Hospitality Business Research

Hospitality Business Research The key to well-informed management decisions

Hospitality Research

Are you interested in concept development and service design, scenario studies, market outlooks, guest satisfaction research, recruitment and selection and other specific hospitality related issues? The Hospitality Research Centre of Hotelschool The Hague focuses on answering the main challenges facing the industry, supporting you with innovative research that focuses on the latest and future trends in hospitality.

“The growth of international travel and consumers’ access to information have revolutionised the hotel industry. Guest experiences will more and more determine the value of a business. Companies and professionals need to be on top of trends and developments.”

Dirk Bakker - Head of Colliers International EMEA

Hotelschool The Hague is consistently ranked as one of the top Hotel Schools in the world and has been ‘At the heart of Hospitality’ since 1929. The university-wide Hospitality Research Centre was founded in 2010. As experts in Hospitality Research, it is our mission to support hospitality organisations and professionals with outstanding and innovative research. The importance of hospitality is of course not limited to hotel companies; the value of hospitable service and “human touch” in delivering unique and memorable experiences, are embraced by other industries as well. The prestige and quality of our research is attested by publications in renowned journals and books.

Well-informed Management Decisions In today’s continuously evolving business environment, we need research to thoroughly understand the effects of strategic decisions and the impact of external and internal drivers and constraints. Our research provides professional knowledge and insights that support both entities and professionals to make better informed management decisions to lead their organisations to a successful future.

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What are customers really looking for on a functional, emotional and social level?

How will trends in other industries, in society or in technology affect your business?

What are the best strategic options to address these issues?

Which business model changes and/or innovation might be needed to create a

sustainable competitive advantage?

Strategic Pricing and Revenue Management Our Revenue Management research aims to contribute to customer-oriented, creative and value-driven pricing strategies. How do consumers of hospitality services perceive and process price information, and how do they utilise price cues to form price judgments and make choices between alternative service offerings? Consumer psychology, economics and pricing management are perspectives that allow us to analyse user preferences and willingness-to-pay. We thus help companies to better understand market demand and price elasticity, and to improve their forecasting accuracy.

Practical Tools and Application The tools developed by the Hospitality Research Centre have brought Revenue Management within reach of smaller and independent hotels. Our researchers have looked into questions such as: • Improving Pricing Strategies: How to bundle and discount room night offerings?

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Setting Rates: How much is your hotel guest willing to pay for a room night?

Room Forecasting: How can SME hotels forecast the demand for rooms using relatively simple tools and readily available data?

Improving Forecasting Accuracy: How can humans and machines best work together?

Channel Management: What is the added value of a high OTA ranking?

Dynamic Pricing in other Sectors While adapting prices to demand is common practice in air travel and hotels, other industries have just recently started to introduce Dynamic Pricing. Some theme parks now use off-peak prices, to reduce congestion and raise attendance at slower times. Our Research Centre can support you in developing your pricing strategy.

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Identifying and coaching Hospitality Talent Hospitality is the defining feature of our business. In Hospitality an empathetic, customer-centred approach is key to attracting and keeping customers. We work with both the hospitality industry and industries where hospitality can make a difference, such as Retail, Finance and Health Care, to show the importance of hospitality in today’s business. Our Research Group on ‘Hospitality Personality and Behaviour’ studies what “hospitality” means, what it is that makes a business or a professional “hospitable” and how these aspects can be fostered and managed.

Hospitality DNA Is hospitality a technique that can be trained, or is it rather a personality trait that should be considered in recruitment? How do we find those employees, ‘hospitable people’, with heart for the guest, who are able to create the wow-factor? The Research Centre has developed a tool kit that allows recruiters to identify “hospitality talents” and that can be used by hospitality (and other) businesses to select and motivate those people

The Welcoming City Our Research Group on ‘City Hospitality’ applies the concept of hospitality to cities and destinations in order to create enduring engagement of visitors, residents and organisations. The four main elements of City Hospitality are: • The welcoming product of the city • The welcoming atmosphere in the city • The welcoming behaviour of people in the city • The resulting experiences of visitors, residents, and/or organisations, achieved by combining these first three elements.

A Hospitable City increases the residents’ quality of life and the business climate for organisations and employees.

