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good morning everyone and welcome uh to this webinar which is expectations for 2022 by hsmi india i am sonia and i am spearheading hsn ai's initiatives in india today we're going to be focusing on leveraging digital for sales revenue and marketing and in respect of everyone's time i am going to dive straight into the agenda give me a minute right so we we are not confined just to the revenue team we're going to be talking about how digital is influencing distribution sales as well as marketing and then if time permits then we will talk a little bit more on the ancillary revenues uh you know and of course there is time for q and a with the panelists so let me introduce you to our speakers as well uh sachin kosh is the business development manager for the indian subcontinent from ota insight he comes with a good 15 years of experience in travel bridge bhushan needs no introduction with over 20 years of experience across the disciplines of business as well as planning functions he is currently vice president revenue and distribution for the indian hotels company limited then we have sema roy who is the area managing director for south asia middle east and africa for preferred hotels she has a varied experience across various hotel brands and will be talking to us about the sales aspect of digital amy clark comes with a solid background in marketing functions she is currently spearheading marketing for emea region for winter hotels and results so welcome to the speakers i am also putting here a link in case anybody would like to see the recording later uh please it's the same link that you use to register a little bit about hsmei and what we do before we start the webinar so um the hospitality sales marketing association is a year organization 95 years old we have about 7 000 plus members across 40 countries and it's a non-profit organization it's more like a professional community you know we focus on improving the knowledge and skills of people working in or managing the commercial disciplines in hotels and results our focus remains on sales marketing and the revenue streams we cover all levels from entry to the expertise i would also like to highlight about our signature event which is the revenue optimization conference or rock as it is called it is slated for 9th and 10th of june in singapore marina bay sands um and post covered this would be the first face-to-face interaction so we excited about it and if you haven't registered for it yet please do so it will be a two-day conference uh with the second day actually focusing on educational sessions and private roundtables for the senior leaders our events are held across eight markets um hsmei asia pacific are you know the new chapters of india and maldives this is in addition to what was there before in singapore greater china thailand australia and the pacific indonesia and japan hsi is known very well known for the global certification programs and we are actually the founders of crme for revenue management and chdm for digital marketing and these purchases i would urge people to locally stash you as an expert in your domain and in your stream in 2017 we launched the hsmi academy to address the gaps in learning which was available for hotel staff working in or wanting to work in the fields of digital marketing revenue management and sales the first program that we built and established with the help of senior hoteliers was the crme and um this is a hundred percent online course with 10 courses which give you the certification uh definitely meant for people who have less than three years of experience in revenue management or definitely for those who are wanting to switch to living match and similarly in 2021 we rolled out the digital marketing um online program as well and this in this the learners have a choice of about 18 plus courses though you need only 10 to be completed for earning a certification you can subscribe to our youtube channel as well um please follow us because a lot of sessions from the conferences and from the academy are uh posted here um and you will find a lot of a lot of value here please join the mission uh you know um we are here to help people build their careers grow their careers in the commercial disciplines of sales marketing and revenue management um tools insights expertise use this platform uh you know to network to grow uh we are there so thank you stay connected um this is the link to our social platforms contact us on the info id uh for any further information and for any query please feel free to reach me my email id is also given so um thank you i will now invite sachin to share with us his thoughts on how up to minute forward data can assist the sales marketing distribution and revenue teams holistic strategy sachin we just haven't got such and he's here but i just can't get him to share his screen at the moment um i think i have his presentation do you want me to share that let's just see if we can get why if sachin if you can speak i can i have a presentation i can share the screen i'm just hoping he can send a chat message so that then i can get his name and i can change him to a host sachin are you there sorry everybody oh i think jasmine he's using jasmine's id no i died jasmine's using her idea i think no no because he's writing yes i'm there ah is that it you made just me okay yeah i can get him right let's get him in her in i should say jasmine ah we solved that mystery no wonder i couldn't see him i kept looking for his name but i couldn't see i couldn't see him it's really hard with so many people to find someone in the list yeah participants maybe you want to ask one of the ladies the questions paul i'm trying to get um such an in um uh jackie i have a suggestion i can share satan's presentation here and he can speak he can't speak until we oh yeah okay here we go i've got jasmine there oh yeah jasmine is that you is that you searching i enjoyed using journalism it's me