Unified, transparent data powers up hoteliers’ decision-making.
PLANO, Texas — As hotel management companies oversee properties across different verticals and markets, capturing and understanding data is essential for making informed decisions that drive results — especially for those companies managing large portfolios of properties.
Ranging from performance metrics to staffing needs to reservation bookings, there is a vast number of critical data points that “live” in a hotel. For regional leaders and corporate teams to focus on the right hotels for the right problems, and build enterprise-wide solutions that can be scaled, sharing this data across departments and markets is key.
John Houghton, Aimbridge Hospitality
That insight sparked the creation of Aimbridge Intelligence. As the world’s leading third-party hotel operator, Aimbridge Hospitality has unmatched benefits of scale — including its ability to source data and develop customized business strategies for its owners. With a cloud-maxing resource base of first- and third-party data, Aimbridge gives its owners, as well as its operations teams, the details necessary to streamline operations, build proactive business plans and make smarter data-based decisions to drive results.
Aimbridge recognizes that data is essential not only for understanding the intricacies of a guest's booking, but also for shaping their on-property experience and encouraging future visits. Unified data enables Aimbridge to seamlessly put the information to work more swiftly, without the need for time-consuming report generation.
“When my team started this process, we found ‘data puddles’ throughout the organization. Different groups had data everywhere, and many were pulling owner reports manually,” said John Houghton, senior vice president of business analytics, Aimbridge Hospitality. “We understood that we had to be able to better harness the data. To do that, we’d have to pull it all within one place. Centralizing data was key to showcasing that information, providing better insights for us internally and then offering that transparency to our hotel owners.”
Tapping the full potential of integration, automation
The desire to create more transparency for owners was the impetus for Aimbridge to launch a tech overhaul, which began with a series of very analog first steps.
“We made a list of all the data sources we knew we had and where they resided,” Houghton said. “We worked down the list of various stakeholders within the organization that ‘owned’ the data or the relationship with the data provider, and just knocked down the silos one by one.”
Part two of the Aimbridge Intelligence project paired human discernment with advanced automation. The aim was to be able to future-proof the system as new data sources are introduced and the need for automated reporting both to internal teams and hotel owner partners accelerates.
Houghton’s team spearheaded the establishment of an internal steering committee comprised of all the company’s major stakeholders. Their objective was to determine the business value of new data sources as they flowed into the company, and then prioritize which sources the team would “attack” first to make sure data was available to the people who needed it.
Their discussions made it clear there was room for across-the-board improvement in how data was served up from the source to the stakeholders, according to Keryn McNamara, Aimbridge’s chief information officer. “We recognized an opportunity to change the way data was accessed and considered, especially as an added benefit to owners who wanted to better understand what was happening at their properties,” she said.
Keryn McNamara, Aimbridge Hospitality
Aimbridge Intelligence’s automation solves that. This bespoke platform removes the need for team members to manually assemble weekly or monthly reports for hotel owners, freeing up bandwidth to focus on how to use the data and develop action plans.
“In addition to providing access to all the data, John and his team streamlined many of the processes that were so labor intensive,” said McNamara. “We’re spending less time retrieving data and more time analyzing it and making better business decisions leading to stronger performance.”
Better data access helps owners dig deeper
As Aimbridge continued to meet the needs identified by the stakeholder groups, the team quickly realized that there was more to offer than simple data presentation with the ability to drill down on the “why” behind the numbers.
“When we presented data to our owners, they were asking us why gross operating profit was at a certain level or why, if they were seeing savings in utilities, they weren’t seeing similar savings in other areas,” said McNamara. “The ability to go deeper into the data so much more quickly enhances our conversations with owners and answers those questions. We listened to what our owners wanted and evolved the ways we were creating our platform with their requests in mind.”
Giving owners the same seamless data access empowers Aimbridge’s owners to look past the numbers on the screen to uncover the real root causes of key issues. They can also see their entire Aimbridge portfolio to identify opportunities and trends.
At launch, Aimbridge Intelligence zeroed in on giving owners near-real-time insights, which would be used by property teams to optimize day-to-day operations. The platform’s format – a web-based application – simplifies access and allows owners to use it quickly without extensive training.
Owners felt the benefits of that recently when two hurricanes hit the Southern U.S. over the past several weeks, impacting hoteliers across several states.
“We have scale in Florida, and with this technology, I could immediately filter the data to focus on Tampa,” said Houghton. “We have eight hotels in Tampa, and because of their locations, our properties weren’t significantly impacted by the flooding. With our ability to rapidly gather insights and adjust operations to accommodate guests from the harder-hit hotels, we ensured more people had access to a safe place to stay during this unexpected crisis.”
We’re spending less time retrieving data and more time analyzing it and making better business decisions leading to stronger performance.
Keryn McNamara
The new system also updates hotel management to any changing staffing or procurement needs arising from demand spikes, as in the case of hurricane-related demand, or downshifts.
“Say that the hotel was in the direct path of the hurricane and occupancy went from 50% to 10%,” said McNamara. “The hotel procurement and staffing are going to adjust. With this data, our operations team can act more quickly to reduce anticipated costs in tandem with lower than predicted demand.”
The constant evolution of tech innovation
Aimbridge is actively looking ahead to what’s next to innovate for owners, and that includes its custom-built data platform. Evolving Aimbridge Intelligence will be an ongoing process to ensure what they hear from owners is incorporated into the platform.
“This isn’t a static tool,” McNamara said. “We’re going to be publishing enhancements and actively evolving the platform, and it starts the same way this concept was born. We’re listening to our owner community. We’re listening to our internal business stakeholders. Working with Aimbridge means our owners have unmatched benefits of scale, including our ability to source data and identify solutions, because we have access to more data than anyone else.”
Many factors can affect the top line and bottom line of hotels, and Aimbridge Intelligence will serve as a model for how multi-faceted data drives success and empowers both management teams and owners.
“Whatever technology advancements are ahead, the point of Aimbridge Intelligence will remain the same: More time devoted to analyzing and actioning the data to build a stronger bottom line,” McNamara said.
Brendan Manley is a writer, editor and digital marketer specializing in hospitality content creation based in Warrensburg, New York.
The views and opinions expressed in this content do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Hotel Investment Today by Northstar or Northstar Travel Group and its affiliated companies.