The Hospitality Statistics and Trends You Should Know about in 2022
Are you curious about the size of the hospitality industry? Or are you interested in finding out how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted hotel employment, income, and occupancy?
Let’s look at statistics which cover the global trends. You’ll obtain a better awareness of the hotel industry’s career opportunities as well as booking patterns. You’ll be a better knowledgeable hotelier with a pulse on the newest hotel business news by the end of this article.
The global hospitality industry
The number of hotels and hotel rooms in the globe is unknown. According to STR, there are 17.5 million guest rooms in 187,000 hotels around the world, but no one knows the exact numbers.
Wyndham Hotel Group, with approximately 9,200 hotels as of June 2020, is the world’s largest hotel company by number of properties. With over 7,600 hotels, Marriott International is the second largest, followed by Choice Hotels International with over 7100 hotels.
While Wyndham Hotels and Resorts has the most properties, Marriott International has the largest hotel room portfolio. In 2020, Marriott had around 1.4 million guestrooms, nearly 400,000 more than second-placed Hilton Worldwide.
The hotel and tourism business accounts for roughly ten percent of global GDP. When the COVID-19 epidemic struck in 2020, however, the hotel business accounted for only 5.5 percent of global GDP.
Trends that are shaping the hospitality industry
1. Business travelers and hotel work areas
Working from home has become the norm for many employees, and it is expected to become more than a fleeting fad. An unprecedented number of high-profile corporations – led by huge digital companies like Twitter, Facebook, and Amazon – have indicated that they will embrace a hybrid or flexible approach to working remotely, a shift exacerbated by the worldwide public health issue. The percentage of workers who work remotely on a permanent basis is predicted to quadruple globally soon.
This means that bleisure visitors as well as locals seeking a change of scenery are using hospitality facilities as makeshift offices. This is a fantastic chance for hotels and F&B venues to capitalise on the trend and adjust their offerings to fit the requirements and wants of this growing demographic; plentiful plug connections, free high-speed WIFI, and superb coffee are all good places to start.
Hoteliers are increasingly using apps to manage the services they deliver to their customers, and they can now control many facets of the visitor cycle and experience. Needless to say, since 2020, the trend toward digital and contactless services has accelerated. Customer-facing services, such as mobile check-in, contactless payments, voice control, and biometrics, are getting a makeover because to the increased use of technology-assisted solutions.
Consumers who have become accustomed to using facial and fingerprint identification to unlock their smartphones and computers will soon expect the same convenience in their hotel rooms. Unfortunately, these upgrades may be costly to install and maintain for the companies that want to embrace them. We propose that you dig deep and invest if you want to stay ahead of the curve.
Guests today have come to expect to be acknowledged and treated as individuals. While platforms like Mailchimp and Zoho have made customised e-mail marketing accessible to the people, providing highly targeted audience-specific messaging, establishments are going the extra mile to personally greet their guests. Data provides insight into past purchasing behaviours, allowing hotels to customize offers and promotions and automatically provide similar services to previous stays, far beyond merely adding the customer’s name to email pleasantries.
Big data is used by technological platforms like CRM and CEM to establish one-to-one interactions between guests and hosts at scale. AI-powered chatbots have shown to be a valuable customer support asset during the booking process as well as in answering common questions.
The use of management systems to monitor and maximise revenues, customer interactions, property, channels, and reputation is progressively shaping hotel operations in general. Not to mention the growing relevance of integrated messaging, predictive analytics, customer profiling, and middleware, which aims to link diverse systems together.
4. Experience economy and essentialism
Customers want tremendous personalisation as well as one-of-a-kind experiences. This could lead to the demise of the travel agency and the growth of the self-guided traveller.
There is such a thing as travel guilt. Minimalism has breathed new life into the tired adage “less is more.” Travelers are less interested in displaying their money and prefer to spend carefully, meaningfully, and have a beneficial impact on the globe. Niche properties, adventurous vacations, and relaxation retreats are in high demand, as are unique experiences that give back to local communities in meaningful ways.
5. Augmented and virtual reality
Following the trend toward aesthetically appealing material, it seems only natural that businesses in the hospitality industry would want to capitalize on features like virtual tours, which allow customers to imagine themselves in a digital environment.
360-degree videos of restaurant ambiance, café terraces surrounded by vegetation, or hotel beachfront sites, for example, are just the thing to help a business stand out this year. As always, keeping the entry barrier low is critical to reaching the widest potential audience with virtual reality content: making content accessible on a range of devices without the use of a VR headset.
Once on site, visitors should be able to use their trusty sidekick – their smartphone – to summon extra information by simply pointing it at real-world artefacts. Augmented reality enhances in-person environments with graphical or informative overlays. Guests can use the app to access restaurant opening times, reviews, interactive tourist information maps, and even produce user-generated content once they have downloaded the app.
This development opens up a whole new set of potential career choices for hotel personnel, combining competence in the wellness field with abilities applicable to the hotel sector. If you’re interested in working in a beautiful setting and are enthusiastic about wellness and health, wellness may be the appropriate path for you in the hospitality industry.
With an MBA degree in Hospitality Management, you can upgrade your skills and learn about the new upgrades in the global hospitality industry at Britts Imperial University College.
Now is the opportunity for hotel employees to upskill into a highly skilled, in-demand job that will never be replaced by a deep-fryer bot.
Britts Imperial University College
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