel marketing agency. Grow My Bookings is one of them. They have expertise in increasing the leads of brands from the Food and Beverages industry as they have seasoned in-house experts who know the exact path to make your brand more visible. To date, they have worked with more than 100 hotels and their average distribution cost is 30% less as compared to other agencies in the market.