Brought to you by Pan Pacific Hotels Group.

The hospitality industry has evolved significantly over the past decade, evidenced by new customer segments, expectations and lifestyle habits, along with an industry-wide trend towards a greater emphasis on the overall well-being, enrichment and experience of travellers. With today’s travellers placing greater value than ever on authenticity, customisation and flexibility; hotels are also moving away from cookie-cutter, white-glove delivery to genuine and heartfelt service where each guest is treated as a unique individual.

Guests are gravitating towards brands that listen to them and offer unique values, which is perhaps not always so immediately apparent in some of the bigger hotel chains. Pan Pacific Hotels Group (PPHG) has taken steps to position itself for sustained growth into the future and to meet the needs of its guests tomorrow.

Pan Pacific Hotels Group embarked on a brand refresh journey, which started naturally with, asking its customers what they want – today, and then five to ten years down the road. After consulting with more than a thousand guests, partners and frequent travellers, the recurring theme which emerged was the importance of trust. Taking great care to perpetuate this enduring value in its business conduct and operations — which is crucial in today’s ever-changing and fast-paced world— into its refreshed philosophy, Pan Pacific also introduced and revitalised its corporate bookers and guest loyalty programmes as part of its marketing initiatives.

Pan Pacific DISCOVERY

As a founding member of the Global Hotel Alliance (GHA), the world’s largest alliance of hotel brands, PPHG offers membership to DISCOVERY, which provides a special selection of benefits and personalised services and entitles the member to intriguing Local Experiences to make the travel unforgettable.

In June, PPHG private-labelled this loyalty programme to become Pan Pacific DISCOVERY. Along with that, PPHG introduced more meaningful benefits to members including an exclusive members’ rate, late check out till 3pm and upgrades to the next room category with direct bookings.

Joining the programme in August are the Serviced Suites under the Group, which will offer members’ privileges which are customised to their guests. These include a range of benefits including airport transfers, complimentary laundry and branded toiletries.

Pan Pacific Connections

Launched in May, Pan Pacific Connections is a by-invitation only bookers’ programme to recognise, retain and reward loyal corporates bookers for booking rooms, meetings and events at all properties under the Group. Membership is open to both corporate accounts and individual booker accounts, where members earn points for every eligible stay and meeting.

Delivered through a seamless digital platform, members will be able to log-in to their account round-the-clock and book negotiated corporate rates or special corporate rates directly through the website, www.panpacificconnections.com. Members are able to enjoy instant reward points for their bookings, which can be used to redeem a rich selection of rewards from hotel stays, dining, wellness, lifestyle and shopping products.

Ms Cinn Tan, Chief Sales & Marketing Officer, said: “The brand refresh arose from our desire to engage our customers more actively and to meet their needs, which are constantly evolving. Aligned with our aspirations of sincerity in service, we developed these loyalty programmes from inside out by first looking at the rewards and benefits which are most meaningful to our customers – both B2B and B2C. We hope to generate more brand love and loyalty to our hotels through these efforts, and will keep innovating and improving to always stay top-of-mind as our partners’ preferred hotel brand in the region.”

Whether you’re planning your own vacation or making a booking on someone’s behalf, Pan Pacific Hotels Group’s loyalty programmes open up a world of exclusive benefits across 40 hotels, resorts and serviced suites located in Asia, Europe, Oceania and North America. Click here to find out more: Panpacific.com/discovery and www.panpacificconnections.com

Brought to you by Avis.

As an international corporation, Avis is committed to both corporate and employee involvement in civic as well as charitable activities. Our corporate responsibility extends beyond philanthropy and volunteerism to include consistent adherence to business practices that are friendly to customers, employees, and or course, the environment.

Avis in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, has introduced numerous measures to ensure a greener fleet is available to our customers. Globally, we have introduced a rigorous check between rentals to ensure vehicles run at peak efficiency. To ensure fuel efficiency, the fleet is rapidly replaced which ensures the use of the newest and most fuel-efficient engines.

Our fleet includes hundreds of new, environmentally-friendly cars that run on fuels other than petrol or diesel. We continue to work with car manufacturers so that our customers can choose the cleanest vehicles around, including the Mercedes-Benz Blue EFFICIENCY vehicles across Europe and more than 400 Flexifuel/BioPower vehicles in Scandinavia.

We are happy to share energy-efficient and eco-driving tips with you and your customers to ensure that we all play a part to protect our Planet Earth. In addition, how we drive not only helps us get the best out of the existing car but it is also good for our back pockets too!

1. Avoid Quick Acceleration and Aggressive Driving When we step on the accelerator, our car is expending energy as heat and noise. It produces high pollution rates and wastes fuel. According to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, one second of high-powered driving can produce nearly the same volume of carbon monoxide emissions as a half hour of normal driving.

