Marketers working in the field of guest experience have a hard time catching a client’s eye at a crowded and extremely noisy hospitality trade fair. Learning how to navigate your segmentation strategy amid the ever-growing consumer demands will make your property stand out from the rest.

Brands can no longer appeal to all customers with one message. Neither can they succeed by simply breaking their broader audience into smaller groups by age, demographics, or geographic location. Meanwhile, the big data seem to have opened a horn of plenty. Or the jaws of hell? Companies race to extract as much valuable information as possible from customer digital touchpoint data. Clients go bananas when they receive another intrusive email. Intriguing, isn’t it?

The hospitality experiments are a powerful tool to ease the hard work. It helps leverage scientific data and cost-effective methods to design surveys and analyze the results.

"Understanding how different attributes of a listing affect guest experience, attitudes, and booking intentions is crucial for any hospitality business. Conducting hospitality experiments is the only way to pre-test the effectiveness of your marketing practices, pictures, descriptions, labels, photos, and so on." — says Dr. Maksim Godovykh.

Let’s take a closer look at some segmentation trends.

1. Sonically Discreet Spaces
The demand for hotel rooms and B&B apartments with soundproof walls is rising. In the first place, this brilliant feature concerned those who wanted to practice music at home without disturbing people next door or on the floor below. However, the nerve-racking lockdown experience during the COVID-19 pandemic has made sonically insulated rooms enjoy wider popularity among ordinary city dwellers and travelers. Some simply seek a good night’s sleep, others want to stomp on the floor or enjoy singing shower songs in privacy. The coveted soundproof apartments and hotel rooms are also popular among loud streamers.

Should the property owner invest in game room amenities, a karaoke system, or a shower speaker — to increase the number of bookings? Test the hypothesis first. It is important to identify the effects of specific listing attributes on guest experience and establish their cause-and-effect relationships.

"Experiments help us manipulate one specific factor while keeping all others constant. This is the only way to conclude about the causality of these effects, showing that changes in pictures, descriptions, colors, sustainable practices, or any other attributes lead to changes in guests' attitudes and booking intentions," says Dr. Maksim Godovykh.

2. Hobby-driven Approach To Lodging Design
In this case, a dwelling is designed to fulfill the needs of enthusiasts wishing to practice their favorite hobby at home or in a hotel room. For example, if you are an athlete, you may be interested in a home gym, where you can find all the necessary workout gear to get your sweat on. In addition to that, you may want to have a personal trainer helping you achieve your fitness goals during your stay, as well as a sports equipment maintenance service. The property manager offers all of that.

If you love cooking, there is an apartment with a larger kitchen and a wide range of cooking tools and utensil sets.

There are options with a hot tub, a home cinema, a stationary bike room, or even stadium-style seating on the roof with views into a nearby stadium so that you can watch the games.

Whichever way you slice it, the role of property photos — highlighting particular features of space — should not be underestimated when drawing attention to your hotel or vacation rental listings. It has a huge potential to influence guests' intentions. At the same time, you may find it hard to judge which photo works and which doesn’t. The best shot — is to pre-test it with potential visitors.

3. "Ohitorisama" Travel Plans
The “Ohitorisama” concept emerged over two decades ago. It was coined by a Japanese journalist, Iwashita Kumiko, as early as 1999. The term is variously translated as “singleton,” “single woman,” and “individual.” In her original text, Iwashita defines it most notably as: “an adult woman who is an established individual.” Hospitality business managers soon noticed there was a gap in the market. So they came up with the “ohitorisama travel plans.”

A recent survey suggests that 68% of participants identify themselves as independent travelers. Meanwhile, Forbes indicates that 2024 will be the year of the solo traveler.

As the solo market grows, the hospitality industry evolves to meet the needs of those seeking quality "me time."

On the one hand, there is a big focus on creating shared spaces within the same property where solo travelers can meet and spend time together, e.g., open-air lounge areas, game rooms, and bars. On the other hand, there is a rise of capsule hotel models and a trend to advocate solitude, customizing physical environments to help people feel comfortable.

In order to address the right consumer pain points, it is utterly important to pre-test the description and the wording of your offering. It could influence guests’ feelings, attitudes, and intentions and, thus, have a huge impact on their booking decisions.

When prospecting for new customers or crafting a retention strategy, even if the market segments are refined, it is utterly important to discover the customer-perceived value and not make a personalization mistake.

Guest analytics help to properly leverage customer data in your marketing efforts and to create unique spaces with personalized touches. Overall, client impression and satisfaction depend greatly on the ability to have a specialized, customizable product or service.

To sum it up, pre-test the effectiveness of certain attributes of your listings, properly analyze the collected data, and then effectively use the findings to increase your property's revenue.

Learn more with Hospitality Knowledge Base.