DIGITALLY PERFECTING THE GUEST EXPERIENCE
02
How Pentahotels is embracing digital transformation, CSR and the modern ‘bleisure’ traveller WRITTEN BY
HARRY MENEAR PRODUCED BY
LEWIS VAUGHAN
03
w w w.pe nt a ho tels . com
P E N TA H O T E L S
Heiko Rieder, VP of Revenue Management and Reservations at Pentahotels, discusses digital transformation, CSR and the changing nature of the hospitality space
T 04
here are many things that make up a truly great hospitality experience: a sense of luxury, peacefulness, access to new and
exciting activities – ask someone why they enjoyed their stay or meal somewhere and you could get a different answer every time. From fluffy towels and exquisite room service to eye-catching art on the lobby walls, at the heart of each and every positive experience is, it could be argued, a sense of attentiveness to the needs of the guest. Identifying and providing what will genuinely delight a guest can be the difference between a lifelong customer and a damning TripAdvisor review. This obviously applies to the entire length and breadth of the customer experience, from the moment of booking to check out and beyond. Therefore, if the desires and habits of its customers change, a hotel needs to change with it.
05
w w w.pe nt a ho tels . com
P E N TA H O T E L S
“ We’re monitoring a significant shift in behaviour driven by younger generations of business and leisure travellers” 06
— Heiko Rieder, VP, Revenue Management and Reservations, Pentahotels
A member of Rosewood Hotel Group, Pentahotels is a global brand of neighbourhood lifestyle hotels serving upper-mid market business and leisure travellers at 29 locations in eight countries on two continents. The brand prides itself on innovative organisational strategies that provide its guests with a comfortable, stylish experience in a laid-back atmosphere. The heart of each Pentahotel is the Pentalounge, a combination of lounge, bar, café and reception area designed to cultivate the lifestyle impression that the company believes is key to securing the loyalty of the ever-shifting preferences of travellers. “We’re monitoring a significant shift in behaviour driven by younger generations of business and leisure travellers,” explains Heiko Rieder, Vice President of Revenue Management and Reservations at Pentahotels, noting that
CLICK TO WATCH : ‘WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF PENTA’ 07 Millennials and members of Genera-
of the company’s travel policy,” he says.
tion Z expect a greater degree of
“Also, it’s very important to them that,
flexibility in terms of business travel.
at the beginning or end of a business
We sat down with Rieder to explore
trip, they can add a night or two, which
the ways in which Pentahotels is
brings together the business and
harnessing innovative technologies,
leisure components of their trip.” The
embracing a new ideology centred
rise in “bleisure” travel is well docu-
around corporate social responsibility
mented: global technology company
and forging new collaborative partner-
Expedia found that, of the approxi-
ships with companies dedicated to
mately 400mn Americans that
digitally transforming the guest
travelled long-distance for business
experience in response to changing
in 2018, approximately 60% of them
demographics and customer priorities.
extended their trip by at least a day.
“We’re actually seeing talent choose their employer based on the flexibility
“We’re seeing more and more business travellers, who would previously have w w w.pe nt a ho tels . com
Elevating the
Guest Experience Wherever you find people expanding their horizons and embracing new experiences through travel, you’ll find Amadeus. In addition to supporting global air, rail, cruise and auto travel, our technology elevates the guest experience, drives loyalty, and increases profitability at more than 44,000 hotels and venues in 176 countries worldwide. Amadeus solutions enrich every step of the guest journey to provide hoteliers with the technology, data, and insight needed to meet the expectations of not only today’s guests, but tomorrow’s as well. And with the acquisition of TravelClick, we support all segments of the hospitality market — from small independent properties to large multinational chains — with the marketing, distribution, and operations solutions needed to acquire, serve, and retain guests while optimizing revenue. In partnership with our customers, we’re creating the next generation of hospitality technology. Together, we’ll meet evolving guest expectations with more experiential travel, provide new ways to deliver more personalized and bespoke stays, and leverage rich data to establish lasting relationships with the right guest at the right time.
We’re shaping the future of travel, and we want you to join us.
Process more than
1.7m
bookings a day, or 20 per second
Helped customers increase mobile bookings by
155% in 2018
Find out more
For further information, visit amadeus-hospitality.com or speak to your Amadeus Account Manager today.
Distributing more than
3.5m
shopping options on the Amadeus Travel Platform
w w w.pe nt a ho tels . com
P E N TA H O T E L S
10
been gone by Friday, stay through
He created, developed and deployed
the weekend,” observes Rieder. “It’s
the concept for centralised commer-
a good business opportunity for us,
cial services at Pentahotels and, as the
and one we need to be properly
Vice President of Revenue Manage-
equipped for.” Sustainability and social
ment and Reservations, oversees
responsibility are also becoming key
a team of 35 employees that handles
decision-making factors in the minds
in excess of $120mn in bookings
of younger travellers.
annually and is at the heart of the
Rieder, who has worked for Pentaho-
company’s ongoing initiatives
tels since the opening of its first
to respond to changing customer
modernised location in Eisenach,
priorities and demographics.
Germany 12 years ago, has been
One of the major trends in the hotel
a fundamental part of the company’s
space (alongside almost every other
guest experience since the beginning.
space) that has emerged in recent years
is the increased emphasis that custom-
here and our president, Mr Eugène Staal,
ers place on sustainability. Last year, The
has changed the way we think and act
Shelton Group reported that, in the US
regarding CSR,” says Rieder. “He has
workforce, 79% of Millennials consider
fully incorporated CSR into our culture
a company’s social and environmental
and we believe that it’s something the
commitments when deciding where to
target group that visits our hotels feels
work, a statistic with clear implications for
is important. We have launched several
a hotel brand looking to attract guests.
very creative campaigns focusing on
Pentahotels has been actively pursuing
contributing to our hotels’ surrounding
a CSR-centric strategy for several years.
neighbourhoods and the environment
“We had a change of senior management
as a whole.”
