Priyanka Kapoor, regional director of sales and marketing MEA at Swiss-Belhotel International highlighted the continued significance of application program interface (API) and customer relationship management (CRM) for increased customer satisfaction during a panel discussion on 'Future Techniques for Customer Satisfaction in Hotels and Airlines' at the Travel Tech Middle East in Dubai.

Kapoor said: “With the changing demographics of the traveller, API and CRM are becoming more important and also evolving into more complex structures. Of course, we all know that data is the key to making any of these interfaces effective. However, it is interesting to note how the interface is currently using extensive ‘Data Analytics’ and looking at further becoming heavily dependent on ‘Artificial Intelligence’ … in order to provide the impact that the customers desire.”

Elaborating on the importance of partnering with the right technology providers, Kapoor stressed: “It is a fact that hotels do not spend as much as some other sectors on technology but that is where the industry must understand the need to partner with the right technology providers in order to enhance the offering of API and CRM to the customer. And while partnering with other parties, we prefer to go with a few key providers (even exclusive ones) at the Group level, because our first and foremost objective is ‘responsibility towards data protection’… which is a growing concern as we move forward with technological advancements. Whatever we offer through our systems, we want the customer to feel safe and comfortable in sharing their information with us.”

According to Kapoor, people and service will continue to be the cornerstone of hospitality despite the advances in technology. She said: “Let’s use technology and data analysis, not just to understand our customers, but also to understand our changing workforce better. We are seeing a shift in work culture with newer generations coming into the workspace – Millennials to Gen Z and after a few years Gen Alpha will be a part of it. All of them have their peculiar traits and being in the people industry, if we don’t understand our own people and don’t make the necessary work culture changes, it will be challenging to have happy customers.” - TradeArabia News Service