Recently, in Ningbo, Zhejiang, the 2023 Hotel Accommodation and Catering Industry Digital Development Summit and the second round of demonstration of the group standard of "Digital Hotel Operation Service Specification" came to an end. The conference invited many industry leaders, experts and guests to give keynote speeches and roundtable dialogues to jointly promote the digital transformation of the hotel accommodation and catering industryHe also focused on the application and exploration of digitalization in the hotel accommodation and catering industry, shared experience and wisdom, and stimulated creativity and passion.
At the roundtable dialogue on "The Impact of Standardization on the Digitalization of the Hotel and Catering Industry", Liu Xuefeng, Chief Financial Officer of Wanda Hotels & Resorts, as the head of the Shared Finance Center, attended the roundtable dialogue and participated in the discussion of industrialization and digitalization as the benchmark and researched new solutions and methods.
Mr. Liu Xuefeng pointed out that the digitalization of the hotel industry not only needs to pay attention to the perspective and experience of guests, but also needs to realize digital management at the group level. By making intelligent equipment operate in a uniform manner, it reflects the value of digitalization in the operation of the hotel group, which is a key value and link in the digital transformation, and is also an important point for whether the hotel group can support and recognize.
Digitalization should start from standards, and only after establishing a certain standard foundation can it be expanded and optimized. Digitalization can leverage the advantages of digitalization itself, including reducing costs, increasing efficiency, and improving guest experience. Therefore, digital standardization is an important way to realize the human-centered role.
He also pointed out the "pitfalls" that need to be avoided in the process of hotel digitalization: At present, hotels use many smart devices, and every business is advertising these devices to help reduce costs and increase efficiency or solve the problem of insufficient staff. However, the actual effect is not obvious, and it is uncertain whether the investment will achieve the desired effect.
In addition, he mentioned one of the challenges facing the digitalization of hotels, namely the issue of collaboration. He believes that digitalization is not something that can be done completely independently by a company or a group, but requires the collaboration of all parties involved. In today's open ecosystem, the challenges of digitalization are enormous and cannot be accomplished by a single entity. Therefore, collaboration has become very important.
Wanda Hotels & Resorts began to plan for digitalization in 2018, and in 2019, through the new hotel brand of Wanda Mira Hotel, the digital application was implemented. Up to now, Wanda Mira Hotel has achieved initial digitalization at the following four levels.
Digitization of consumer touchpoints
The first level of digitalization embodied in Wanda Mira Hotel is the "digitalization of consumer touchpoints", which allows consumers to perceive the core value of the "intelligent" brand throughout the whole process from booking a hotel to leaving. In terms of specific performance, Wanda Meihua Hotel has realized intelligent services such as room selection and reservation, self-service check-in, self-service check-out, robot delivery, TV projection, and self-service invoicing on the Wanda Hotel's WeChat applet as early as 2019. It can be said that the intelligent consumer touchpoints that exist in the market now have been realized by Wanda Meihua Hotel, and in this process, with the transformation of consumer demand and the iteration of technology, the consumer experience touchpoints before and after staying are still being upgraded intelligently.
Among these upgrades, the hotel service robot MOMO is favored by consumers. The robot Momo has been working in many hotels, including Wanda Mira Hotel, which has not only improved the service efficiency of the hotel, but also incarnated as a walking brand ambassador, continuously enhancing consumers' memory of Wanda Miracle Hotel and making technology more warm.
Digitize operational processes
In the process of promoting digitalization, Wanda Mira Hotel shares the Wanyue Club membership system established by Wanda Hotels & Resorts and the Wanwei ** independently developed by the Group, which not only accumulates various consumer experience data, but also leverages this to precipitate target users into the digital assets of the enterprise to achieve long-term operation.
This is a strong positive for Wanda Mira Hotel to optimize its services and operations. In the traditional "brand-consumer" relationship, the brand has a basic understanding of the consumer group, but the awareness of the individual is insufficient, and it is unable to communicate effectively, and the information feedback is also lagging behind. Now, with the help of this system, Wanda Mira Hotel can enhance the value and brand loyalty of members through a membership mechanism that caters to individual needs, such as launching exclusive products and services for different member groups, and realizing a positive cycle of membership ecology.
The overall business is **
Process management is extremely trivial, especially for the hotel industry, which emphasizes a lot of detail, and the best way is to have all process behaviors exist in the form of data. As Liu Xuefeng, Chief Financial Officer of Wanda Hotels & Resorts, said, "For a hotel group to achieve digital development, any behavior related to the company's economic interests can be recorded at one time, and can be called up by all employees (all stakeholders) anytime, anywhere, and used efficiently." "This requires the realization of the overall business of the front and back office of the hotel.
Up to now, Wanda Mira Hotel has achieved the best service and established an agile service response system, such as the first booking CRS and marketing system, to provide consumers with high-quality services. At the same time, Wanda Meihua Hotel has also realized the organization with the help of Wanda Group's superior resources, and independently & jointly developed a Wanda financial management system that is highly compatible with its own business model and service process, including the settlement system, intelligent receiving system, and intelligent reconciliation and verification system**Joint procurement and supply system - Wantao.com;There is also a human resource management system, i.e. hotel EHR, so that all actions related to corporate profits are clearly recorded. With the help of these systems, which complement the business model of Wanda Meihua Hotel, the management efficiency has been effectively improved, and more importantly, the organizational structure has been simplified and the investment cost has been reduced.
Intelligent decision-making on data
No matter what kind of market behavior, the ultimate point is to the business results, but when the results come out, it is too late, so how to use the process management, so that all behaviors lead to better business results is particularly important.
For example, the various financial systems should not only make financial work more efficient, but more importantly, closely connect with the market & business to achieve efficient collaboration and avoid potential business risksSecond, through the innovation and optimization of the company, the hotel products have stronger investment attributes. According to reports, Wanda Hotel's intelligent receiving system has reduced labor costs by 50% in the practical application of Wanda Meihua Hotel. The human resource management system can depict a clear talent portrait through the data labels of the whole process management of personnel recruitment, and find the right candidates more accurately. At the same time, through the analysis of more refined consumer behavior path data, it can effectively drive the group's operational decision-making, and the service-level data can be directly directed to store management.
The hotel industry has embarked on the road of digital evolution, and hotel brands like Wanda Meihua are choosing the most suitable digital implementation method and path according to their current development status, keeping up with the pace of the times, taking a calm step, building digital assets, and precipitating the most core competitiveness.