Rajan and Speaker A discuss why hotels need mobile-friendly websites. They explain how syncing offline and online customer experiences can improve business outcomes, and why a mobile strategy matters for hotel bookings.
And everybody's in the holiday mood, hotels and all of that. But this holiday mood is going to soon be over and they're going to get back into business and they're going to come up with their digital strategies and all of that. What's the one thing that you think is going to happen in 2015? Wait a minute, I'm going to make it tougher for you. It has to be common for hotels across the world and it has to be something which is going to come true. I want you to look into the future and give us a reading.
Well, there are a couple of things that are going to happen and that's how the market is evolving. What is common is first, if you look at it from the digital point of view is of course, these guys right here. The adoption of it is growing. The Internet usage on mobile phones is now more than desktops in multiple countries and it's common to almost every country that that's the trajectory. So if you are thinking about building online experiences, that is where I would start.
So can we let go of the desktop website and just do this? Have you reached that stage yet?
Not yet, no, not yet. Because there is still a lot of the market is also using desktop. But what is really happening right now is people are moving in and out of these experiences first. What will happen is you may start on the mobile phone, then you will move on to your desktop and then you may go back to the mob while you're continuing to shop or the.
Tablet or the phablet. So the experience has to be. It has to be a wow experience on every tablet, every device now. So it becomes simpler to do all this or more difficult for hotels.
It's definitely not simple because you are thinking about multiple experience points. So what you have to think about is first, what are you trying to achieve? What is the type of experience you want to deliver? Then think about the context of the device. So what I mean by that is mobile device and experiences. You cannot build a super complex website on it. You have to simplify. You want to, yes, inspire them by showing them great photos, but at the same time make it simple enough so that they can actually make a reservation as well. And if you're not pairing that experience on the device and you just translate the desktop experience to a mobile experience, that is not an ideal.
That's it. That's what most people are doing. I've seen a lot of people doing some great websites, but end of the day that's what they're doing. It's just A M hotel website. It's just a mobile version of your same website. It's not a mobile experience. Thank you for bringing that up.
Yeah. And when you think about timelines, honestly, the timeline is that you should already be there. So it's not that it's going to slow down or it will happen next month or next six months. You should already be there. And if you're not already there, make sure that's what you're working towards and that's how you will be able to excel in this digital environment. And you will be there on every touch point that the customer expects you to be there and wants to interact and actually wants to transact on that experience. So once you're there, you will have something which is a very positive experience that you're delivering and it will be great for you. As you're a business, you'll be able to capture more customers and it gets more customers because they'll be like, yeah, I want to interact with this business on this platform and I'm able to, and I'm able to make the reservation and I don't need to go to a different device, but if I did, the experience is equally great.
Yeah, I know you're 100% correct, but I just feel, I seriously feel bad when I see maybe just a handful of hotels who've actually understood, like you said, you started by saying what kind. You must understand what kind of experience you want to give online. They don't even know. I mean, a lot of hotels don't even know the kind of experience they want to give online. The experiences that they're giving offline are wonderful. But that's what. So you know what, if I was to make a prediction for 2015, I would be very sure, I would say, and I've been harping over this for the last one year and we've done some trainings with hotels as well. We would say get your online and your offline together. You have a great offline experience. Most of you guess most of the hotels that we work with and we've seen across the world have great experiences offline. Sync it with your online, have your every department in your hotel understand what you're doing on social and on digital. If it's only the senior management and one digital marketing guy and the agency which is working in a silo, I'm afraid this is not going to go very far. Your customers are going to read through and see through the loops that your hotel has in terms of experiences and it's not going to be a great 2015. If you want to make an awesome 2015, do what Rajan said. Understand it has to be an experience for a guest on these devices. And please also understand that your offline and your online has to be 100% in sync. I hope you know these predictions, I mean, these predictions, these are already on their way, right? So they're going to be part of strategies. And I hope these are adopted as soon as possible and we see people making more hotels, making more revenues than ever. Thank you for watching.
