Hotels + Neuromarketing = Wonders

What is this about?

Whether for business or for pleasure, when you are in another city or a country, practically, you need a safe place to sleep, rest, shower, change and keep your stuff. For that, you need hotels.

They say the home is where the heart is. The heart, is about feeling. The home, is where the heart is, in my view, because the heart wants to be at home, because at home, the heart feels good, or rather, at home, the heart feels best. And that is because at home, you get everything the way you want it, the way it all best suits you and your innate nature. What if hotels could give you that? With Neuromarketing, they can.

It is about the experience

The key differentiation factor for hotels, is the experience taken away by each guest. That determines repeat business in the future. All textbooks in the trash, and you must forgive me for this taboo statement, but really, the best source of any revenue in many industries including Hospitality, is a customer coming back to you. And if a customer comes back to you, chances are, that same customer is likely to encourage others to come to you. And that all results from or is contingent upon, experience. And there is no better marketing for hotels, than experience itself, while the audience is captive at your disposal, on your premises.

At the Hotel Technology Conference 2016 Singapore, my opening Keynote revolved around the future of hotels being the evolution of experience. Experience, that hotels can provide to their guests in the future, with the help of new or emerging technologies that would make possible, that which has not been possible in the past.

In the past, hotels could not specifically identify how each individual feels, let alone experiences something. There hadn't been the means available to hotels, to determine definitively, the experience taken away by each guest.

Thank Technology for Neuromarketing!

With Neuromarketing made possible thanks to technology such as Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Electroencephalography, Biometrics, Facial Coding, Eye Tracking and Steady State Topography, Hoteliers can determine or derive how each guest is thinking at the unconscious level, subconscious level as well as even the conscious level, objectively, by means of what the physiology is telling the technology. Therein, it is possible to identify triggers of emotion or indicators of emotional states, to define, feelings.

Allow me here, to let you in on a secret, in case it isn't already known to you; our experience is determined by emotion or feelings more than purely intellectual or logical deduction, in general.

Hotels have the opportunity, a unique one, to to address emotion and feelings at a greater level than do businesses in other industries. And hotels can do this quite very directly.

The Little Things Matter

The colour of the flowers in the corner of the room to reflect or address a certain mood at the end of the day. The music we hear sitting in a lobby area. The scent in the lift. The right thing someone says to us when we are fatigued or upset. Believe it or not, it is not the great deal of an architectural wonder we see of the whole building or the shape of the swimming pool we see outside of a window, but a whole host of little things that affect our feelings and emotions, which then shape our overall experience. Here is another secret; a good experience is one where we the feeling is of happiness or contentment.

With truly personalised information available on each guest, Hoteliers can then execute the necessary measures to cater to individual mood and sentiment. And with the help of IoT and AI enabled smart systems, it isn't exactly a tall order as it may sound.

In the End

It really is about marrying the various different technologies, to attain optimum benefits from their synergies. The feasibility is already in existence. The next step, is the one of embracing.

Here is a cue. Let the technology gather the information or data you need. Then, automate the response. You manage the process of marketing yourself to the guests that come to you, by giving them an experience, that they need, truly and deeply. And your results? Wonders.

Harish Shah is Singapore's first local born Professional Futurist and a Management Strategy Consultant. He runs Stratserv Consultancy. His areas of consulting include Strategic Foresight, Systems Thinking and Organisational Future Proofing. He was the Opening Keynote Speaker at both the Hotel Management Summit Singapore 2015 and the Hotel Technology Conference 2016 Singapore.