Increasing the guest experience

When it comes to the opportunity for customer engagement, the travel industry already has a head-start – because who doesn’t get excited at the prospect of going on holiday? But while travel consumers might naturally be more inclined to engage, this also means there is greater opportunity for brands to get it wrong. Delays and disruptions might mar a travel experience, but how a brand deals with it can make or break a customer relationship.

Travel Brands need to do the basics as below:

  1. Consumers prioritise pragmatic needs, such as honesty, authenticity, value, and good service. Brands that do not meet these expectations (or view them as standard) run the risk of losing trust.
  2. Customer-centric brands create deeper relationships. Offering something of value (on top of the expected) can be the key to generating longer-term loyalty.
  3. Transparency is key when it comes to data-sharing. Personalisation can help to improve the customer experience, so it is important to communicate this value-exchange clearly with consumers.
  4. In-the-moment technology can take brands to the next level. VR, AR, and chat-bots can enhance and improve the travel journey, engaging consumers when it matters most.

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Games Customers Play

Have you noticed how our guests have become smarter over the years and are now able to wangle better deals from you? As much as the world gets smaller, travel has become much less complex and affordable and today’s guests can be geniuses at negotiating much better deals than earlier. Besides, a larger supply of hotel inventory as well as destinations has tilted the scales in the favour of the guest.

Following are some of the most popular tactics that used by Guests

  • Shortage of funds/ limited budget/ more than estimate
  • Complaining from the time of check in /event
  • Never appreciating the positives during his stay
  • “I am too busy now, meet me later”
  • “Your competitor is offering me better rates than you”
  • Praises the competition
  • “What is your best offer?”
  • “I’ll book with you only if you quote me a discounted rate”
  • Referring documents to make out as if he is comparing your quote with competitors, but not specifying any comparison
  • Asks you to give him a minute and keeps on doing other things for a long time
  • Does not pay proper attention – talks to others around – Leaves in the middle for a while
  • Raises his voice on the phone with the person he is talking to in front of you
  • Showing off that he will be favouring you if he commits in your favour
  • Asks for a complimentary stay to check quality (in case of a large residential banquet query)
  • Makes out that he is very pressed for time

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I was used as a catspaw!

Children’s author Aesop in 1919 relates a fable of the monkey, the cat and the chestnuts.

Once upon a time a Cat and a Monkey lived as pets in the same house. They were great friends and were constantly in all sorts of mischief together. What they seemed to think of more than anything else was to get something to eat, and it did not matter much to them how they got it.

One day they were sitting by the fire, watching some chestnuts roasting on the hearth. How to get them was the question.

“I would gladly get them,” said the cunning Monkey, “but you are much more skillful at such things than I am. Pull them out and I’ll divide them between us.”

Pussy stretched out her paw very carefully, pushed aside some of the cinders, and drew back her paw very quickly. Then she tried it again, this time pulling a chestnut half out of the fire. A third time and she drew out the chestnut. This performance she went through several times, each time singeing her paw severely. As fast as she pulled the chestnuts out of the fire, the Monkey ate them up.

Now the master came in, and away scampered the rascals, Mistress Cat with a burnt paw and no chestnuts.

Hence the phrase – ‘he used me as a catspaw.’

How often have we been used as a catspaw in our jobs?

As a General Manager, I was given to sign termination letters and file cases against various employees. Sometimes I may not have agreed with the harsh step taken, but job insecurity out of fear, may frankly have led me to comply… not my proudest moments for sure!

We all have our values, our code of ethics, our ways of looking at life… yet moments come when we find ourselves being used as a catspaw. You may relate to situations like these:

  • Your colleague convinces you against your better wishes to go along with his/her plans or ideas…
  • Your subordinate entices you into signing off his/her leave form with flimsy excuses and you do so in order to gain his/her approval…
  • Your boss gets you to do his/her work using flattery to keep you motivated…
  • Your boss takes your idea and implements it without giving you due credit…
  • People are nice to you only because they need something off you and not necessarily because they care for you…

All of the above may happen, but at a cost to you. Remember how pussy’s catspaw was singed while pulling out chestnuts from the fire for the monkey?

So keep a watch and be aware of such situations!

How many time have you been used as a catspaw recently?

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Disruptive technology half a century ago ~ Sony vs. RCA

There is a class of technological changes where almost always the new entrant – with far fewer resources and with no track record – topple existing industry giants. This special class of technological changes, paradoxically, does not have to be sophisticated or even radical.

Take transistor television as an example. When RCA first discovered transistor technology, the company was already the market leader in colour televisions produced with vacuum tubes. The company naturally saw little use for transistors beyond a mere technological curiosity and decided to license it to a little-known Japanese firm called Sony.

Sony, of course, could not build a TV out of transistors, but it did manage to produce the first transistor radio. The sound quality was awful, but the radio was affordable for teenagers, who were delighted by the freedom to listen to rock music away from the complaints of their parents. Transistor radios took off. Still, the profit margins were so low that RCA had no reason to invest further. RCA was busy making serious money and investing every R&D dollar on improving vacuum tube colour TV.

Sony, meanwhile, was looking for the next big thing. It launched a portable, low-end, black and white TV targeting low-income individuals at a rock bottom price. Called the “Tummy Television,” it was tiny enough to perch on one’s belly — an antithesis of RCA’s centrepiece that graced middle-class living rooms. Why would RCA invest in transistors to make an inferior television for a less attractive market? It did not.

The real trouble began when Sony finally pushed the transistor’s performance to allow it to produce colour TVs based entirely on the new technology. Overnight, RCA found itself trying to catch up on a technology that it had ignored for the past three decades, which it had ironically pioneered and licensed out. This type of technology – inferior at first but immensely useful later – was disruptive, a term that has since been immortalized in the business lexicon of executives, consultants, and academics.

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2016 India Biz Travel

India is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, and the business travel spend that originates there is expected to reach $33 billion in 2016. India is the 10th largest global business travel market, and GBTA expects the country to climb into the sixth spot by 2019. In July, GBTA had estimated that business travel spend growth from the second quarter of 2015 to the second quarter of 2016 would come in at 10.2 percent. Now that those numbers are final, GBTA has found that business travel spend grew 10.9 percent during that period.

GBTA expects domestic business travel spend, which it estimates represented 91.4 percent of India’s total business travel spending in 2016, to increase 12 percent to $30.2 billion in 2016 and to reach $33.8 billion in 2017.

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