The Analytic Hospitality Executive

CHAPTER 6Analytics for Marketing

Half of my advertising is waste, I just don’t know which half.

—Henry Ford

Marketing is quickly emerging as the next area of opportunity for driving value through analytics in hospitality. The crowded digital marketplace and increasing competition for the consumer have intensified the importance of better guest intelligence and smarter marketing actions. Recently, many hospitality companies have launched personalization initiatives, with the intention of mining guests’ expressed preferences and behaviors to design more individualized interactions. This is a highly complex initiative doomed to fail if not built on a solid foundation of data collection and analytics.

Gaming companies have been calculating and tracking customer value for many years. The gaming industry is largely built on identifying and nurturing high value gamers, while still generating revenue from the rest of the patron base, so it is important to have a view of the potential of all casino patrons. Even with this ongoing focus on patron value, the marketing area in casinos has still been evolving in recent years. The proliferation of nongaming options, particularly in destination gaming markets like Las Vegas and Macau, is requiring that casinos understand the complete picture of patron spend, the so-called 360-degree view. Personalization is also of interest to casinos. As competition increases, any edge that shifts patron share of wallet can make the difference.

While digital ...