2024 hospitality benchmark report
Database health – North America
Database health – North America
In this chapter you will find
In this chapter you will find
Introduction
Introduction
Are you off to the races, or stalled at the starting line?
A car is only as fast as its engine, and your hospitality marketing is only as powerful as the database that fuels it.
As a hotelier, you know you have a lot of guest data — whether it’s booking history in your PMS, browsing behavior from your website, or restaurant reservations — but without a well-oiled Customer Data Platform, your marketing engine will be clogged with faulty contact information, bounced emails, and generic, un-personalized communications.
With a finely-tuned database, hoteliers can build rich guest profiles, deploy advanced segmentation, and monitor campaign performance, earning more direct revenue and increasing profits along the way.
Just as a car engine needs a smooth flow of fuel and proper combustion to perform optimally, your database requires accurate, organized data to fuel your marketing campaigns. We’ll walk you through how to assess the health of your guest database, benchmark your performance with your peers, and understand the value of a robust database.
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North America database health benchmarks
North America database health benchmarks
A healthy database is a growing database.
Growing your database with valuable guest information is especially important now, since 2024 is the year that the tracking cookie crumbles. Hoteliers and other businesses will no longer be able to purchase large amounts of third-party data obtained from third-party cookies. Instead, hospitality businesses need to build their own databases with first-party and zero-party data that their guests freely and consensually give them.
The good thing about this change is that using first-party data is effective. A study by Sojern found that 81% of hoteliers saw an increase in revenue when they used first-party data strategies. Guests also benefited, with 57% of those surveyed reporting higher satisfaction levels.
Learn more about how to adapt to a cookieless world with our resource, “The complete guide to first-party data for hoteliers.”
Database growth
We saw our customers experience significant database growth in 2023, as hoteliers in North America increased their guest records by an average of 29%, higher than any other region.
This growth is a promising sign that hoteliers are prioritizing guest data and embracing digital innovation with data-focused marketing tactics.
We calculated this database growth metric using a “same-store sales” approach, which means we only analyzed the records of hoteliers for which Revinate has two full years of historical data.
The makeup of your database: benchmarks for complete guest profiles and how to value them
The makeup of your database: benchmarks for complete guest profiles and how to value them
Growing your database is just the beginning — you also need to assess the health of your data and invest in it.
Quick links
Database records with valid email addresses and phone numbers – overview
On average, 72% of a North American hotel’s database records will have a valid email address that is not masked by an OTA. This is an indicator of email health, an essential measure of the usefulness of the profiles in your database.
The average for phone numbers included in database records is lower at 55%. Clearly, people need to see the value in sharing their phone number, and need a clear reason to do so — whether that is added convenience or an incentive like a discount.
Capturing guest phone numbers is essential for interacting with them on both messaging and voice channels, and we’ll explore how hoteliers are leveraging both to drive revenue and delight guests in their respective sections of this report.
As you grow your database, track whether you are bringing in high-quality records that are complete with guest contact information to ensure your marketing efforts actually reach them.
Value of records with email addresses and phone numbers – overview
Every additional complete guest record has potential for future, repeat bookings. We calculated the incremental value of a guest database record with a valid email address by comparing the revenue from all records with an email in 2023 to the revenue from records without one. The result? NAM Hoteliers can expect to earn $14.06 more per contact.
As you grow your database and improve its email health, you’re increasing the value of your data and the revenue you can expect to bring in.
The incremental value of capturing a phone number in NAM, meanwhile, is $13.31. These numbers add up fast, so make sure you are collecting guest email addresses and phone numbers at every possible opportunity. The value of a phone number, however, isn’t just measured in revenue from upsells or future bookings alone.
Phone numbers are key for communicating with your guests on both the messaging channel and the voice channel. Using these channels can improve the guest experience better by considering their preferences. Research shows that customers are very open to texting with brands, but are wary of being bombarded with too many marketing messages.
The right tools for messaging and voice services can also make staff more efficient, saving you both time and money.
Identity resolution: benchmarks for a healthy database
Identity resolution: benchmarks for a healthy database
The elephant in the room when it comes to email addresses and hotel databases? OTA-masked emails. OTAs are, of course, great for bringing in new guests — but the OTA relationship can sour if they get in the way of hoteliers driving loyalty and repeat business from their guests.
Masking the guest’s email address, of course, is the #1 way OTAs try to maintain control of the guest relationship.
Quick links
Database records with an OTA-masked email address
The scope of this problem is significant. In North America, 11% of raw profiles in a hotel database contain an OTA-masked email. That means up to 11% of your guests could be unavailable for retargeting, costing you potential loyal guests and direct revenue from re-targeting. Contacts with masked emails can also increase the cost of re-acquiring guests and lower profit margins.
But hoteliers can regain control of the guest experience and direct booking revenue — with the right technology. Specifically, identity resolution powered by a CDP.
Identity resolution is tech that merges and dedupes guest data into clean, rich profiles — complete with every interaction they’ve had with your hotel, from email engagement to stay history to reviews. Revinate’s identity resolution capability, called Advanced Profile Synthesis, uses a sophisticated AI/ML algorithm trained specifically on hospitality data.
Merged profiles in a database
So what happens when you apply the power of identity resolution to all of those OTA-masked emails? They get matched up with other identity indicators and consolidated into unique rich guest profiles. In North America, 9.4% of rich guest profiles have been merged together from multiple identifiers, like email addresses.
Revinate has merged nearly three million profiles of guests who booked through OTAs with their real email address. Over 17% of these merged profiles had two or more OTA emails associated with them. That means you have repeat guests who are loyal to your hotel, but not the booking channel. All they need is a good reason to book direct.
