New Research

Summary

This IDC study describes the most prominent use cases that are being digitally transformed in the hospitality industry. Hospitality organizations can use this document as a guide as they define what and how they will plan for change, innovation, and new technologies along the digital transformation journey. The tables in this document provide insight into the many areas of hotel, restaurant, and travel business processes that organizations should put on their road map. This document defines the strategies, programs, and use cases that will be implemented, highlighting the benefits of moving from current processes to digitally transformed processes, and the technologies that will be required.

Dorothy Creamer, research manager, Hospitality and Travel Digital Transformation Strategies, IDC Retail Insights, says, "Hospitality and travel organizations have evolved to be digital first and now must look ahead to applying AI and other next-gen technologies to all aspects of operations and business objectives. With digital ubiquity, hotel, restaurant, and travel brands are feeling increased pressure to balance high-tech with high-touch service and engagement with data-driven capabilities across guest and employee experiences. Future-ready enterprise ecosystems need to be dynamic and flexible to adapt to changing market and geopolitical conditions while addressing fluctuating guest demands. This document is designed to provide a road map of strategic priorities to enable the effective and efficient use of technology to deliver on operational and customer-facing objectives."

Summary

This IDC Market Glance offers a graphical representation of hospitality, dining, and travel ecosystems through the lens of applying artificial intelligence (AI) and automation. This market overview illustrates key segments of the overall infrastructure components that are being overlaid with AI and automation to drive business value and achieve objectives. Included in each segment are some of the key players with AI-based offerings in each category.

Summary

This IDC study discusses our top 10 predictions for worldwide hospitality, dining, and travel for 2023.

"The rapid digital transformation of the hospitality, dining, and travel industries that occurred over the past few years is not waning," says Dorothy Creamer, research manager, Hospitality and Travel Digital Transformation Strategies at IDC. "Organizations of all sizes are realizing that to remain competitive, they must invest in and develop strong technology strategies. The stakes are high in industries hit hard by the pandemic. They have rebounded but now face greater demands in creating memorable digital-first experiences that will exceed guests' expectations."

Summary

This IDC study reviews the competitive market for travel and expense management software in 2022.

"Every business is a people business and providing flexibility in how your employees can work and travel makes you better able to keep top performers and makes your business more attractive to top-tier talent. For companies looking to provide a high-level employee experience, upgrading to a model travel and expense solution is a must," says Kevin Permenter, research director, Financial Applications at IDC.

Summary

This IDC study examines the market for travel and expense (T&E) management software.

"As travel returns, there will be changes to the travel experience itself. Travel companies (e.g., airlines, hotels, airports) will be adding more value to enrich your trip experience. These service providers will race to bring customers back, and as a result, vendors must be able to add new features and capabilities to their software packages. Agility will be even more essential as the new travel landscape takes shape," says Kevin Permenter, research director, Financial Applications at IDC.

Summary

This IDC Market Presentation showcases key findings and analysis from IDC's 2022 Worldwide Industry CloudPath Survey. This presentation examines how hospitality, travel, and dining organizations are investing and forging strategies in cloud technology, focusing on what is driving cloud adoption, key concerns, benefits, and the challenges these enterprises continue to face with cloud services.

"The hospitality, travel, and dining industries have made rapid investments in cloud technology over the course of the past several years, and they continue to adjust goals, strategies, and expectations around cloud," says Dorothy Creamer, research manager for IDC's Hospitality and Travel Digital Transformation Strategies. "As hotels, restaurants, and travel providers steadily increase spend on cloud strategies, we observe a shift in objectives and realized benefits from customer facing, including adopting new innovation and improving guest experience, to efficiency oriented, including reducing costs and improving security. This indicates a mindset shift that will continue to establish cloud services and management as a key pillar of technology infrastructure and strategy."

Summary

This IDC Survey Spotlight focuses on how key challenges facing hotels and restaurants are driving IT investments, particularly around managed services. With objectives focusing on driving profits and identifying new avenues for revenue monetization, restaurants and hotels feel increased pressure to manage and maintain existing infrastructure and service levels while identifying and implementing best paths forward. To remain competitive and bridge existing talent gaps, managed services will continue to be a vital partner for hospitality companies as they address current business struggles and focus on consistently providing frictionless guest experiences.

