A hotel industry expert discusses how UAE and Middle East hotels can survive downturns by treating guests exceptionally well. He emphasizes technology, personalization, and loyalty programs as key strategies to retain customers when demand drops.
Hi, welcome to another show with Askavi Arya, live from Dubai. Beautiful city, great hotels. There are hotels opening every single day. Although I've also heard that demand might be going down because countries like Egypt, Russia, Russia, demand has gone down. Countries like Egypt have taken in the demand. So a lot of things are changing in this region for hotels. There are a lot of hotels coming in. Demand is cyclical. The real uprise of tourists coming from all over the world doesn't seem to be happening anymore. So it's a more challenging time for uae. More challenging time for hotels to focus on their revenue management, focus on their digital marketing, how to make that whole mix work together. The one key thing, hotels are already built, but this is one place in the world, this whole UAE Middle east region. But I find it so exciting because hotels are still being built, new hotels are coming up, but I seldom find hotels which are tech friendly. People are spending hundreds of billions to make a hotel, but they're still not having tech friendly hotels. The future of hotels we all know is going to be personalization and loyalty. So if it's going to be a personalized experience, every time you walk into a hotel, should the person not already know you by name, they're saying that the shoe stores of 2019 are going to be such that you walk into a shoe store, they'll know you by name, they'll know that you bought a 11 size 11 runner when you came two years back and they didn't have a black and now they have a black. And shoe stores are coming to that level of personalization. Whereas the hotel industry needs personalization the most. So when it comes to technology and personalization, it has to be ground up. Adopting technology once the hotel is gone live might be a completely different ball game. You have to have a tech friendly hotel which is going to offer personalization to your customers. From the word go, a guy comes today's experience. Like you come to a hotel, you get off an airline which asks you your name, asks you to fill four forms. Then you see a plug card, guys asking you for your name again. You walk into the hotel again, they want your details, why the hotel should already know who you are and what you need. That is going to be the difference between a personalized experience translating into loyalty and me coming to your hotel again and again as a direct customer versus coming from a third party channel where you're paying a lot of money versus you losing out customers and always fighting to get new business. So personalization and technology being the new two mantras while talking talking while I'm here in Dubai for a few days and I see the whole UAE bustling with hotels coming, I had to make this point through a video and send it out to all of you guys. Thank you very much for watching and hope to stay connected.
