The Changing Landscape of Customer Experience in the Hospitality Industry
In the last couple of decades or so, customer service has changed significantly. Overall customer shopping experience has undergone great change due to the advent of the digital technology. With time passing by and emergence of advanced technology many organisations have integrated the same within the system to enhance the customer service but it has posed increased challenged for the consumers to make their purchase decision. Even though the advancement of technology is still in progress all across the world it is likely to reach the Asian countries late as per the trend. Thus, it could be said that the biggest market in the world that India is likely to undergo significant changes even in the coming years (Kandampully, Zhang & Bilgihan, 2015 p, 76). Speaking in line with the above statement it is true that customer preferences change pretty fast nowadays in India because of the wide market and gamut of options available especially in the hospitality industry and this clearly makes the consumers take their time to decide what to choose and what not to. The present paper is a critical analysis based on the above statement taking the hospitality industry into account in the Indian market.
It is a known fact that Indian market is one of the biggest markets all across the world for almost every product. Earlier the Indian consumers knew perfectly well what to do if they required hotel services, restaurant or any other hospitality services but with time passing by and significant development in the market there are many options available to the consumers which not only raise the competition but also the confusion among the consumers in this country. Creating an excellent customer experience has always been the priority of the hospitality industry but with increased options and opportunities smaller organisations have taken over the market which has changed the concept of customer experience (Atwal & Williams, 2017 p, 12).
With growing education among the consumers they analyse customer experience in different way now. For instance, with the rise of budget hotels customers no more compare their services with luxury hotels rather analyse the services of the budget hotels with similar services. This means consumers have become more educated in terms of analysing services which is the good part but the bad part of it is customer experience has become very precise in the Hospitality industry in India which is not expected from one of the most important industries in this country. The hospitality industry has transformed to a complete package for the consumers which has created the visible difference among organisations. Around 15% of the total hospitality customers sustain on budget hotels and look for standard restaurants and other hospitality services (Sharma, 2016 p, 89). Organisations like Oyo Rooms and concepts like Airbnb has revolutionised the way customers think about experience. This is not a traditional hospitality market anymore where late room service would mean poor service quality but here the friendliness and approach of the staffs are looked at in a bigger manner. Smaller hotels have lack of training and exposure that has created significant problem which ultimately affects customer experience which is why in Hospitality sector in India customer experience has been compromised number of times. The direct and expected contribution of the Hospitality sector in India is to increase which clearly shows the need of proper understanding of the market which would help to provide better customer experience (Neuhofer, Buhalis & Ladkin, 2015 p, 32).
India’s Hospitality Industry: Challenges and Opportunities for Enhanced Customer Experience
As it could be seen that the above figure has a clear idea about the increase in India’s hospitality sector which is an extremely important aspect because if the customer experience remains in the same horizon it would definitely impact the upward movement of the statistics. Lack of knowledge, poor customer service, and lack of proper facilities especially in the smaller hospitality companies largely affect the customer experience. In this case it is extremely important to note that with the increasing competition customer management has become an important aspect for every hospitality organisation. Therefore, not being able to manage customers properly means loss of consumers and it would lead to constant deterioration of customer experience (Bowie et al., 2016 p, 43).
One of the key facets of the modern day hospitality industry in India is the rise of digital technology. It can be said that the government has been able to disseminate the internet technology throughout the country which has led to evolution of a new trend which is “ask the internet”. Like all other countries, Indian consumers have started referring to the internet for almost anything and everything. With the advent of technology almost 60% of the population has started Smartphones which not only helped them to realise the ease of access to the new information but they have also started to use the concept of smart purchase that is doing online purchase from the different online medium (Kiron et al., 2016 p, 51).
Online development and customer interaction with the internet is the new trend in the hospitality industry in India because it is not only allowing consumers to get to know more and more but it is also helping them to choose the right product for them. This is where the new marketing professionals should pick up information from. The new age marketing professionals have the access to the best possible solution to gather data which would help them to analyse the trend and possibilities in the hospitality industry which would not only help organisations to create right product but it will also help to develop strong marketing strategy which would help to get closer to the consumers. Customer experience in the modern day market is considered as a key business strategy for organisations which means they realise the importance of allowing the consumers to decide for them but via the online platform (Chathoth et al., 2016 p, 63).