This IDC Survey Spotlight is based on IDC's July 2022 Global Retail Survey, which surveyed over 800 retailers worldwide, 120 of which are in the restaurant and hotel verticals.

Summary

This IDC Market Note evaluates the Tata Consulting Services (TCS) Analyst Day that took place in Boston on June 13, 2023. This document examines how TCS is applying its broader corporate strategy and vision to enable digital-first capabilities and drive business outcomes across hospitality and travel enterprises. The TCS Travel, Transportation, and Hospitality unit is seeking to capitalize on TCS' broader companywide approach to "accelerate innovation through uncertain times."

Summary

This IDC Market Analysis Perspective (MAP) provides a view of the worldwide travel and expense management software market. It is designed to summarize key trends driving the industry and provide clients with an opportunity to engage with IDC analysts on the key issues impacting this sector.

Summary

This IDC PeerScape examines several best practices for blending personalization into the digital customer experience.

"Hospitality and travel experiences are shifting to become digital first as guests expect and demand customized connected interactions with brands," says Dorothy Creamer, research manager, Hospitality and Travel Digital Transformation Strategies. "Digital CX must be personalized to maintain the higher level of service that hospitality guests are seeking. CX strategies will become increasingly dependent upon data management and visualization, artificial intelligence, robust systems integrations, and thoughtful interplay with workforce engagement and optimization tools. The combination of these systems and capabilities will drive effective, personalized digital experience strategies."

Summary

This IDC Survey Spotlight explores what workloads hospitality and travel organizations are prioritizing for deploying at the edge. The data from IDC's Worldwide Industry CloudPath Survey indicates that hospitality and travel organizations recognize the need for access to analytics and the insights that can come from AI and IoT solutions in real time to drive personalized, frictionless experiences across digital channels and on premises.

"Travel and hospitality are increasingly adopting AI and analytics solutions to improve guest and employee experience," says Dorothy Creamer, research manager, Hospitality and Travel Digital Transformation Strategies at IDC. "The need for instant access to data while leveraging cloud solutions is driving more hotels, restaurants, and airlines to consider edge solutions to help with reduced latency and faster access to actionable insights."

Summary

This IDC Market Presentation highlights emerging trends in consumer attitudes and behavior in travel and dining. With respect to meals and dining, generational shifts in attitudes are driving behavioral shifts, which will have far-reaching implications, as Gen Z and Millennials increasingly adopt a lifestyle very different from Gen X and Boomers. This presentation explores these many impacts and the role played by rewards programs. With regards to travel, this document explores the impact of inflation on planned travel over the next 12 months. It also explores how consumers use technology to book and experience travel as well as their receptivity to different kinds of travel experiences, both tech enabled and non tech enabled.

The survey was conducted among over 2,000 consumers in each of the seven countries where it was realized, namely the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Germany, Brazil, Japan, and Turkey.

Summary

This IDC Survey Spotlight reveals the top business objectives that hospitality and travel organizations are tapping AI investments to help achieve. AI is being layered across enterprise solutions to help augment employees and make them more efficient while enhancing guest experiences. Investments and strategies encompass everything from hyper-personalized content and messaging to automation that can be used for small tasks and large. Operators are also leveraging AI to identify most profitable channels and appropriately target new and emerging business models to increase revenue.

"Our data shows that hospitality and travel organizations are making AI a major factor in successful business strategies as it is layered throughout key IT initiatives," says Dorothy Creamer, research manager, Hospitality and Travel Digital Transformation Strategies at IDC. "To remain competitive, organizations are recognizing the benefits that AI offers to enhance guest experiences, increase efficiencies, and offer invaluable visibility and insights into supply chain and sustainability efforts."

Summary

This IDC Pivot Table provides worldwide data for IDC's Industry CloudPath 2023 Survey by industry. A worldwide banner and banners by region are also available.