can you hear me okay yes we did we've been playing hide and seek huh you just look like you're jasmine no no no worries finally i'm able to join in so hello everyone good morning i don't know why the camera is not working i'm just trying to switch it on i don't know why it's not working so just make you a co-host so you can share your your slides sure that should you should be work right now all right so just give me a moment i'll share the screen yes it's working yes finally sorry everybody already really sorry for this technical glitch something which is beyond the control at this point of time hello everyone good morning my name is sachin and uh today we have joined over here for an interesting session and i need to before starting i need to really thank sonya and jackie for for inviting me to talk over here and uh welcome everyone and the panelists also at the same time so moving forward why data is no longer just for the revenue team well it is very interesting you know a lot have changed since march 2020 and there is still so much of uncertainty after every interval we have been in and out of lockdowns the hotel teams have been shrunk and people are wearing multiple hats well traditionally hotels relied on post data such as historical performance on the books otb and then compared with the static concept there are now more forward-looking data sets that allow revenue and marketing team to get a glimpse into the traveler's behavior early in the customer journey now well the hotel's commercial team needs to really emulate and come together you know wherein the marketing revenue sales and distribution team and given in this normal facility and market data is quite restricted to the rm and that's where the collaboration is required and technology is required and that's where the data will really help a lot now what's the new normal so let's look into the key objectives of the commercial department we basically are talking about the commercial department and strategies uh you know so let's take one take one by one and talk about what these commercial departments are focusing on so predict price distribute and analyze these are the four main essential pillars and let's take a closer look and ask ourselves how these pillars have evolved and changed in last two years and what is important to become successful so we at otnsight work with more than 60 000 hotels globally and we recently ran a survey and collected the data we found top three concerns with the hotels the biggest and the largest being the otas undercutting which is like almost 32 percent of the respondent mentioned followed by inability to focus dua in this uncertain time as i mentioned earlier and the most important the critical part is manually pulling the data the revenue team and the commercial teams are surrounded by the complex of excel sheets and it really becomes difficult to drive an actionable insights through these mini sheets these are the main three key pain areas for the hotels at this point of time now let's look at the first essential pillar that's basically predict so i just want to draw an attention over here as i mentioned earlier we are looking into a forward-looking data and you know historical data is no more of use it just needs to really back in the box and set aside at this point of time to predict the future demand now we come to know with this flight searches when are people looking to travel and this you actually can see i've shown you the evolution for last six months where we really had an amazing time in october to november where we saw a right nice upgrade in terms of upward trends in searches and then in the first week of december probably that started falling due to the increased cases however now we see where i've just marked an arrow at the end which is basically last two weeks we can see the markets are really showing an upward trends in researches the majority of the contributors are from the asia and the european markets so i think the question goes back to the hotels do we know who are the feeder markets and what are the demand holding for us now further if we can look from a predictive perspective how are flights and hotels such as the world so what i've done over here is rather than taking the entire data sets for the whole country i've just picked up mumbai as a market and then and then thought to focus over here now what we see in the first graph is for the flights and the second graph is for the hotels in the first graph what we see is the evolution of the lead time for the flight searches it it has gone through a lot of variation but if you can focus on the highlighted area which is at the end of the graph it says the flight surge between 8 to 28 days and 29 to 90 days are showing positive upside since last two weeks for mumbai and that's pretty good news for us because if the searches are happening which means people are intending to travel for their future dates and similarly if you look at the second graph for the mumbai market i would say the hotel's lead time evolution is also showing us some upward trends as covet 19 behavior or restriction changes we can see positivity in hotel searches towards an upward trend and the searches majority are happening between 0 to 7 days and 8 to 28 days so the question goes back to what else over here do you see the similar trends for your market too now if we take a closer look for the demand outlook for the next 90 days in this we can see that mumbai is quite busy as of now for april the high demand over 8th of april the 22nd of april 21st of april for the various events which are happening as of now our hotel is optimizing the length of the stair which we generally call as los in line with the guest preference are we still seeing pickup for the cam expo event happening in april i hope they have still not rescheduled i saw like yesterday it was still there so these are a few questions we need to really ask ourselves where are people looking for which dates are they looking for