Millennial Brand Loyalty and how to not use Social Media in Hotels

Last week’s Hotel Show in Dubai was again a well-attended event, although the conference was a little underwhelming, or at least the TecSec Summit, the technology focused branch of the conference program was.  Generally I believe that great expos have average conferences and vice versa for the

simple reason that each format attracts different types of attendees, so inevitably the part with lesser emphasis will suffer. This was the case for the TecSec Summit which had a great program but suffered from bad accoustics and a lack of a dedicated conference manager who would keep time and more effectively moderate the audience-speaker interaction.

Millennials in the Middle East are different – buy why?

Nonetheless, there were a number of interesting presentations worth battling the ambient noise for. Millennials featured in more than just one presentation and while the general consensus is that this new dominant demographic is picky and demanding, a presentation from Google pointed out that unlike their peers elsewhere in the world, Millennials in the Middle East are very brand loyal.

Why? According to Google, the Millennials in the ME are not quite as sophisticated when it comes to brands but will catch up soon. 

Really? In a region that has become synonymous with brand shopping and conspicuous consumption and boasts large membership of social networks it seems a little far-fetched to blame a lack of sophistication. It would be welcome to get a greater perspective here, as the results may also provide a better understanding of brand loyalty in this demographic in general. I hope the good folks at Google take up the mantle and dig a little deeper here (the essence of the Google presentation can be found here).

Big Data or Big Brother?

Another big topic was Big Data and how hoteliers can use it to their advantage. It’s a topic close to my heart, as IPTV systems by nature can reveal a lot of information about guests through their in-room entertainment system usage. However, most hotels today tend to just look at general statistics, rather than ‘customising’ a guest’s experience.

Copyright Pauline Siebers

Social media is at another level of course and it is tempting to look at the data available surrounding travelers on the net as this big, easily mined pot of gold, ready to be exploited. But just how dangerous it is to approach this topic without a sound strategy and thorough research was evident in the TecSec panel discussion on this topic.

It’s all fair and well to engage with guests on Twitter and Facebook but what about using guest data from social networks to customise his/her visit? Where to draw the line between usefulness and invasive creepiness? Sadly, the panelists only had shrugs rather than enlightened answers, which is a shame, as this question had come up in other sessions of the conference (it does help to attend some other sessions than just your own to get a feel for what is top of mind).

While some people may find it a ‘wow’ factor when the hotel spots from my various social media sites that I like Hello Kitty and stacks my guest room with references to them, an equal amount may find it very creepy and will feel they have been stalked and run a mile, never to be seen at that hotel ever again. The problem is that you may not glance from my online profiles to which camp I belong.

The rather limp response from the panelists was to adopt a ‘trial and error’ approach, which I doubt any hotelier would risk, less a bad experience not only repels one guest, but also presumably his/her 10,000 twitter followers.

Those advocating these purportedly ‘tailored’ initiatives really want an algorithm that neatly takes care of seeking out the info and delivering the right call to action to the hotel for fulfilment. But, as much as culture, conditioning and commerce have forced us into certain stereotypes that behave more or less predictably, there is a core individualism inherent in us that spoils the party for those who want us all to ‘like’ the same thing. And thank heavens for that, too.

Don’t get me wrong, I think data mining could play a much bigger role, especially when determining which pages/services/offers are more popular than others, what content is looked at how often, to better the experience etc. But hotels understand very well that there is a creepiness factor and are mindful of not straying too far into their guests’ privacy.

Beware the 'Beacon' Effect

For now, and unless there is a more solid, empirical approach to this, I believe the most productive way to mine the social media data is to look out for broad trends, rather than individual targeting. Yes, it means business cannot use all that fabulous data out there but as even Facebook learned with their disastrous ad platform Beacon, which resulted in a class action law suit and was eventually scrapped, we are not quite ready yet to accept being completely manipulated.