Industry CloudPath provides deep insight into how each industry is moving to the cloud for 30 industry segments, including healthcare (payers, providers — United States only), life sciences (pharma, biotech), manufacturing (aerospace and defense, automotive, industrial products and equipment, high tech, CPG, chemicals, paper mills, and metals and materials), wholesale distribution, financial services (banking, insurance, and capital markets), retail, energy (oil and gas, power utilities, water utilities, and gas utilities), government (federal, state, and local — United States only), education (K˗12 — United States only, higher education), hospitality and food service (includes commercial travel), media and entertainment, telecommunications, and professional services.

Coverage includes overall adoption, application migration strategy and timing, drivers and inhibitors, budgeting trends, purchasing preferences, attitudes toward buying channels, vendor ratings and advocacy scores, behavioral trends, and cloud adoption and buying intentions for nearly 300 industry-specific applications.

Summary

These IDC Pivot Table banner books provide data for IDC's SaaSPath 2023 program, including 23 application categories, broken out by industry: financial services, manufacturing, life sciences, oil and gas, retail, wholesale distribution, professional services, media and entertainment, utilities, education, hospitality and food service, and transportation and logistics.

Coverage includes application adoption, deployment models, budget plans and replacement cycle timing, purchasing preferences and attitudes toward SaaS buying channels, packaging and pricing options, and in-depth vendor reviews, ratings, and spend and advocacy scores for all 23 functional application markets.

Summary

These IDC Pivot Table banner books provide data for IDC's SaaSPath 2023 program, including 8 of the 23 application categories: accounts payable (AP), accounts receivable (AR), PLM/CAD, subscription management, tax, treasury management, travel and expense (T&E), and talent acquisition.

Coverage includes application adoption, deployment models, budget plans and replacement cycle timing, purchasing preferences and attitudes toward SaaS buying channels, packaging and pricing options, and in-depth vendor reviews, ratings, and spend and advocacy scores for all 23 functional application markets.

Summary

This IDC Market Note discusses key announcements, themes, and trends presented during the Comcast Business Analyst Event held in March 2023.

Summary

This IDC study provides an assessment of the leading SaaS and cloud-enabled travel and expense software solutions and discusses the criteria that are most important for companies to consider when selecting a system.

"IDC believes that vendors looking to capture market share, or even to maintain their current market positions, need to focus on data management concerns of their clients. Building out essential data management features like advanced APIs, AI-based automation capabilities will form foundational software elements to compete in this highly dynamic space," said Kevin Permenter, research director, Financial Applications at IDC.

Summary

This IDC study provides an assessment of the leading SaaS and cloud-enabled corporate travel booking applications and discusses the criteria that are most important for companies to consider when selecting a system.

"More businesses took the opportunity to add new features to control travel spend or provide more duty of care–related functionality and controls. This was an especially powerful differentiator for software vendors with preexisting ties to new emerging areas within corporate travel booking such as auditing, sustainability, virtual cards, and duty of care," said Kevin Permenter, research director, Financial Applications at IDC.

Summary

This IDC study provides an assessment of the leading SaaS and cloud-enabled travel and expense applications and discusses the criteria that are most important for companies to consider when selecting a system.

"IDC believes that vendors looking to capture market share, or even to maintain their current market positions need to focus on data management concerns of their clients. Building out essential data management features like advanced APIs and AI-based automation capabilities will form foundational software elements to compete in this highly dynamic space," says Kevin Permenter, research director, Financial Applications at IDC.

Summary

This IDC study provides an assessment of the leading SaaS and cloud-enabled travel and expense applications and discusses the criteria that are most important for companies to consider when selecting a system.

"IDC believes that vendors looking to capture market share, or even to maintain their current market positions, need to focus on data management concerns of their clients. Building out essential data management features like advanced APIs, AI-based automation capabilities will form foundational software elements to compete in this highly dynamic space," Kevin Permenter, research director, Financial Applications at IDC.

Summary

This IDC Perspective highlights the importance of sustainability initiatives in the hospitality and travel industry. Global hospitality and travel enterprises are feeling increased pressure to identify, target, and meet goals pertaining to environmental responsibility. This comes at a time when the grace period for enterprises to digitally transform is rapidly waning as global organizations that wish to be industry leaders are adapting to an age of unprecedented digital acceleration. This mindset shift has created new demands for guest experience as well as employee engagement and overall operations — including those impacting a company's sustainability efforts.