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Experience Design Redesigning hospitality concepts from the perspective of guests’ wants and needs has led to substantial business innovations in recent years. As today’s consumers are more experienced, better informed and more demanding than ever, it is crucial to understand what exactly it is they are looking for, rather than relying on intuition or imitation of what the competitors do. How can you personalise your service, in what type of amenities do you invest and which additional features or services add value to your guests?

Experience Design requires solid market intelligence, experimental testing of new ideas and creative thinking to design innovations that can successful take your organisation into the future.

Personalisation We live in a hyper personalised world. Regardless of the product, it can be customised to personal needs and preferences. Research shows that customised products lead to higher consumer value perceptions and greater willingness to pay. Such customisation practices are now entering the service industry. Our research shows that in a hospitality setting, the same applies regardless of the customisation method. As such, our findings suggest a clever experience design providing consumers the possibility to co-create their experience (by choosing amongst different options) can lead to an incremental revenue increase.

“Developing a new concept is more than just having a great idea – it requires insight in consumer motivations and a thorough understanding of current and future trends. We need business intelligence to innovate.”

Hans Meyer, Co-Founder & Managing Director at Zoku

Guest Satisfaction and Guest Delight Research suggests that Customer Satisfaction is not sufficient to retain clients. Only the delighted customer will become loyal to your business and attract new customers through a positive word-of-mouth. Our Research Centre studies how ‘Delight’ differs from ‘Satisfaction’, what causes ‘Delight’ and how Experience Design can lead to delighted customers.

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Scenario Studies In a turbulent world changes coming from outside may determine the fate of your business. The Online Travel Agents are a relatively recent phenomenon, but they have profoundly changed the hospitality industry. Social unrest and insecurity may see the collapse of tourism in one destination, and at the same time cause an unexpected boom in visitor numbers somewhere else.

Our researchers cannot predict the future, but they can help businesses and organisations in the development of strategies to cope with future uncertainties.

Anticipating Uncertainties and Opportunities Scenario studies typically consider different alternative developments in the future, with the goal of developing resilient and future-proof strategies.

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What will automation mean for your industry? Where will we see workforce shortages in the future, and how will these affect the hospitality and tourism industries?

What will be the impact of ageing populations? And how disruptive will business innovations as networked hospitality platforms —Airbnb and similar initiatives— become?

Sustainability Environmental, social and cultural sustainability are key elements in future-proof business models. What steps should you take to reduce energy consumption and CO2 footprint? How can tourism development benefit local communities? How can city destinations absorb increasing visitor numbers?

Take the next Step!

Please visit our Hotelschool The Hague blog: http://blog.hotelschool.nl and join our online community to find out more about the latest Hospitality trends, insights, and research projects.

Please contact us for Hospitality Research The Hospitality Research Centre supports hospitality businesses and other organisations were hospitality makes a difference with: • Market outlooks • Concept development and service design • Future scenarios to support strategy development • Guest satisfaction and guest experience research • Staff recruitment and selection • Toolboxes for small and medium enterprises • Any specific research questions you may have in the field of hospitality.

Please contact our Hospitality Research Centre and find out how we can help you to make well-informed management decisions.

“In today’s hospitality industry, understanding and anticipating consumer needs is of competitive advantage.

The strength of Hotelschool The Hague lies in the role of hospitality and human interaction in an evolving business context.

Our research team makes the latest insights and research findings available for professionals and students.

We seek to offer innovative solutions for the key emerging challenges of the hospitality industry.”

Jeroen Oskam, Director Hospitality Research

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Contact Contact our Hospitality Research Centre, either by email or by calling us at the number below: Email: Telephone: Website: Facebook: Instagram: Blog:

research@hotelschool.nl +31 88 028 18 00 www.hotelschool.nl/research facebook.com/HotelschoolTH instagram.com/hotelschoolthehague blog.hotelschool.nl

Address: Hotelschool The Hague The Hague Campus Brusselselaan 2 2587 AH The Hague The Netherlands

Hotelschool The Hague Amsterdam Campus Jan Evertsenstraat 171 1057 BW Amsterdam The Netherlands

Š Copyright 2015 Hotelschool The Hague, The Netherlands, all rights reserved.