what lois they are looking these are few forward-looking solutions which really help us to come together and work for a common goal now further if we deep dive into flight searches for mumbai we can basically see for a granular data there are two different intervals where we see higher flight searches happening the first one is between 10 to 24th of february and the second one is between 9th to 21st of 21st of april now in this we can also see that how are we really leveraging this information with our source markets below the graph you actually can see the top country searching like uk australia and then followed by india with the breakdown of the lost also so the question goes back to the hotel how can the marketing team help us over here how they can collaborate with the different commercial department like revenue and distribution and drive an roi driven promotion which will a give visibility to the hotels and which will also help to generate direct business for the hotels everybody loves direct business and then when we look at the hotel perspective from the hotel searches and what we see over here is closer to the dates we see really high demand at this point of time 75 of the searches continue to be from india and which contributes to maximum of 61 percent of the searches for length of stay one night however if we look at the los 2 and 3 in the length of the state breakdown we can see almost 28 or roughly 27.5 percent searches contributes to two nights and three nights elos so here we can see that optimism is building between zero to seven days and if you pay a close attention it's majorly over the weekends so customers are booking closer to the arrival dates are we in line with the customer preference what are they looking for and do we have something to offer this is where the commercial team needs to dive further sorry and coming back to the second pillar over here is a price the second essential pillar how are the hotels using los discounting now if we if we play a close attention where we can see in the first graph for los 2 and the second graph is for los 3 and then i have given example of mumbai as a breakdown in terms of lrs so if you look at the first graph it says like 32 of hotels from hyderabad offered a non-refundable rates as compared to 20 and 21 respectively for bangalore and mumbai the other data suggests in the second graph that over 55 of the hotels at the same time have a same day cancellation policy and only 25 percent of hotels in mumbai offer the same day cancellation now here are we utilizing the los discounting in line with the guest preference in the mumbai graph if you can see the breakdown with los you can see 38.8 searches are for more than lost to and above yet 95 of the hotels in mumbai do not offer discount on los 2 so here's something which used to be brainstorm when we talk about loss not necessarily it has to be for all room categories the revenue person can decide a strategy it can be for the next one category it can be for a high room category that's something which the commercial team needs to be brainstormed and followed by how are the hotels using great flexibility we basically want to really understand that you know hotels are offering non-defendable options and what are the flexibility what the hotels are offering it's really important at this point of time that the more flexibility we have the better the guest experience is going to be reflected quickly to talk about the third pillar as a distribution and what we see over here that how are hotels optimizing the channel mix now there are two different sets of graph over here the first one is the demand graph for the next 90 days which allows us to see which are the high demand dates the red color bars are basically the high demand dates at the blue are the very low demand dates and the second graph what you see is the otp for the hotel and when as a revenue person we want to see that based on the demand which are there in the future and therefore in the future dates how is our mix for those specific days which channel we need to really perform which channel needs to really perform and need to be paid attention so years the commercial team needs to really come together and then drive how they want to really have a channel mix and optimize the demand which is there for the future well over here the hotels uh commercial teams need to you know come together and uh and for marketing promotions and help market the team and to really analyze which is the most important food pillar over here for this food pillar for forward-looking solution at the end of the day what commercial strategy has created and roi driven impact needs to be really analyzed and final key takeaways bring the commerciality together demand pattern has changed data is critical coed situation is forced to think out of the box and what strategies have been implemented needs to be measured thank you for your time thank you so much sachin yeah i'll just stop sharing sure that was certainly very insightful thank you i'm just wondering if anybody has any questions for sachin or can i just move to having bridge come on yes so sure suresh go ahead um the participants can't speak because there's they have to send that question by by the chat okay so suresh if you could just hold on until the end of our session we do have uh some time uh budgeted for q a so we will take that there right so may i please now invite bridge uh you know to talk to us about what he has to say regarding digital and revenue all right so i hope i have uh kind of break and broken the curse in terms of the you know the tech challenges so you are able to see and hear me loud and clear yes okay so if you can just allow me just a second and then we can so um again just just a quick word of confirmation from the anybody in the audience or my team here you are able to see the full screen yep okay all right excellent so you know uh first of all thank you very much to everybody around uh you know who joined uh