The Limits of Using Icons as a Visual Vocabulary

It was just the other day when we looked at coming up with a new set of Icons for our in-room entertainment Graphic User Interface that it occurred to us that while the various technology devices that anchor our lives these days allow us to communicate ever more visually, our collective reference points are more and more fragmented. From the old Egyptians and their hieroglyphs to today’s Apps, mankind has always sought to use pictorial descriptions to communicate. When you study for your drivers licence, you have to memorise the look and meaning of as many road signs as possible in order to pass the test. In order to make it easier, the road authorities around the world came up with pictorial representations of the various signs which over the years were adopted more or less universally in the developed world. But while learning the meaning of these signs came with a clear incentive – i.e. learn them or don’t drive – the visual identifiers and pictorials that guide so many other things in life evolved much more haphazardly.

The windows approach to computing was probably a major milestone for making icons a centre piece of way finding in our daily lives. In the early days of the desktop computing age, these icons were necessarily simple, but not only because of the graphic restrictions, but because of the need for a simple conduit into a complex world that would be understood by the most technically inept person. The artist who created the icons for the original Mac desktop and applications believed that icons should work like traffic signs and convey information without distracting the user. So born was the ‘folder’ icon with the little stub poking out that looked exactly like the ones stacked in everyone’s office desk, alongside the ‘recycle bin’ that looked like Oscar the Grouch’s trash can, the pair of scissors that signaled that you were about to ‘cut’ something and a paperclip that meant you were ‘attaching’ a document. Then, when the internet came of age, the depiction of a neat little house with a chimney wasn’t an advertisement for a furniture shop anymore, but the icon that signified the homepage of an internet site. All of this is of course common sense and has largely managed to align most of us along one common path of iconography that enables us to recognise that a shopping cart icon means “check out” a pad lock means “security” and an umbrella has something to do with the weather.

However, what happens when the corresponding physical object has no longer any distinguishing features that are so important for being both instantly identifiable and minimally distracting? Or what if the activity it is meant to represent becomes too complex for a clear pictorial representation? A house is a house is a house is a home – ok. But take out your mobile phone and look at the symbols on the buttons for making a call and ending a call. It’s the old fashioned banana-shaped head set that was part of the home phone before it was replaced with a very different looking hands free set or a mobile phone. Or try saving something on your computer and you’ll see that this action to this date is symbolized by a floppy disc, something that joined the technology scrap heap more than 15 years ago as other portable storage options such as CD-ROM took over.

But it was when I was sitting with my graphics team to ponder a new set of icons for the User Interface of our in-room entertainment system that it really hit me how little the pictorial representation of our world has changed in the face of the relentless evolution of our communications world. How better to represent TV channels than a box with the old rabbit ears on top? And nothing says “movie” better and clearer than the old 35mm movie reel, even though today’s box offices smashes are more likely a combination of digital video and CGI. Music channels are much better represented by a full blown stereo headset rather than the now more prevalent micro earpieces. And what says better “you’ve got mail” than a good old fashioned letter envelope? It will be interesting to see if these ‘old’ pictorials finally disappear simply because a new generation of users has no longer any memory of them ever being in existence. But what will replace them? The problem is that as the physical part of human interaction and communication gets more complex, so by necessity does the iconography. What was once a clearly defined activity, such as “I watch TV”, has morphed into “I Skype my friend on my connected TV”. “I read the news in the paper” is now more likely to be “I read the news on my smart phone”. The question is at what point finding a universal visual vocabulary for ever complex activities becomes futile. Some icons will move into the abstract space where the meaning is instilled through what is commonly known as branding. We can already see this with Facebook, Skype and Twitter, whose logos have effectively turned into icons describing an activity.

But what about the so-called ‘way finding’ icons? At the risk of sounding a little nostalgic, my bet is that while newspapers may go completely digital and TV’s become multifunctional communication devices, their original form and purpose will live on in the world of icons for generations to come. And as for our User interface? In the end we decided to do a combo of words and icons. Nothing beats a good compromise.