The Role of Digital Technologies in Enhancing Customer Experience
The online platform has brought ease of access to the consumers which is an extremely effective choice given to them because it has not only helped them to extract information but it has also helped them to decide the right thing and this is where there is a significant opportunity to waiting for the hospitality industry to cash in on. It is true that organisations so far have not been able to provide consumers with anything new or exciting thus; it becomes extremely important for them to create an excellent customer experience so that it becomes easier for the consumers to decide which brand to go to. The myriad information available for the consumers in the different social media sites, in respective websites of the organisations and travel blogs and food blogs help organisations to get their desired information which is an extremely effective way to choose products and services (Law et al., 2015 p, 71). Hence, it is becoming increasingly important for the marketing professionals to check the analytics and big data mediums to analyse customer demand.
Initially before internet it was tough for the organisations to analyse customer demands, wants and preferences but it has become easier with the availability of significant information present in the internet. It is important for the marketing professionals to realise that they cannot own customer experience and can only strive to improve it through the given information. It is also important to forget the traditional marketing strategies to build a new one which would help to refer to the online system and develop a cohesive strategy or else customer experience cannot be improved. Companies have to understand that digital development is the next generation thing thus, it will not have an expiry date in the coming few years so, they should focus on improving online customer relationship management strategy and introduce a interactive online strategy for the Indian consumers which would help to provide better customer experience and also enhance opportunities for increased traffic (Jayaram, Manrai & Manrai, 2015 p, 78).
Digital transformation has been a major focus for most of the hospitality organisations in the whole world which clearly shows its importance. Consumers are more interested in making their purchases through the online medium hence, in order to provide the optimum customer experience hospitality companies should emphasise on constantly developing its online operations. The main focus of online operations is to stay in touch with the consumers directly which would help to emphasise more customer preferences and accordingly plan the products and services in the Indian market. Organisations like Trivago, Make My Trip, Oyo Rooms et cetera have done the same in a very interesting manner to drive traffic. Even though above organisations are merely mediators connecting businesses with clients but this is one of the key trends in the Indian market which the consumers have embraced pretty successfully clearly showing the impact of digital technology and laying the platform for the new age marketing professionals (Kandampully, Zhang & Jaakkola, 2018 p, 89).
Conclusion
From the present analysis it could be said that the hospitality industry in India have undergone significant change because the consumers in the country have shown higher propensity to use the digital technology to choose their products and services especially in the context of hospitality. It has been seen that the hospitality industry has experienced changing trends in the market and thus, customer experience can only be changed with effective integration of digital technology in the market.
References
Atwal, G., & Williams, A. (2017). Luxury brand marketing–the experience is everything!. In Advances in luxury brand management (pp. 43-57). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Bowie, D., Buttle, F., Brookes, M., & Mariussen, A. (2016). Hospitality marketing. Routledge.
Chathoth, P. K., Ungson, G. R., Harrington, R. J., & Chan, E. S. (2016). Co-creation and higher order customer engagement in hospitality and tourism services: A critical review. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 28(2), 222-245.
Jayaram, D., Manrai, A. K., & Manrai, L. A. (2015). Effective use of marketing technology in Eastern Europe: Web analytics, social media, customer analytics, digital campaigns and mobile applications. Journal of Economics, Finance and Administrative Science, 20(39), 118-132.
Kandampully, J., Zhang, T., & Bilgihan, A. (2015). Customer loyalty: a review and future directions with a special focus on the hospitality industry. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 27(3), 379-414.
Kandampully, J., Zhang, T., & Jaakkola, E. (2018). Customer experience management in hospitality: A literature synthesis, new understanding and research agenda. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 30(1), 21-56.
Kiron, D., Kane, G. C., Palmer, D., Phillips, A. N., & Buckley, N. (2016). Aligning the organization for its digital future. MIT Sloan Management Review, 58(1).
Law, R., Leung, R., Lo, A., Leung, D., & Fong, L. H. N. (2015). Distribution channel in hospitality and tourism: Revisiting disintermediation from the perspectives of hotels and travel agencies. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 27(3), 431-452.
Neuhofer, B., Buhalis, D., & Ladkin, A. (2015). Smart technologies for personalized experiences: a case study in the hospitality domain. Electronic Markets, 25(3), 243-254.
Sharma, D. (2016). Enhancing customer experience using technological innovations: A study of the Indian hotel industry. Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes, 8(4), 469-480.
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