you know it's quite encouraging for all of us at hsmai to have such an audience and thank you jackie and sonia to start on the india chapter um quite certain that this is going to be a very very engaging forum as we will move forward um from an industry perspective from a sales and marketing from a commercial level and from a revenue management perspective so what you know over the next 10 to 15 minutes i'll try and talk in terms of how digital and distribution or distribution and digital are kind of evolving uh from where we were and where we are going and that poses not only you know i won't say challenges but a lot of opportunities for all of us around the table uh whether we are starting into the hospitality or whether we are a few years away or uh you know after there is so much happening there is so much to do that this is super exciting times um now i hope i can change my screen and the bus is back okay so a quick uh you know since we have a mixed bag of audience you know just to go back before we go forward if you actually look at it distribution has come a long long long way from a 1960s yes i am going you know before i was also born where digital means bent neon signs across the the road in terms of you know that of that was that is what was happening to the 1960s when gds came over when you talk about airlines when you were talking about you know hotel airlines getting sold together and things like that and and that is when your you know convenience of a travel agent or commissions actually started to come along 1995 onwards was when the internet started to come in um you know we had the first um so-called branded hotel site from hilton which which came in and then but still we were using internet or the website thing as i'll say as good as an electronic brochure not from a conspirator but sooner or later the otas came in in the name of expedia and they taught us you know what all can you do there um adding to that the economic boost and the internet uh you know kind of reaching to the masses uh was when you know you were we all were adapting to digital mobile phone communication becoming cheaper multi you know multiple otas and obviously the rise of the googles and the facebooks is something which we need to talk about lastly what has affected our lives in the last two years has actually kicked off a revolution we you know whether we call it the the pandemic over whatever it is uh it is you know made things go much more faster than you can ever imagine and trust me the way i look at it uh this is going to you know pick up more and more in a pace as we as we move forward when it comes to a digital movement um you know ota is becoming more and more uh tech savvy the new distribution chance opening so this was just just a quick overview in terms from a progression of distribution point of view now if you look at it from a distribution or comprehension um you know why do i try to write that one are the days when uh we could call you know that each channel had its own specific segment today we see a mishmash happening across all distribution channels a retail guy is booking you through your hotel team car center brand website otas gds and same as with corporates or travelling there is increased transparency what that means for our commercial you know whether you talk about sales or marketing or revenue teams is a bigger bigger challenge than ever before the moment you give a rate out to a wholesaler today it is out there for everybody to book there are gardeners we all are struggling with you know the earliest of the mumas or [Music] and this word is going to get complicated or is getting complicated or i'll say transparent from a guest perspective in simple words uh you know to uncomplicate what i just said life is not going to be simple and it's it's it's as simple as as this web is what we're looking at i know a lot of us may not be able to make head or tail of the chart on the right hand side but that's that's the way things are moving and and it will uh further more and more get more entangled and engaged so what is digital doing in distribution if i have to say now both of these two aspects go hand in hand and i think distribution is a lot to do with marketing in today's state um you know we all if you look at it when whatever we are distributing across various channels a key you know when it comes to communication uh customers and conversions are the three pillars what we are driving towards digital marketing has become the pillar of driving business content is king uh you know we all know that and more and more rich content and then it started to influence what we are trying to do communication to email and notification on web and app i think is very common in what we understand even from a hotel in our business partner offers and promotions continue what is it doing it's it's building community loyalty and the fine balance of a brand image as such from a customization point of view digital is driving my micro markets personalized engines cookies cash a lot when it comes to crm and stickiness and and making more cost effective lastly is in terms of conversion because at the end of the day we all are money managers we all are revenue managers and that's what we are looking at when it comes to enhanced conversions micro targeting and you know so that's that's what is driving our distribution and digital stuff all this does not come without uh you know challenges exponential growth if i have to say uh is actually putting a lot of stress on all of us the growth while is great is leading to a lot of challenges uh you can see that loyalty is is dropping you know uh prices become the the basic driver you know it is leading to price wars unorganized uh structure of or usage of data um a lot of this enough and more data i mean people talking about data is is the fuel and things like that but how do we go about using that and that is leading to you know rising costs when it comes to x you know as as you move forward aggressive