What the Hospitality Industry Gets Wrong About Digital
Hospitality brands invest heavily in physical experience. Most dramatically underinvest in the digital experience that precedes and follows every
A guest's relationship with a hotel brand doesn't start at check-in and end at checkout. It starts the moment they begin searching for accommodation — and increasingly, the quality of the digital experience in that moment determines whether they ever reach the check-in desk at all.
Working with Dalata Hotel Group — Ireland's largest hotel operator, with the Clayton and Maldron brands — gave me a detailed view of how a sophisticated hospitality business thinks about digital, and where even the best operators leave significant value on the table.
The Booking Funnel is Broken
The hospitality industry's conversion rates on direct booking websites are, as a category, significantly lower than they should be. OTAs (Online Travel Agents) have invested billions in optimising their booking experiences; most hotel brands have not kept pace. The result is that hotels pay commission on bookings they should be capturing direct.
On the Dalata project, the booking funnel redesign was the highest-priority workstream. The room selection experience — the point at which a potential guest transitions from browsing to committing — was the biggest drop-off point in the existing journey. Redesigning the room selection UI, improving the photography and description quality, and clarifying the price comparison between room types delivered a measurable improvement in funnel conversion.
The Dual-Audience Problem
Most hotel websites try to serve two fundamentally different audiences simultaneously: leisure travellers planning a holiday and business travellers booking on behalf of a company. Their needs, their decision criteria, and their information requirements are completely different — and a single, undifferentiated homepage serves neither well.
The 'I'm Browsing / I'm a Customer' navigation pattern we introduced on the AA Ireland site has a hospitality equivalent: a clear fork in the user journey between 'I'm planning a stay' and 'I'm a member / I'm returning' that allows each audience to follow a path designed for their specific context.
Post-Stay Is an Untapped Opportunity
Travel retail is an area where I also have experience through work with Aer Rianta International — and one consistent observation is that hospitality brands dramatically underinvest in the post-stay digital experience. The moment a guest checks out is not the end of the relationship; it's the point at which that guest is most likely to leave a review, share their experience, and decide whether to return.
Designing the post-stay touchpoints — the follow-up communication, the loyalty programme experience, the review request — with the same care as the booking journey would, for most hospitality brands, significantly improve repeat booking rates and online reputation scores.
