Do hotels have too much data to handle these days?

This evening, I am participating in a interesting debate with hoteliers (mainly revenue managers, finance and sales directors) where we would discuss this question:

"Given the ever increasing accessibility and complexity of Benchmarking Data and public on-line Customer Reviews – do you believes that Hotels cannot realistically take full advantage of all the information available?"

I would be very interested to hear your view as a hotelier whether you are independent or part of a hotel group. I believe answers will be different depending on the status of your hotel and also your responsibility in the organisation.

Use the comment box below or send me your feedback on Twitter or Facebook.

Comments

[Gary Halpin]

As an experienced hotel manager that qualified in the early 80s , the onset of all this data only began emerging really with the advent of the internet. Small amounts of data were available but not on such a global scale.
It is neccessary to filter data that is only of benefit to your particular venue or circumstances. I think if an hotel manager or company of hotel managers find they are losing time concentrating on data issues it is time to hire an expert to filter and process data on this scale and feed the results to the management with suggestion in moving forward or resolving issues arrising from the data acrued.

[Hotel Supplies]

You really need to have someone dedicated to managing the online reputation of your hotel these days. Having the tech savvy intern do it just won't cut it with the massive amounts of information available online today.

[Hotel Desk]

I would say that before any data is collected the hotels would need to ask questions. Once you have the question, you would be able to collect the RIGHT type and amount of data to provide the answer.

I've seen many travel companies looking at all the data they have and the management team running in different directions to work out what to do with it - the data meaning different things to different people.

Central marketing plan, with a CEO that is focused on just a few targets/questions at a time.

Isn't the phrase too much analysis causes paralysis..??

[Guillaume Thevenot]

@Mike - You are spot on. I don't think the question is reflecting the issues hotelier encounter today. Data without interpretation and calls to actions are useless anyway

[Mike Amaral]

I think that the question and debate would be better served if the question was framed this way: How is the data available used to improve hotel performance? Hoteliers have always had, and expended a large amount time and effort, collecting data. In my experience the issue has always been about the analysis and use of the available data. I don't see the challenge being about the quantity of data, in fact the quality and presentation of data today is far better than in years past, the issue has always been in the interpretation and use of the available data and believe that will continue.