InterContinental Hotels Group has introduced a dashboard for corporate
enterprise clients that offers monthly and yearly spending data
breakdowns by brand, city, state and region, as well as booking channel,
allowing users to see whether travellers are booking through global
distribution systems, central reservations offices, directly through IHG
hotels, its website or app or other methods.
Called the Customer
Insights Portal, the tool was introduced in November to a select group
of clients, according to IHG. "I view it as a real positive step for any
large brand to step up to the plate and put a dashboard together," one
corporate travel manager who had access to the pilot told BTN,
requesting anonymity. "I think this is quite helpful. It gives top
cities, so I know where our spend is. There's also average daily rate,
room nights, stays and the nights per stay. It's a pivot and will set
the bar for other hotels to engage and do the same thing."
IHG
created the dashboard based on enterprise customer feedback and findings
from other corporate tools it has introduced, such as its Business Edge
product for small and midsize companies.
"The tool gives travel
managers actionable data about their company spend with IHG," VP of
American sales Betty Wilson told BTN. For example, "when [travel
managers meet] with sales managers, we want to turn that into more
productive time. [Buyers] said it would help if they could look at data
points ahead of time so they could come to business review meetings with
thoughts and ideas on how to drive actions rather than spending 10 or
sometimes 30 minutes looking at charts and data. They wanted to do that
in advance."
Additional data offered in the dashboard include a
loyalty program breakdown, green stays, customer satisfaction scores for
a client's travelers and internally produced content. The loyalty
section includes percentage of stays by members, new members, spend,
status breakdown, room nights and more.
Satisfaction scores are
based on surveys travelers complete after their stays. "How a travel
manager might use that is if they are trying to drive share movement
into a brand," Wilson said. "A travel manager might see a score
increasing for a hotel that they want to move more market share into and
may internally highlight that for travellers, saying, 'This is a hotel
on the move based on what other travellers from [our] company are saying
about it.' "
For now, the dashboard includes 2018 and 2019 data,
and will add 2020 information as it becomes available. Some pilot users
have asked for prior years or the ability to see reports by week, which
Wilson said IHG will consider, along with other suggestions users have.
"This is brand-new, and before we enhance a lot more, we want to
consider all the feedback from users who have been on it," Wilson said.
"We might think something is important, but if the customer doesn't,
we've focused on the wrong thing. We want to listen to customer feedback
and focus on what they care about."
The travel manager with
access to the dashboard would use the Customer Insights Portal to work
more on loyalty as well as "on closing some of those gaps that we see so
clearly from this reporting instead of having to wait and ask for it
and make it into a project." The ADR feature is appreciated, "as that is
something we are always looking at and concerned about."
The
travel manager also said that a connection to IHG's
request-for-proposals tools would be nice. "Those are separate from what
you'll find in the portal," Wilson said, adding that IHG sees RFPs as
"a big innovation opportunity for the industry and not just IHG, and we
want to lead the charge on that." She offered no further details on
possible changes for RFP products.
The portal is available to any
corporate travel customer who has a managed relationship with IHG from a
global sales perspective. "They will get a notification with their
credentials," Wilson said. "If they don't see it, they can call on their
global sales rep or me to help them."