E XE CU T I VE PRO FI LE
11
Heiko Rieder Heiko joined Pentahotels in its startup phase in 2007 as Revenue and Reservations Manager. His passion for performance measurement and data analysis supported the conceptual design and rapid deployment of a centralised model for revenue generation and reservations handling as it is the companies foundation to commercial success until today. Before joining Pentahotels the German national worked for several global and regional brands such as Hilton and Steigenberger in Europe and the US in the field of rooms divisions and revenue management. In today’s position as Vice President Revenue Management and Reservations Heiko steers the company’s commercial direction and oversees the disciplines E-commerce, Revenue Management, Reservations, Distribution and Business Intelligence. Heiko concluded a dual hotel management training with Accor and the Albrecht Dürer Schulen Düsseldorf. w w w.pe nt a ho tels . com
P E N TA H O T E L S
This year, Pentahotels has partnered with Cornish music and arts festival Boardmasters to organise a beach clean-up at four locations across the UK and Belgium: Felixstowe Beach in Ipswich, Crosby Beach near Liverpool, Fistral Beach (beside the festival grounds in Newquay) and Ostend Beach in Belgium. The program encourages the audience to join the cleanup crews and, even though the 2019 festival was cancelled due to a storm warning, 12
the cleanup went ahead as planned. In 2018, prior to Christmas, Pentahotels also launched a campaign where social media engagement was used to rack up hours that were then donated to “support social work in our hotels and neighbourhoods,” explains Rieder. “Overall we accumulated more than 62 days’ worth of time to give back to our communities. There were teams raising funds to donate to children’s hospices, helping in shelters, refugee camps and animal rescues. The management team in Frankfurt went to deliver gifts to a refugee shelter on Christmas. It was an amazing experience to give
back to our neighbourhoods together with all colleagues around the world.” In addition to aligning itself with a sustainability-conscious public, Pentahotels is harnessing new technologies intended to both ensure that its guests have the sort of experience that creates a lifetime customer while increasing efficiency. “In the long run it’s about gaining time for our guests, of course, but in our industry we must never forget that the guest experience is crucial,” explains Rieder. In order to increase flexibility and agility when dealing with changes in customer behavioural patterns and improve guest experience, Rieder is currently
“ We have launched several very creative campaigns focusing on contributing to our hotels’ surrounding neighborhoods and the environment as a whole” — Heiko Rieder, VP, Revenue Management and Reservations, Pentahotels
overseeing the development of a new partnership between Pentahotels and TravelClick. A subsidiary of Amadeus Americas, Inc, TravelClick is a one-stop shop for digital solutions relating to the bookings and hotel space. “We went through a very long, selective RFP process of sourcing a technology partner that can provide, not just CRM technology, but technology that enables us to w w w.pe nt a ho tels . com
13
P E N TA H O T E L S
14
870,000+ pints of beer consumed per year in Pentahotels
2007
Year founded
1,155
Approximate number of employees from 32 different nationalities
w w w.pe nt a ho tels . com
15
P E N TA H O T E L S
16
“ In our industry we must never forget that the guest experience is crucial” — Heiko Rieder, VP, Revenue Management and Reservations, Pentahotels
capture client information and also integrates with our booking engine,” Rieder explains. “You can accomplish what we need with 30 different vendors that each provide a single piece of technology that you then have to figure out how to connect to the rest of the infrastructure, but with TravelClick, we found that all of what we need is already incorporated into their offering. It includes CRM functionality, allows us to capture data to store it – all according to GDPR law – and then also allows us to invite people to provide us with information and to sign up into our marketing program as part of the booking process.” The new software, which has been implemented in record time, will grant Pentahotels a level of integration and back end capability that Rieder sees as instrumental to achieving the company’s goals moving forward. “We’ve already doubled the number of people who are opting in to our marketing program, which is very important to us,” Rieder enthuses. With this back end functionality in place, Rieder’s eyes are now set on harnessing technology to transform w w w.pe nt a ho tels . com
17
P E N TA H O T E L S
18
“ We want to engage with our customers less on a transactional level and more in terms of a qualitative interaction” — Heiko Rieder, VP, Revenue Management and Reservations, Pentahotels
the front end elements of customer experience. “We are very modernised on the back office side of things, but we feel that we need to further improve on the guest experience when it comes to digitalization. We’re very close to launching technology that facilitates the self-check-in/check-out process at one of our hotels” he explains. “We want to engage with our customers less on a transactional level and more in terms of a qualitative interaction. We believe that this is what
19
our customers want to experience.
Looking to the future, Pentahotels
They want to check in while they’re
will continue to focus on its customer
in the taxi on the way to the hotel,
facing and internal processes in order
have a digital key and want to walk
to provide the sort of responsive,
straight through to their room, without
lifestyle-based guest experience that
having to stop by the reception and
is the mark of great hospitality.
wait in line to check in.” Soon, the company will also enrich its ‘Pentafriends’ guest membership program with further benefits and a more digitalised experience, again designed to increase qualitative engagement with guests. w w w.pe nt a ho tels . com
Penta Hotels Worldwide GmbH Mayfarthstrasse 15-19 Frankfurt am Main Hessen 60314, DE T +49 69 2566990 www.pentahotels.com