Hospitality Trends 2020
The first month of 2020 has almost come to an end, for many it has been a great start of the year, nevertheless there are various businesses facing major challenges. If you are in the hospitality industry, your ability to adapt to new trends and meet customer’s demands would ultimately determine your business’ success.
Sometimes it is hard to catch up with every single trend that pops out in this rapidly changing world, technology plays a major role in the increasing number of customer’s demands and expectations and every single business wants to be at the top of its game. To help you, here is a list of the different trends you can expect to influence the hospitality industry this 2020:
Making processes easier for customers should be a huge priority for any hospitality business. Technology plays an important role into making that possible not only on the customer’s end, but it also facilitates the business operation for owners and managers.
Solutions like “After Pay” are great alternatives that will continue to lead this year, offering customers a wider variety of easier payment options.
Let’s not forget these days customers are hungrier for information (relevant and useful of course) than ever before, the more details hospitality professionals can provide them about their travel destination, accommodation, food and ingredients, etc. prior, during, and after their visit the better. Trust us, this is a great way to increase repeat business and customer’s loyalty.
Customer Experience
It is not enough anymore to only offer a good customer service, like we mentioned before, customers are eager to embark in new adventures and experiences. In order to survive and thrive in this new era, hospitality professionals need to really understand their customers at a deeper level: Know what they are interested in and deliver mesmerizing experiences according to their likings.
Recent studies have demonstrated that travellers are willing to immerse themselves in new cultures. Activities like wine tastings, traditional dance shows, or cooking classes rank high in the top list of things travellers will seek to do this 2020.
Privacy also plays a huge role into making the guest’s experience more pleasant, with some hotels already implementing private spaces for recreation or dinning experiences with private chefs. This is a trend you should not miss.
In the case of restaurants, even though takeaway options are becoming increasingly popular, dinners are still keen to visit brick and mortar restaurants that are willing to provide them with exciting experiences in an atmosphere that can’t be recreated at home, facilitating one of human’s favourite activities: socializing.
Sustainability:
This trend is not exclusive to the hospitality industry. The way we see it, sustainability should be top of mind to all customers, businesses and governments. Gladly, customers are increasingly demanding venues to adopt more eco-friendly practices and review the environmental impact of their operational activities.
Regarding to food, a good way to tackle this trend would be to offer locally sourced and organic ingredients, eliminating or reducing food waste and growing your own herbs and vegetables garden.
Another easy alternative for food professionals to adopt is to say “goodbye” to all disposable plastic products and welcome new consumable products with low impact to the environment. Some of the most common materials that are here to stay are pine, bamboo, sugarcane and make sure to check out consumable products made with biopolymers derived from plants.
Whatever methods you decide to implement, make sure you do it fast because this trend would only grow from this year onwards.
Health:
Millennials are health conscious, this provides hospitality professionals with a great opportunity to explore a new ton of recipes and food menus. Organic ingredients are a must have on every menu to remain competitive, farm-raised food and free-range eggs are getting increasingly popular.
Fermented drinks like kombucha or kefir are coming in full strength this year due to their gut health benefits, make sure to include them in your drink’s menu, there are many different flavours you can choose from.
For a change, kids should not be excluded from this equation. Parents are aware of their children’s health, seeking wholefood options for their little ones. It is time to forget about pizzas and hot dogs, kids will eat quinoa and kale salads too.
Are you ready to embrace change this 2020? Many individuals and businesses often fall into the trap of focusing too much on sales, but they ignore the activities and investments necessary to generate more demand. Some of these activities/investments include: training, equipment, technology, and willingness to understand the customer; of course this is a never ending process, learning and growing is an intrinsic part of any business’ success, and of course we are always pleased and honoured to help you in that process.
