The Future is now: The emergence of the Customer Engagement Channel in Hospitality

For a few years, very significant developments have occurred, and, radically changed the marketing of hotel, the distribution content and the customer engagement in hospitality. In this direction, the increasingly important use of Internet and social media changes the consumers' behavior, and the hotelier must adapt and change their strategy marketing, their manner of communicating with their customers. 

This article is very interesting, and, is focused on the emergence of a new Customer Engagement Channel. It gives and explains the forces that have been combined to lead to the emergence of this new customer engagement channel.  Indeed, this customer engagement channel is the result of several things, of the combination of several forces, according to this article.

• Internet => Today, it is considered as the main travel planning tool and booking channel. We are increasingly numerous to carry out our booking online, and to plan all our travels with internet.  

• The hyper-interactive travel customers => Thanks to Internet, to Social media, and to Mobile apps we are hyper-connected, hyperactive, hyper-engage and hyper-informed.

•  Social Media =>Today, hoteliers need to engage their customers via social media. Social networks should have a big part of a marketing strategy of a hotel. Hoteliers cannot ignore the success and the importance of social media. 

• Mobile Web => The mobile channel has become a very important travel planning and transaction channel. 

• Channel convergence => There is a convergence of of marketing and distribution channels. As I said below, travel consumers are hyper-interactive, so they need to collect and to share information (actual and interesting) about a hotel, with their communities, at any time. For that, they use various distribution and marketing channels (Traditional website + social media or social media + mobile apps...).

• Multi-channel marketing => It is a new norm. Today, with the development of Internet, of social media, of mobile apps... As the hyper-interactive consumers of today choose how and when they want to interact with the hoteliers’ campaigns, it is essential for hoteliers to reach them at multiple touch-points, and for that, they need to utilize multi-channel marketing for all their campaigns. As you can see on this image, the hotel website will be the hub of multi-channel marketing. 

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I think this article is very interesting because it shows and explains why a there is the emergence of a new Customer Engagement Channel, and what is the most important impact of this emergence.

To conclude, I can say that today’s consumer, considered as the hyper-interactive travel consumer, is communicating every day, at any time, via social media, blogs, mobile applications, internet... This behavior is forcing a channel to change and to have a new approach to hotel marketing and distribution. For that, according this article, the best is a complete channel convergence, in which all marketing and distribution channels are combining into only one and unique channel, in order to engage the customer.

 So, the Customer Engagement Channel is the result of the convergence of all marketing and content distribution channels and of the new hyper-interactive travel customer. The most important impact that this emergence has, it is the influence of the customers (who are in this channel) on their communities about the hotel. Now it is a reality, when we have a good experience with a channel, with a hotel, we commit ourselves promoting this hotel or this chain via social media, or mobile applications… near our community. It is a reality and a new thing to take into account when hotelier wants to establish a marketing strategy.