"Rapid technological advancements have given rise to more feverish calls for action on sustainability initiatives as there are more tools at organizations' disposal to mitigate environmental impact, identify opportunities, and track progress," says Dorothy Creamer, research manager, Hospitality and Travel Digital Transformation Strategies, IDC. "As global enterprises are being held accountable for their impact on the climate, hospitality, dining, and travel, organizations are turning to technology to achieve sustainability-focused goals."

Summary

This IDC Market Glance provides a glance at the current makeup of the travel and expense software landscape, illustrates the participating vendors, and depicts the segments and structure of the market.

Summary

This IDC study examines the key strategies and capabilities that hospitality property management system vendors are offering to the worldwide enterprise hospitality market. The study evaluates and examines the strength of vendors as innovation and efficiency partners as well as capabilities in integration and partnerships, user experience, innovation, data reporting and analytics, guest engagement, flexibility, and scalability.

"The hospitality property management system space is rapidly evolving as legacy systems move to the cloud and must adapt to a complex hospitality technology ecosystem. The pressures put on front desk staff require systems that are faster and more intuitive and insightful than ever. This has put a laser focus on the PMS, and technology partners are recognizing that the PMS must be flexible and open in order to offer solutions for hotels across segments and market sizes as the market shifts to seek platform solutions," says Dorothy Creamer, research manager, Hospitality and Travel Digital Transformation Strategies at IDC. "This research uses a comprehensive set of criteria to evaluate PMS vendors that are offering solutions to the global hospitality market. With heightened demand and expectations of guests coupled with strained labor conditions, hospitality operators must evaluate PMS partners on what capabilities they can quickly roll out and iterate to help companies sustain and grow business in the years ahead as digital demands increase."

Summary

This IDC Survey Spotlight examines worldwide, North America, and U.S. enterprise expectations around spending on and budgets for corporate-liable (CL) smartphones and tablets during 2022. CL devices have a long history in enterprise, but hybrid work, the return of business travel, and ongoing digital transformation initiatives are driving growth of CL device adoption. Companies seeking to streamline hybrid work hardware options can leverage CL smartphones to provide seamless, secure connectivity to remote employees. Many digital transformation initiatives hinge on providing secure mobile access to corporate resources to remote, traveling, and frontline employees. And with 2023 expected to see a stronger return of business travel, efficiently connecting employees on the road creates more uplift for CL programs. As a result, while many organizations are merely maintaining their existing CL programs, increasingly companies are expanding budgets for CL smartphones and tablets.

Insights are derived from 700+ IT decision-maker responses in IDC's monthly Future Enterprise Resiliency and Spending Survey, Wave 9, October 2022, which examines enterprise spending and investment plans in digital transformation, business resiliency, and specific IT technologies.

Summary

This IDC Pivot Table banner book provides the industry-specific data for IDC's Industry AI Path 2022 program, which offers global insight into the use, impact, and value created by AI/ML within 28 industries, 7 enterprise application markets, and over 200 industry use cases.

Industries include healthcare (payers — United States only, providers — United States only, life sciences), manufacturing (aerospace and defense, automotive, industrial products and equipment, high tech, CPG, chemicals, paper mills, metals and materials), financial services (banking, insurance, capital markets), retail, wholesale distribution, energy (oil and gas, power utilities, water utilities, gas utilities), government (federal — United States only, state and local — United States only, higher education), hospitality and food service (including commercial travel), media and entertainment, telecommunication, and professional services.

Enterprise applications include ERP, finance, SCM, HCM, procurement, EAM, and digital commerce.

Summary

This IDC Perspective analyzes the perfect storm driving investments in digital and data for organizations throughout the travel industry to improve efficiencies, boost revenue, and increase customer loyalty and lifetime value.

"The traveler journey begins long before they reach an airport terminal and the systems and processes that ensure a frictionless experience are becoming increasingly complex. The aviation industry is at a crossroads as the need to modernize systems is aligning with the emergence of new standards and regulations across the ecosystem. The travel ecosystem technology architecture will need to be robust and agile enough to meet the demands of travelers today as well as ready to pivot to the expectations of tomorrow," said Dorothy Creamer, research manager, IDC Hospitality and Travel Digital Transformation Strategies.