campaigns what we all are running you know just to acquire that customer this is basically also what that means is higher cost of conversion and lastly in terms of channels which are higher risk and higher volatility is what we are seeing what are the trends uh from our distribution and digital point of view social media you know we all are on it and we all are engaged and i think hsmi itself is using social media quite a lot and each other and this continues and it will continue to you know earlier we had facebook linkedin and things like today we have blogs post podcast bloggers multiple things content is at a new different level we are ar is is what we are talking about personalization will become the key as as we move forward gadgets keep on evolving you know earlier so far we were talking about ipads and variables now we're talking about iot alexa google home everything possible compare uh meta we all are aware of uh not everything is getting transparent and great parity is more important than ever before alliances whether we're talking about credit cards all our our partners are such and lastly you know nuggets were off book done and exclusive loyalty which continue and that that will be a key driver for any brand as we move forward what is the future like um data is the new oil so definitely uh you know this is what we see in the next five seven years uh data supported by you know a lot of the strictest privacy laws so each and every of one of us will need to kind of look at how we are using data as we move forward um expansion of business diversification and and today uh the way i will i say it so far you know when we look at distribution we're only talking about rooms as such no longer that is the truth now you know you have already seen the and and swingies of the world coming into that that answering and this is going to further become bigger so for a challenge or an opportunity for all the distribution teams is is this business association as such resource management again what this also means that there's a new kind of a manager or training what is required amongst all of us and i think that is where uh you know we all will need to invest a lot of stuff digital first branding uh rise of digital brands is a given and i already spoke about iot and ai as as we go forward so what will you do this is a question i think everybody has to ask themselves there's some we are we are we traditionally think that we are the hoteliers we have them you know but do we are you know houses or two builders depends from organization to organization but what does this mind space is you know you will have to ask each and every of us the question in terms of skills tech stack usps brand guest cost vision resource budget and what is what has come to profits so in a nutshell if i have to say all distribution chance need to prepare for the next generation of distribution it is evolving faster than we ever can imagine a consumer will have more options to make the most basic decisions to ready to travel what we will need in the future is an approach that simplifies you know this entire landscape so that's all what i have to say thank you thank you so much bridge that was uh very very insightful uh and um and very nice to have you share your thoughts here i would now like to invite amy clark uh you know um just for a discussion on you know what's happening in the marketing space how how do you see digital driving marketing for hotels and resorts if you could share you know from your experience and from what you were doing that would be really insightful for the audience as well absolutely yeah thank you sonya and hi everyone really good to be here i look after marketing for wyndham hotels and resorts um with the largest franchise hotel franchising company globally we've got um 20 brands now um and in india i know that ramada is the most prevalent so you might be more familiar with ramada as one of our um strongest brands anime and yeah i mean digital is is really important for us i came from a digital background i worked in e-commerce for my whole career and more recently have been looking more broadly at marketing kind of brand and and loyalty but digital really takes the lion's share of my budget as i'm sure it does for many um and you know i'd say after a turbulent couple of years roi is really important now more than ever that's that's why i'm getting a lot of pressure from stakeholders to show them kind of the roi of every dollar that we invest because it's it's so precious now after what we've been through but having said that growth is still really important so we're feeling like growth is our only way out and certainly what we've noticed over the past year is the number of kind of different companies coming up with new digital innovation approaching us because you know we're hoteliers we're not a tech company we rely on the expertise in the market and and making good choices about who to work with to drive digital and drive direct bookings for our brand so we're exploring a lot of new opportunities and really taking a test and trial approach because you know budgets are also under pressure um having been through um some some challenging times so we need to choose carefully so we are trying to kind of start small invest test something if it proves that it works then then take it further and there's a lot more digital innovation and kind of opportunity coming coming our way and that we're looking for um some of the things i think we've seen a lot more growth in recently is like in the search arena we're seeing a lot more traffic coming through local search that was that was already increasing and it's increasing more and more and so um we're working on new opportunities within that that segment um and for example with google local which i know we all rely on a lot um there are new opportunities around health and hygiene and eco and sustainability and these are all things that not all hotels are taking advantage of um to their fullest