1 Power Shifts to the Connected Customer
From Exclusive to Inclusive
Exclusive: The guests pay for the service only at the resort upon check in.
Inclusive: Guest can now pay through online BPI, BDO or even over atm deposit and Cebuana payment outlets for reservation fee. It’s a hassle free and more convenient way to pay. They can even send poof of payment electronically by taking a picture of the slip and sending it through Facebook messenger or Viber instead of emailing it.
From Vertical to Horizontal
Vertical: The resort’s main avenue for advertising is through road signs and distributing flyers within 5 km radius from the business site.
Horizontal: Guests nowadays have other means of getting information about the resort via FB, Google reviews, website, YouTube channels, earned media, word of mouth that they are not required to leave home to be able to research about the company.
From Individual to Social
Individual: Guest express their complaints directly to the front office manager at the resort.
Social: Guest express their positive, neutral and negative comments via Email, FB testimonials, blogs and even bargain for discounts and take advantage of the technology and social media to even get freebies. Nowadays guests can influence others about a brand far from what the resort wants to project. In today’s world, there is a strong need for community managers to monitor the comments and sentiments of guests as they comment on FB threads. Some netizens are very impatient, if you do not respond to their inquiries right away they will post something that is not nice like, “no one is answering my phone call” they are highly demanding even if we have 95% to 100% response rate on Facebook.
A. What are the trends in your industry that demonstrate the shifts toward a more horizontal, inclusive and social business landscape?
Shift towards horizontal: Resort guests believe more in F-fact (friends, families, FB, Fans, Twitter followers) because they can easily access social media and company websites where in they can get information about the resort. They can search anything about the resort over search engines like Google and YouTube.
Shift towards inclusive: This enables the company to tap other markets that they cannot reach before, by joining FB groups, the resort was able to advertise to different organization and communities, and these communities had a more active role. Inclusivity is creating a social fence of stake holders, customer, suppliers, financiers, workforce, local government and interest group to improve the brand though collective feedback.
Shift towards social business landscape: Guests buying process is becoming more social, resort guests are becoming more active in online social platforms and this has been the contributing to their behavior in decision making. Online reviews in TripAdvisor has a huge impact if they are going to book or not.
B. What are your plans to embrace these shifts in the marketplace?
We make sure to consider the sentiments of the guests and feedback of those who have experienced the resort and try to tailor fit the products and services according to what could make their experience worthwhile. We combine online and offline strategies and take into account their insights based on a survey given upon check out and their response on emails after the outing. This is to generate and build return guests and loyal customers. To make them feel that they are important.