Sabre Hospitality Solutions president Scott Wilson has told delegates at Travel Forward that hoteliers should start their personalisation journey at their brand dotcom and other owned channels.

Joining the event from Chicago via a video link, Wilson was responding to a question from the floor, asking how hoteliers could take their first step towards retailing and personalisation.

“Start with what is yours, what you can control, such as your own web site,” he replied. “Concentrate on the content and assets you already have.”

Platforms such as Sabre’s SynXis have the tools for personalising brand dotcoms built in, giving hoteliers a cost-efficient “straight out of the box” way to offer guests a curated experience.

Third-party distribution for hoteliers via online and retail travel agents is an option today and am important channel, although many of retailing and personalisation options cannot be carried over to third parties, leaving many hotels unable to differentiate.

Wilson noted that this was a familiar refrain over the years from airlines and led to the development of NDC – the industry standard developed by IATA to help airlines sell seats and ancillaries via third parties with the same degree of control that they have when selling direct.

However, hotels have no comparable global industry association to take on such a task. But Wilson believes that standard will emerge. “If you look at the internet, familiar features such as  HTTP or javascript became a de facto standard without a governing body creating and overseeing them.

“Hotels need to have at least an industry baseline to support information sharing because intermediaries will need to embrace the new capabilities that hotels have around retailing, distribution and fulfilment,” he said.

Wilson repeated that cutting edge retailing technology is available through SynXis and others. “As the technology becomes more mature it can be embedded into a platform. You don’t need to build a data science team to apply best practice for personalisation.”