2 Table of contents 1.Executive Summary 3 2.About HEDNA 5 3.About Hotel Analytics Working Group 6 4.Introduction 8 4.1Background 8 4.2Research Objectives 9 4.3Research Methodology 9 4.4Research Results 10 5.Survey Results & Analysis 11 6.Findings 25 6.1General25 6.2Chains 27 6.3Management Companies 27 6.4Independents 28 7. Conclusions & Next Steps 30 3 1. Executive Summary “Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink”– Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1798, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Coleridge’s quote is an apt description for the global state of hotel distribution data managementand as this paper sets out to reveal, the responses and general enthusiasm for the initial surveyvalidates a mandate for guidance as well as change. HEDNA’s Hotel Analytics working group (founded in the spring of 2017) set-out to investigatekey ways in which hoteliers collect store, analyze and action their data as part of their distributionoperations, The objective is to prepare industry best practice recommendations and identifyopportunities for added value from the data. The group opted to focus initially on defining the current status of hotels’ approach to distributiondata management, based on a working group pre-survey that quantified that issues related to datacollection and storage were pre-requisites for future industry improvements. A 20-part survey was released in October 2017 and over an 8-week period, generated 1,053 globalresponses, representing over 40,000 hotels and Management Companies., in itself a significantachievement as one of the largest survey samples collected. The survey set out to quantify current practice in data collection, storage and usages, as well as testrespondents’ overall data satisfaction.The Survey responders come from all major continents andrepresent hotels, management companies and independents. The Analytics Working Group split into3 groups to analyze the sample size across these three segments.Data quality and systems integration were cited as key challenges and potentialbarriers to analyticsinitiatives. Throughout the survey, the importance of the OTAs both in terms of impact on inventory allocationbut also the relatively positive quality and access to data was reinforced across all segmentssurveyed. Repeatedly throughout the survey it became apparent that despite high collection rates across allsegments in key distribution data, such as Costs or Operational Performance, this did not translateinto KPI definition and data usage. 4 At Chain level, the data findings were surprisingly consistent with the global average, with theunusual exception of inventory mix,where 30% of Chains were found to have more than 50% oftheir available inventory placed with OTAs. For the Independents, which dominated the results with 59% of responses, the absence of resourcesand education was frequently observed both in the qualitative and qualitative data collected. This however did not limit their ability to track key data sets such as Guest Data, OTA Fees andCancellations. Finally and the most interesting contribution to the study, were the responses from the ManagementCompanies. In general they communicated high dissatisfaction with the data quality and systemsprovided by their respective chains/brands but reacted to this with substantially greater investmentsinto human resources, data warehousing and 3rd party analysis tools. This lead to their scoring proportionately higher ranking in KPI’s such as Cost of Distribution, whichalludes in itself to the future recommendations and best practice guidelines to be generated by theworking group. The initial survey results and findings were first unveiled and presented on the 30th of January 2018at the Winter HEDNA Conference in Austin, Texasat which time next steps and an outline for future best practice guidelines were defined. Two distinct approaches for further best practice developments were proposed and are currentlybeing explored. The first suggestion aims to find ways to help hoteliers leverage more of theirexisting data by making it more accessible and usable in real operational contexts. The secondsuggestion promotes greater collaboration between vendors and hoteliers in defining and aligning aset of data standards across channel types to overcome current data fragmentation. 。。。。。。