Technological advancement in general calls for more sociability and changeability in the activities of restaurants and the hotel industry. Travelers demand to upgrade, renovate, and improve their services and property. Incompatible with these demands, new trends have brightened the future growth and prospect for the restaurant and hotel industry. These new trends may be outlined below.
Advantages of Market and Technology
While the recession had discouraged the hotel industry from investing in capital expenditures for quite some time, globalization has contributed to its marketability. Consequently, the hotel industry takes it as the time opportune to bring about innovative changes in their properties that may include lobbies, restaurants, bars, gyms, parking areas, furniture, cupboards, television, and many more.
Advancement in information technology has facilitated the booking of hotels through the internet. With the present status of half the bookings made online, the trend will continue with moderate growth, leading to stabilization. The latest development in mobile technology has eased out hotel booking to the extent of ‘tips of the finger’. As a result, besides researching lodging and travel requirements, travelers tend to make their bookings of hotels along with preferences for rooms, through their mobile cell phones and tablets.
Balancing Between Demand and Supply
The recession has impacted the balance of supply and demand. Although the primary market in the hotel industry and restaurants have recovered, the secondary and tertiary markets show that they are yet to be recovered strongly from the adverse impact of the recession. The technique of revenue management, first introduced by the airline industry in 1970 plays an important role in the marketing efforts of the hotel industry. When there is poor demand, the price is lowered for increasing sales and it is increased with the increase in demand. The new trend is that through advanced market intelligence, the hotel industry is now in a position to avail updated prices of the arrivals expected in the future. Instead of matching with historical data, they match the same with the present market demands on a daily basis.
Expansion and Brand Establishment
Globalization has ushered into the hotel industry; the interplay of multi-national companies that tend to find saturation in their respective localities and choose to expand their activities to other geographical areas. They find new partners in new countries who prefer to establish popular brands in the hotel industry. Travelers prefer to avail of services of established brands in the hotel industry.
Therefore, hotels and restaurants make the fullest use of cost-effective distribution channels. Prominent brands in the hotel industry such as Intercontinental Hotel Group (IHG), Hyatt, Hilton, Marriott, and Star wood enjoy great commercial prospects around the world. Therefore, there is a trend of these groups expanding and covering hitherto uncovered areas for having a good share in the new development that is taking place in the hotel industry. The growth is likely to double during the next five years with the increase in profits and values. More than a fifth of Hotels and restaurants make use of social media such as Search Engine Results Pages (SERP).