Challenge:
Minor Hotels needed to standardise its guest data across its newly acquired network of hotel groups, including in China. It needed a solution that would save time, money, and reduce the risk of human error.
Solution:
Using Tealium iQ™ Tag Management, Minor Hotels eliminated the complexity of manually implementing tags and increased its digital marketing agility.
Results:
Minor Hotels has significantly cut the time it takes to implement new tags by removing third parties, allowing business critical tasks to be carried out quickly and securely in-house. Using Tealium has saved IT staff 20% of their time, effectively handing them back one working day every week.
Managing data across multiple regions and suppliers causes strain to the business
Minor Hotels is an international hotel owner, operator, and investor, currently with a portfolio of over 530 properties. With operations in 56 countries in nearly every time zone, Minor Hotels’ provides a diverse portfolio of properties to travellers; nevertheless, they wanted a unified data across each brand. While expanding its existing hotel and spa portfolio and exploring strategic acquisitions in new markets, Minor Hotels’ vision of a more interconnected world was derailed by increasingly siloed data.
The collection of guest data became disrupted by the diverse range of technology stacks being used by the numerous hotel groups within its ecosystem. As a result of its expanding portfolio, Minor Hotels’ Digital Applications & Platforms team was not only tasked with standardising guest data from multiple software providers but also achieving a centralised view of its data across multiple regions.
Even though individual hotel groups like Avani Hotels & Resorts functioned on their own, using differing technology platforms left Minor Hotels group with data sets that were difficult to manage across all of its brands. Further to this, across APAC, Minor Hotels receives around 30% of its business from China and therefore needed a system capable of working through the country’s firewalls.
Minor Hotels also sought to reduce the number of third parties with access to critical source codes in order to limit the risk of human error as much as possible. Using multiple third parties to manage its guest data, and the coordination associated with managing these relationships was proving costly to both business revenue and staff hours.
When Anthony Green, Group Director Digital Applications & Platforms at Minor Hotel Group, found Tealium, he knew it would be the solution to change the business for the better.
“As the business grew,” Green shared, “internally managing 20-30 tags at a time became close to impossible. We knew we needed a tag management solution, but we were adamant it could not be just another third-party vendor.”
In a bid to reduce the number of external suppliers, Green opted to consolidate existing data solutions by partnering with Tealium.
Tealium worked closely with Green to deliver a bespoke product offering that would complement Minor Hotels’ business growth strategy. Soon after, Green implemented Tealium iQ™ Tag Management which would quickly prove its value by allowing his team to easily manage tagging requirements and increase tag efficiency. The implementation was quick, the solution itself proved easy to use and the hotel group saw the benefits of rapid tag deployment across multiple hotel groups from a central location.
“Tealium’s support team went above and beyond to ensure we were fully optimising the capabilities Tealium iQ™ offers,” Green said about the implementation process. “The fact that Tealium immediately eliminated the complexity of manually implementing tags and increased our digital marketing agility speaks volumes about their industry expertise and experience in providing personalised data transformation solutions.”
Less time on administration tasks means more time to push the business forward.
Before Tealium iQ™, the process of deploying tags could take several weeks. Now, Green’s team is able to implement new tags and isolate faulty ones in just a few hours. This new, consolidated approach to entry points means Minor Hotels no longer has to undertake the lengthy process of engaging with third-party developers to adjust source codes or fix technical issues. This can now be done in-house using Tealium’s software which streamlines what was once a monumental task, into a quick ‘tick’ off the to-do list.
“Being able to manage our processes in-house has been critical to the business in terms of generating savings to both revenue and time.” Green shared. “My team previously spent up to 20% of their working week managing third-party vendors, but their time has now been redirected more strategically towards business development and further streamlining internal processes.”
Critically, the elimination of multiple third parties greatly reduces the risk of human error. With fewer access points come fewer chances for mistakes to occur. However, in the case that a mistake is made, Minor Hotels’ IT team can quickly log in in-house and adjust the source code when required.
The comprehensive management of digital marketing campaigns across multiple regions has also become far easier for Minor Hotels. Having a centralised view of the company’s global data means the hotel group retains greater control and can run several projects in differing formats to generate the same result. Tealium provides an additional layer of consistency to existing data sets which standardises the information and frees up administration time otherwise lost to cross-region analysis and data entry tasks.
Tealium’s solutions are one of the few that offer consistent functionality though China’s firewalls. With nearly a third of Minor Hotel’s APAC business sitting behind these barriers, Tealium became the “obvious choice” to Green not only for its capabilities, but for its reliable functionality in the region.
Tealium iQ™ has become a key part of Minor Hotels’ core infrastructure, with Green sharing he has “full comfort and confidence in the software.” Green is thrilled with the way it has simplified the way Minor Hotels does business and, as such, considers Tealium to be a “trusted member of the family.”
