Tourism and Hotel sector is widely expanding across the world and India is no exception. This industry offers huge job prospects as well.
In less than 10 years, the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) expects India to become the fourth-largest travel and tourism economy behind China, the U.S., and Germany.
India was ranked 40th among the 136 economies across the world in 2017 Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index (TTCI) released by the World Economic Forum (WEF). In this edition of index, India has jumped 12 places from earlier 52nd position in 2015. The number of Foreign Tourist Arrivals (FTAs) in 2017 were 10.2 million as compared to FTAs of 8.8 million in 2016. Based on India Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF) report on Tourism and Hospitality in India, foreign tourist arrivals into the country is forecast to increase at a CAGR (Compound annual growth rate) of 7.1 per cent during 2005–25.
Although this industry promises a huge growth potential, there are still challenges from a technology perspective that need to be overcome to tap the huge potential. Some of the pain points that Hospitality Industry is currently facing is as follows:
Hospitality Industry
- Lack of a centralized lead/enquiry database
- Speed of communication with Leads
- Efficient task allocation and Staff Management
Process for gathering and maintaining leads/enquiry database (guests) are arduous and highly time consuming. To be more competitive in this Digital Era, a smart and ease of use mobile application has to come into play for collecting leads/ prospects and lead nurturing.
Similarly connecting with prospects as soon as they post an enquiry in your Hotel website can enhance your customer conversion rate. So, an instant greeting email or SMS can be a very good option for a Hotelier to quickly get in touch with the customer. Many times it might happen that you allocate a task and forget to follow up or the task is not finished on time. Your guests check-in to find a dirty room or your staff misses an important request from a guest. The communication channel is not set-up properly. So, an on time follow reminder tool can help out overcoming these scenarios.
With regard to the above pain points, an effective software with features to do team management and customer follow ups can help in assigning tasks to staff with proper timelines to get it done and increase Customer Conversion and Retention Rate.
On the whole, to increase the number of customers in Hospitality industry, timely follow up of leads by way of periodic calls, WhatsApp, SMS OR emails is mandatory. Hence a well-organized lead management tool which ensures sales discipline and shortens the conversion cycle for doing repeated follow-ups is the need of the hour.
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