Collecting data effectively and using it intelligently can have a transformational effect on hospitality businesses.
A huge advantage to businesses that take a digital approach is the amount of customer data at their disposal that provides them with vital insight into their customers’ purchasing habits and helps them target them more effectively with marketing campaigns.
Prask Sutton, founder and CEO at Wi5 says the huge amount of data collected by mobile payment systems alone is already being used by operators to great effect. “Even something as basic as seeing which popular things are ordered together can help operators increase average transaction values by offering add-ons and creating offers,” she says.
Now though we’ve had time to think harder about how our businesses work and many pubs are bringing in money-saving equipment and software to help boost the bottom line.
In the middle of the coronavirus pandemic pubs had to switch their businesses into more tech-focused operations for various reasons, but the main driver was the need for booking and payment systems.
Countless apps rose from the nowhere and were taken up by desperate operators who needed solutions to problems they’d never encountered before – mainly ordering and paying from tables but also the need for more intelligent booking software.
It’s taken a pandemic, but hospitality operators are finally beginning to understand the power of digital and the wealth of data it generates
Sadly, the industry will emerge leaner from the pandemic, but it has forced operators to embrace digital. This new-found understanding of how technology and intelligent use of the data it generates can improve both the customer experience and the bottom line will help many operators survive and hopefully thrive in the coming months and years.
Mobile payments and ordering have helped operators serve customers safely and efficiently. But the technology has also opened the door for a new era of personalisation by way of digital menus. Imagine being able to tailor a menu for a particular time of day or occasion, or even a specific customer.
Order and pay technology will help revolutionise a post-pandemic restaurant sector.
At the end of 2019, if a customer wanted to order and pay for their food using their mobile phone the number of restaurants in which they could do this would have been relatively small. Fast forward to this year and, once lockdown is lifted, the number of places offering digital order and pay will be significantly bigger.
“Pre Covid that was an uphill struggle, a lot of hospitality businesses said they can see the benefits but that it will never work,” says Nick Popovici, CEO of Vita Mojo, which provides an omni channel digital order experience to the hospitality sector. “There were mental blocks against change. Then Covid came and it was adapt or die, and the ones that adapted did really well.”