so we're helping hotels to make sure that all of those opportunities are tapped and in some ways they're basics but they're also kind of really easy opportunities to grow your visibility for your direct channels um i know we've heard meta search mentioned already and it's you know it's a difficult channel to play in because it's so heavily dominated by otas but again it's something that we're we're trying to to focus on more and find those those nuggets that where is the right market or the right time and it does provide extra direct bookings so that's something we're doing more of and again looking for new partners to help innovate in that area and then i think one of the biggest areas of innovation and digital at the moment is all around kind of the targeting and customer data so this is something that we're doing more of and layering in some of our own customer data into how we target our digital advertising and there's so much scope here even with kind of changes in legislation around data privacy very conscious of that but there's still a lot of opportunity to bring in your own customer data and and really target your investment to the right audience is more important than ever with with this pressure on roi so um they're some of the kind of priorities at the moment i was thinking about what are the challenges um at this point and i think you know for most most hotels the main challenge at the moment is budget um and you know we're managing various stakeholders who are kind of questioning every everything that we spend in marketing so um the way that we're getting through it is by um leaning on our data sources more than ever and again echoing what some of our previous panelists have already said um i know for us we're working a lot more with ota insight actually to help with that forward planning and we are working more closely than ever with our revenue management team to echo exactly what bridge was saying they they need i don't think i've ever worked as closely with revenue management as i do at the moment and and they have access to a lot more data and um they're kind of helping bridge that with marketing so that we can understand some of that and use it to prioritize so yeah i think kind of tackling that challenge of roi in digital is is really using data as our crutch and working with revenue management and also the one of the things i'm learning a lot about with revenue management is the rates integrity side of things because i don't want to invest in digital marketing if if a customer's not going to get a great experience when they're shopping around for rates it's kind of wasted investment if if there's inconsistent pricing out there which is which is confusing for the customer and doesn't drive our direct bookings um and then another challenge that i was thinking about is tracking and it's been a challenge for many years and it's still a challenge but with with more recent kind of innovation in in digital and tracking there's even more more opportunity and more options out there and i think with digital comes an expectation of proven roi and with digital you can track it with offline you can't so let's see it but it still requires very sophisticated tracking to be able to say this marketing investment in digital resulted in exactly these bookings because sometimes digital is still about brand uh brand awareness and and we need to work harder to to tally that up with with the resulting bookings um how can we use digital marketing to make our customers more loyal so yeah good good question and i think there are a couple of things here um one is is coming back to the targeting so bringing in some of your loyalty data if you have it or even if you don't have a loyalty scheme your customer data can help you give the right message to the right people so we'll have um you know messages that we put out there to our loyalty audience say we've got some some highly engaged loyal audience we want to give them a message that reminds them of the benefits of being loyal and we can do that through our digital advertising rather than a generic message and at the same time we can have a different message for those those customers that aren't yet loyal so really using customer data to target more effectively and also um for those of you that have an app um that's that's another kind of excellent digital tool to to grow loyalty and we find that kind of promoting that status through the app um is a really good way of encouraging somebody to to stick with your app keep it on their phone use it as their sign of i've got this status with this with this company and use it as a new membership card so there are a lot of um yeah digital opportunities for loyalty yeah and yeah yeah yeah no that's yeah that's great thank you so great amy it was uh very good to know about all these things and certainly i think uh digital and marketing uh have taken off very well after post covered i would say it sort of accelerated the whole proposition um so thank you and do stay on because there are a couple of questions that people have and we'll take them at the end of the presentation yeah and may i please now invite seema to share with us some insights on how digital is impacting sales for hotels thank you sonia thank you are you able to hear me yes okay greg all right well thank you for having me over uh it's uh great to be part of such a wonderful panel i think um uh you know just uh first of thoughts i'd say and i'm wishing all the very best to hsmei india chapter looking forward to contributing as much as i can and you know being a part of this and learning from everybody as we go along like sonia mentioned in the beginning i'm with preferred hotel group one of our brands which is preferred hotels and resorts represents 700 of best-in-class independent properties across 80 countries uh thank you everyone for joining and listening in today sonia going back to your question uh you know i'd start with a little bit of insight into trends what we are