Summer vacation, winter holiday, or a break between peak seasons: with few exceptions (for example New Year's Eve), most hotels would be happy about more guests. This wish is especially directed at so-called "good guests", meaning guests who accept a reasonable room rate, do not misuse the breakfast buffet as their day's catering until the half-board dinner, and who use the paid wellness and beauty offering.
But the "guest Christkind" seems to ignore the many letters on hoteliers' windowsills - so far, no angel hair has been found in return. So it remains a wish.
"Thank God there are helpful people besides the Christkind!" some hoteliers might think. "At least you can rely on them." Some of these "good people" offer THE solution in the form of booking platforms - a kind of digital door-to-door sales crew. They help bring potential guests from all over the world, even to the remotest corner of an otherwise almost unknown place.
An exciting development. The basic prerequisite is that the hotel is listed on a successful platform such as HRS or Booking.com. Of course, for a not insignificant fee of 10-15% of the booking price. That is how quickly the "good" become the "bad" people.
Would you pay such fees to Visa, Mastercard or Amex? Their service is not less complex and is even riskier.
Please do not misunderstand me: I have nothing against booking platforms - no, really not. It can often make a lot of sense. But the situation is generally developing in a strange direction.
"Aha," you might think, "what does that have to do with service design?" Good question. I will get to that in a moment - first, my personal view on the booking-platform business.
How was it in the "good old days"? Hotels sold their rooms with price boards at the reception desk, via phone and fax, with artistically designed brochures, funny postcards, nice catalogs, busy travel agents, at travel fairs, by chance (the only hotel in town), or similar channels.
Then the internet came. Wow. Every accommodation business, from a guest room to a five-star luxury hotel, could in principle present itself in its own sales space at its best and convince many potential guests to use the offer. But only in principle. As with many breakthrough inventions, it took longer - much longer - until the masses decided to actually open that sales space.
In the best case, internet agencies helped with professional web designers for a suitable presence with a "digital price board" and "electronic inquiry option". In the suboptimal case, the grandchild, the friend or other well-meaning helpers took over.
The wheel spun faster and faster: direct booking with payment (online booking), interactive 360-degree room images, flash animations, atmospheric videos, social media presence, SEO, blogs, and so on. The challenges for hoteliers grew and keep growing.
Developments on the web have also strongly influenced guests. Never before has there been such global transparency for every potential guest with an internet connection (or a friend with one). Prices, experiences, reports, opinions, ratings, photos, videos - everything is visible to everyone.
Add the economic crisis, euro problems, climate change and more, and all of it influences the question of where to spend a vacation. It has become increasingly difficult to fill a house with "good" guests, or any guests at all.
In Austria, every third booking happens online, but the success of bookings via one's own website is limited. Two fifths of businesses generate less than 10% of bookings via their own website. Two fifths get between 11 and 30% of bookings via their hotel website. One fifth records more than 30% via its own website.
So booking platforms like HRS or Booking.com boom worldwide. The new generation of platforms such as Trivago aggregates data from 130 booking platforms. Even review platforms like Holidaycheck or Tripadvisor have long since stopped only collecting experiences; they also broker hotels, flights, cars and more.
Why does all this work so well? Because far too many hoteliers do not use their own potential and sometimes even present themselves worse than necessary. Keyword: much higher prices on the hotel's own website than on booking platforms.
I argue for forward integration by hoteliers. Do not let your business be completely taken out of your hands or dictated to you. Of course booking platforms are important and are part of web life.
Your hotel has to be found in the first place. But then, once a potential guest has come across your hotel, they want first-hand information. So they will google your hotel.
And now it is up to you. Where will the guest book? Use the opportunity and become your own authentic, sustainable experience booking platform for guests near and far.
Take an example from the international airline industry. Step by step, airlines reduced agency commissions for pure ticket sellers, today almost to zero, and sold more and more tickets via their own call centers and the internet.
Why? Because it was possible, and because it gives them a direct, more personal and self-controlled access to their customers. They decide every step of the booking and stage the customer experience before, during and after the service "flight".
From brand promise to advertising, booking, loyalty program, check-in, business lounge (sometimes even the terminal), the flight, arrival, and follow-up services: that is service design. And that, dear hoteliers, you could do as well.
If you really want to, it is possible. It does not have to happen alone; maybe you partner up with like-minded people.
In America, some hoteliers joined forces and founded their own platform: roomkey.com. In Switzerland, a different path is taken: myswitzerland.com is the official website of Switzerland Tourism and enables booking all accommodation providers in the country.
Empathy as a central challenge for tourism (see the article on pressetext.com).
The future of tourism lies in the ability to see with the guest's eyes and hear with their ears.
Viennese leisure researcher Peter Zellmann from the Institute for Tourism and Leisure Research (www.freizeitforschung.at) calls this empathy the ability to deal with people in the right way and create value.
