Travelers want digital services- Can you offer that as a hotel or destination or are you out?

Have you always wondered why everyone is talking about digitalization and online bookings??

Quite simply because our guests are all digital.

Here are just a few examples:

89% of all travelers dream and plan their trip online.

No matter if it's weekend trips, city tours, business trips, etc.?

Between 57% and 66% of travelers book directly on the Internet and do not want to make phone calls, write eMails or fill out inquiry forms, and often do not want to wait for answers that often never come.

It does not matter in which age group the travelers are:

70% among those under 30

66% among 30-49 year olds

56% among the 50-65 year olds

25% still among the over 70-year-olds

They have all gone digital in the last 10 years. They use smartphones, tablets, laptops and PCs, and often 2-3 devices at the same time. Depending on the application and location. The pandemic has again significantly strengthened this digitalization among guests.

Guests today demand that destinations and their hosts offer digital services and accompany them digitally when dreaming, planning, booking & paying and sharing their experiences, e.g., through reviews.

Unfortunately, the hospitality industry has slept through this digitalization for a whole host of reasons. The result is that your guests are now customers of booking, expedia and other online travel agent (OTA) platforms because they have simply given travelers what they want.

You as a host are out of the running and now you are paying expensive booking fees to these platforms or even dependent on them.?

This is between 60% and 80% of your contribution margin (GOP). But you also lose customer sovereignty. And at the same time you lose visibility as the platforms advertise against you with your name and location e.g. on Google.

This is economically unsustainable and ultimately hurts your business and the destination, because not enough revenue from these bookings reaches you and the destination anymore.

That is why progressive destinations provide a destination portal as well as their hosts with the unique and eight times award-winning applications of the 5 stages of success.?

This gives hosts and the destination everything they need to be perfectly positioned digitally. A one-stop-shop package, so to speak.

Turn guests back into your guests, get more bookings on your own website and via your region's destination portal.

Together, we restore the economic sustainability of your company and the entire destination.

After all, economic sustainability is the foundation of all other aspects of sustainability, be they ecological, cultural or social.?

More precisely, without the recovery of economic sustainability of suppliers and destinations, no sustainable tourism development will be?possible.

Write me your opinion or if you are interested in more content on the topic a comment.