seeing what we are witnessing uh i think it's a lot it's a lot in line with what everyone said before me um we all know corporate or business travel as a segment has been slow uh leisure and that too largely domestic has remained the key focus uh mice is looking to slowly come back even though smaller and in most cases hybrid we know weddings and wedding related events and in general banquet business has has been an important segment uh you know that brought respite to hotels and properties around the country um uh it was great to see in sachin's presentation you know shorter lead times has been one of the one of the trends we we're witnessing but it's good to see it's changing um and and a longer length of stay as frequency of trips have dropped we can see uh people are uh trying to do longer trips because it's it's lesser numbers uh you know that they're doing through the year i think from a booking pattern point of view um people are more amenable to digital purchases than ever before uh you know kovitz taught us that over the last two years um at preferred like i said we stand for authentic independent experiences around the world and i can tell you uh i think the kind of growth we are witnessing on brand.com on hotels own websites followed by otas as an extension of hotel's own digital universe you know has been has been phenomenal it's uh it would be safe to say i think that digital channels the growth or the numbers via digital channels are recovering way faster than any other segment um i think one of the other other things we are witnessing is uh the high growth on mobile channels and i think that when that goes back to what bridge presented what such and mentioned yeah it is definitely the primary device it is taking over as uh as the you know primary device and probably we're already in the iraq mobile first um so it is definitely the need of the r for sales and commercial teams to focus more on digital as a segment realign strategy to convert more business uh you know while offline will still gradually make its way back um so yeah i think uh in in terms of trends what we are witnessing in terms of some of the changes uh or evolution that's happened over a period of time um that's what we've uh you know we're looking at and i think this is this is probably going to stay at least in short to medium term okay great so what is the gap in the sales efforts that you feel digital can fill uh great question uh sonia i think um from from a sales perspective as sales you know as sellers for our hotels we need to look at digitalization as an enabler as an enabler for sales for both our touch points which is b2b as well as b2c uh key objective being ease of doing business by going digital you know one part of it is what everyone's presented so far from from bridge and and otn sites uh you know such as presentation data and mis that we have available now uh is is at another level uh you know that can help us be a lot more focused and targeted in our selling approach it helps us take personalization to another level i think we spoke about how personalization is becoming so important and data and mis that we have available and access to uh helps us with that the other part i think from a digitalization perspective is that it allows us to capture the experiential aspect of travel and hospitality it can help us inspire people to travel not just to our properties but to our destinations you know it's it's how do we create how do we use technology to deliver that message that experience um you know some of the things as an industry we know we've been known to be laggards and embracing technology we've had some progress over over the last couple of years but there's still a long way to go um we do need to continue to push the envelope continuously our efforts that you know the sales distribution marketing efforts that used to be in isolation in silos in yester years may not be good enough anymore uh of course uh you know digitalization can can take it to that another level how um how can we use the digital world to capture the full bandwidth of how we can sell the entire experience you know going hyper digital is probably the way forward we've been hearing this term a lot um basically making the entire selling experience a lot more engaged you know to give you an example uh let's say from a b2b perspective we work with agencies we work with corporate clients uh how can we make change how can we enhance the selling process you know um from sending static pdf files and emails to actually using some sort of dynamic web-based communication uh you know usage of videos virtual tours photography guided experiences in the entire selling process how do we utilize all of that to our benefit as a part make it a part of the selling process and not look at it in in isolation um you know the fact is digitalization does allow us to be a lot more nimble and faster there is no waiting period trial and error is quicker uh you know we can we can experiment and quickly learn and move on from there um i think um amy mentioned in recent times most of us had to pivot our selling strategy to target local and regional travel digital has played an important role in that we know today's traveler is perhaps not looking at the cheapest option but probably safer alternatives uh more flexibility how can we communicate this message using the power of digital you know uh we've partnered at preferred we partnered with euroveritas our partners uh likely love uh you know come up with programs like suraksha by leela i think digital perhaps was the fastest and most cost-effective way um as a go-to-market strategy you know for communicating all of such enhancements to our end consumer and to our uh b2b partners just uh addressing the elaborate act of selling and distributing the experience i think is is where digitalization can play such an important part we can you know like i was saying perhaps we can look at not selling accommodation f and b uh wellness uh culture of