2. Stick to the Speed Limit Drive within the speed limit. Higher speed means more energy spent on overcoming friction and maintaining the momentum. Instead of driving at 120 km/h (75 mph), if we drive at 105 km/h (65 mph), our fuel economy will improve by about 10% and tailpipe pollution will decrease. Cruise control will help maintain a steady, constant speed, which will reduce the need for acceleration and braking.

3. Avoid Rush Hour The stop-and-go driving of rush hour burns fuel and increases emissions of smog-forming pollutants – not to mention the effects of road rage on our health. It would be worthwhile to plan our schedule to avoid driving during peak traffic times or use a GPS to find a less busy route.

4. Avoid Hard Braking Anticipate rather than breaking hard! This will prevent increased pollution, wasted gas and wear on the breaks. This is especially true for congested, high traffic areas. 5. Do Not idle for more than a minute The philosophy of managing the engine extends to idle time too. An idle but turned-on engine generates more pollution than driving, and it wastes fuel too.

6. Use an Electronic Toll Collection System, where available Avis e-TollTM avoids cash payment lines at toll booths in the USA and Canada. Studies have found that paying tolls electronically reduces hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide emissions by 40%-63% and reduces emissions by 16%.

7. Benefit from a GPS Navigation System The GPS navigation from Avis, provides real-time traffic alerts to help avoid traffic jams and road construction. It also guides drivers to their destination without getting lost, eliminating the extra driving that could result when they do get lost. Besides saving on fuel, money and driving time, anxiety and stress levels are reduced too!

So, be a Green Driver and make the most of the mileage for the money spent, save on fuel and reduce the overall environmental impact!

Extracted from avis.com Photo Sources: Avis, Getty Images, Pixabay

About Avis Avis Car Rental and its subsidiaries operate one of the world’s best-known car rental brands with approximately 5,500 locations in more than 170 countries. Avis has a long history of innovation in the car rental industry and is one of the world’s top brands for customer loyalty.

Brought to you by Cendyn.

Travellers today are more connected, informed and tech savvy than ever before. This has opened a multitude of new ways for hotels to gather data and use it to enhance the guest experience. However, there are challenges when it comes to gaining a 360-degree view of that data. Hotels need technology solutions that can integrate together to help build a more detailed view of the guest and use it to deliver more personalized services and marketing.

Today, a hotel may use a dozen or more applications, from revenue management systems to guest survey solutions to marketing automation software. “Guests leave a tremendous amount of data in their wake at the various touchpoints during their stay—website, call center, PMS, mobile app, POS, activities, survey, loyalty program, just to name a few,” said Tim Sullivan, Chief Revenue Office at Cendyn. “The challenge is that each of these systems captures a sliver
of information about the guest, and it’s housed in disparate data silos.”

When you consider the entire lifecycle of a guest, which may encompass multiple stays at properties and brands within a hotel group, the amount of data increases exponentially. The challenges arise out of the evolution of technology in hotels. New tools have been developed piecemeal over the years, some as standalone applications, others as add-ons. Because many of the systems do not communicate with one another, a hotel company may have multiple profiles of the same guest scattered across its properties and databases.

In today’s competitive marketplace, hotels need to know their guests and earn their loyalty. Customer relationship management (CRM) utilizes a combination of technology and human hospitality to create rich profiles of guests and cater to their individual needs and preferences.

By mining these profiles, staff can make informed decisions about the services, amenities and marketing campaigns they need to gain an edge over competitors. And with a single view of the customer, hotel staff can ensure that engagement is meaningful and relevant at every touchpoint during the guest journey. For example, a single profile within a CRM can include the guest’s photo, stay history, total spend, interests, preferred room types, links to social profiles, loyalty program status, and feedback from previous stays.

In addition to the single, consolidated view of every guest, hotels are also well positioned using CRM, to be transparent and upfront about how they use and store guests’ data. By centralizing their data, hotels know exactly where the data is stored, who has access to it, and who controls it.

Some hoteliers have misconceptions of CRM, that it provides an email marketing platform and not much else. CRM has capabilities far outreaching that of email marketing, by providing a consolidated view of every guest, it allows hoteliers to act on their data through segmentation, personalization and accurate, real-time reporting.

A great example of this is how a central profile within a CRM can play a pivotal role in improving the guest experience across the whole travel journey. Hoteliers can automate, segment and tailor how they communicate based on data points such as:

• Spend per stay
• Frequency of visits
• Preferred locations and booking patterns
• Interests
• Behavior
• Satisfaction
• Reasons for travel

This wealth of data and activity means they are now communicating via the right channel, at the right time, with the right message. Here are a few examples of how using segmentation and personalization can improve every day activities at a hotel:

• Tailor transactional/confirmation emails based on reservation and preference data
• Up-sell room upgrades, and amenities based on reservation type, room type and preferences
• Provide a tailored check-in experience based on arrival times
• Display and provide personalized welcome gifts in the room for arrival
• Send reminder emails to guests to book again based on stay dates and preferences

To find out more about the CRM data warehouse and how it can improve engagement and operations at your hotel, download this guide.