Trends in the Hospitality Industry
Nowadays trends are everywhere. You can find them in every industry and they play a huge role. The retro trend in clothing, the SUV trend in the car industry, but nowhere else are trends more important than in the hospitality industry. But what exactly is a trend? A trend describes usually the time measurable course of a development into a certain quantitative and/or qualitative direction. In economics, trends are changes of the behavior of the society. In marketing research this describes the change and development of the consumerism and consumption behavior.
In old days it was okay for a hotel to have only rooms and a restaurant. Today a hotel has to have a recreation centre, a beauty farm, a shopping arcade etc. The guests want it, even if they just stay for one night. Hotel managers have to deal with a lot of wishes and expectations of the guests, so they have to have a look of the hospitality industry from two sides ? from the industry specific and from the guest specific. So where are the trends heading to? I will start with the industry specific trends.
1. Changing customer profile
Health Care and medical treatments help elder people to life a longer and more active life.
Horst W. Opaschowski predicts that, because of the demographic development, the market "new seniors" will double. So hotels will start to create special menus, treatments and activities for those guests.
Also the business travellers have changed. Less business travellers are more often less travelling.
This graphic shows that the length of the travel is raised 10 %. But if we have a look at the amount of national business trips within the United States, they will have grown back:
It is no surprise that the internatio ...