the destination in isolation but as a comprehensive experience you know how do we make that a more more consultative and engaged using tech and and ai perhaps uh for for a wider reach yeah okay thank you so much thank you so much seema that was certainly very insightful and i will take the opportunity to thank all our speakers i think what all you shared is very valuable great takeaways for everyone and yes it is time that the commercial disciplines did integrate together to make it work as a business stream um we have jackie do we have time can we take a few questions i think there's one for probably for amy from sresh most tech specialists prefer to work in tech organizations where they have more opportunities for growth so it is very hard for hotels to hire the best digital digital workforce so should hotels build their own digital teams or outs outsource their work really yeah really good question very much a challenge um for hotels and you know obviously it depends quite a lot on the size of the hotel the revenue that you're you're working with in terms of going in-house versus agency there are definitely some things where you'll need to work with an agency especially when you know connectivity is involved like meta search for example but um i mean one thing i've done previously in hotels is i actually hired a maths graduate as an intern to come in and and look after digital for me which was a really exciting opportunity for that person and they ended up really prospering and and now um work you know runs digital marketing for for a large hotel group so i think also in recruitment it's about thinking outside the box and finding new ways to challenge different types of people and and use their skills in in the best way that you can okay great um and then this one might be a fast one to answer and maybe it's maybe it's one for bridge um just trying to scroll down basically asking about in the new okay really that's a fairly long question but why do hotel brands continue to struggle with direct bookings sure uh yes so that has always been i i think every hoteliers uh struggle or dream to have maximum business coming out of direct challenge um the the important i think digital today has made that much more efficient when it comes to you know things a small small things like what we talked about best guarantees and things like that our initiative is what you need to take parity is another one which which comes into play uh if you will not have the discipline of of doing uh you know some basics then obviously we can't expect a lot of direct business to come and your reliance on your third parties will always be there however at the same time uh it is it's an ecosystem the way i i look at it that every every partner is important and we need to kind of play play uh you know ball in that aspect so uh in in submission uh there is a lot of changes a lot of stuff which is coming or which is happening in in today's environment where you can uh you know get into these from a from a direct business point of view how well you will use your content how well you will price your products uh how experiential you can and how easy it can you can make i think these are the things simple things what we can do in terms of driving the directional business i hope i have kind of summed it up is there anything specific somebody wants to ask then how do you take that on thanks bridge and as one for sema sema do you see new customer segments emerging in the digital area area era well uh thank you for the question and i think there are many social and sub segments that we've seen emerging over the last couple of months or two years if i can say uh that might continue to remain um you know or become a part of our overall segmentation strategy i think some of the concepts like leisure you know with limited business travel people are looking to combine their trips with some personal time off workations you know which is working from anywhere concept you're taking a vacation while working remotely from the hills or near a beach staycations or dry vacation taking a holiday within your own city um you know um also in other segments like uh are meetings going hybrid or fidget a new term that i recently learned where it's a physical and digital combined meeting yes uh you know these are new segments and i think as as commercial team sales marketing revenue we all need to work a lot more closely together to to remain agile to adapt and align and perhaps keep realigning our our strategies as we go along uh you know one of the one of the things is uh how are we using or harnessing the power of user generated content you know to to build trust and credibility for our brand and again just to be able to target these newer segments because they've not these have not been traditional segments that we've catered to in the past so how are we creating or sending that message out to you know which is uh creating that credibility for our brand using the good old word of mouth using the power of digital which is which is social media in this case i hope that helps answer yes thank you thank you that's great um i think bonish had a question but i'm just waiting for that to be come through on the chat it doesn't look like it's coming through so i think that's it we're five past the hour so uh that might be it uh sonia did you want to wrap up yes i was just thinking if there is um somebody has had a question okay so it seems like there are no more questions um i would like to thank everyone for joining us today thank you for your time uh stay tuned we are going to be coming up with a couple of events throughout the year and i look forward to some of you joining us as members if you haven't done that already um please feel free to reach me or jackie or any of the advice report members here uh we look forward to interacting with you all thank you so much and thanks to all the panelists again thank you thank you bye everybody bye-bye thanks for getting absolutely no thank you bye