Data is a source of information to improve and make businesses profitable. Thanks to data analysis, we are able to examine, clean, transform and model data with a specific objective. In the 2023 Spanish Hospitality Yearbook we found a lot of data about hospitality in the country, its evolution and its future. In 2022, there was already a boost in the sector to reach pre-pandemic levels, and it was in 2023 that hospitality received a significant boost.

According to the study presented by the employers, some data that we can take into account from last year for the sector are: In catering, an additional 9.2% was invoiced, employment reached its peak of 1.9 million workers in the summer months, tourism is increasingly qualitative (the number of visitors with lower income is falling), cities such as Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Seville and Bilbao lead the segment of the most expensive establishments, and 2024 is expected to bring an increase in growth of between 2% and 4%.

And how do we know all this? ‍

Thanks to data and its analysis, to digitalization and the search for improvements. The next step is to polish the data we have at our disposal (both from the hospitality sector in general and from your own business in particular) to be able to show the results visually and thus explain the story to reach a conclusion: decision-making.

In Spain, the use of Artificial Intelligence and Big Data by 2022 It has increased by 3.6 points in companies with more than 10 employees.

11.8% of small businesses are already incorporating AI into their business to increase their profits and save costs.

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Let's go in parts, why does your restaurant, hotel or cafeteria need data analysis?

Data analysis for businesses in the horeca sector is key. Do you want your hotel to pay less for electricity? Or maybe you're thinking about reducing your local water consumption? Is it possible that you are considering an improvement in the gas bill of your cookers? Do you have several coffee shops and do you need to analyse the variable costs of each one? Do you want to know the specific benefit of one of your restaurants? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you need the help of data analysis to make informed and strategic decisions that will improve the efficiency and profitability of your business in the long term (and at Polaroo, we're sure you'll notice the improvement in the short term, too).

Every day we see how hospitality is increasingly a competitive market, customers are looking for price and quality to be in line with the dish being presented to them. And business profitability is increasingly subject not only to the expectations of diners, but also to price behaviour and the recurring costs incurred. Therefore, we encourage you to review what data you have and how you can, based on it, find opportunities for improvement that promote a viable horeca business.

Here are the advantages of using data analysis in a business, be it a restaurant, a hotel or a coffee shop:

• Informed decision-making: It allows businesses and owners of restaurants, hotels and catering to make more informed decisions based on facts identified in the data.

• ‍Identifying trends and patterns: It helps to discover trends, patterns and correlations in data, which can be essential for predicting future events or understanding past behaviour. Don't run out of rice on paella Thursdays, nor do you have other products left over on days with less demand.

• Process optimization: It makes it easy to identify areas of improvement and efficiency in business processes by analysing operational and performance data from the restaurants, hotels or coffee shops you have.

• ‍Personalization and segmentation: It allows companies to personalize products, services, and marketing and communication strategies by better understanding customer preferences and behaviours through data segmentation.

• Anomaly detection: It makes it easy to identify atypical data or anomalies or errors that could indicate significant problems or opportunities. It also helps detect suspicious patterns or abnormal behaviour that could indicate fraudulent activities in your horeca business.

• Improved performance: It allows us to evaluate and improve performance in various aspects, from employee performance to the efficiency of the processes of a restaurant, hotel or cafeteria.

• Optimizing resources: Allows you to allocate resources more efficiently by identifying areas where adjustments can be made to maximize results. If we know that there is more work on the weekends, we will be able to have more staff than at other times.

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Get the most benefits and efficiency for your hotel or restaurant

Here's where to find the data and how to use it to get the most out of it for a hotel, restaurant and/or cafeteria.

Monitor your recurring expenses:

‍A tool like Polaroo allows business owners to know how much their stores, hotels, restaurants or coffee shops spend on basic supplies, get the best rates for each supply and ensure they have the best suppliers on a regular basis.

Recurrent or fixed costs are often the biggest forgotten costs in administration tasks. A service is usually registered with a company, and it is never changed again out of laziness, thinking that all suppliers give the same thing at the same price, because of the cumbersome of the process or simply because of oblivion. But that is precisely where we can find many savings possibilities. Lowering the cost of a fixed expense will have a positive impact on business accounts.

Study the opinion of your customers:

One of the most critical data sets for a restaurant or hotel includes information about customer preferences. Collecting data on the most popular dishes in a restaurant, the busiest times and specific dietary preferences, the most booked or most reviewed rooms, comments from specific areas of the place, etc., allows the entrepreneur to customize their offer and adapt to the needs of the customers.

Order and reservation management systems and loyalty programs are very important sources of data in this regard. Customer feedback, whether through surveys, online reviews or direct feedback, is a set of data that can influence business decision-making. From here you can get great stories that will improve business results.

Control the company's operational performance:

‍Which workers do the most in the morning? We study the context because it is also a source of data. Does your restaurant have a higher turnover at noon or at night? This way we can configure the workers' shifts and their breaks. It is possible that more bread is also consumed in the first half of the day, we must have stock to meet demand.

It may also be that employees spend a lot of time during their workday performing tasks that could be automated thanks to different technological solutions, which will impact business productivity. Time is money. Within this point, we also study the performance of suppliers, their compliance with delivery times, ingredient demand studies for coherent stock management, etc.

To effectively manage this data, restaurants and hotels must invest in integrated management systems that facilitate the collection, storage and analysis of information. Point of sale (POS) platforms, customer relationship management (CRM) software, and analytical tools can work together to provide a complete and detailed view of restaurant performance.

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Profitability of a dish: Cost ingredients + Labor + Operating expenses = Competitive and profitable price.

Profitability of a room: Interior design cost + Labor + Operating expenses (cleaning, maintenance, updates) = Competitive and profitable price.

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Implementing predictive analysis techniques or Artificial Intelligence tools can also be beneficial. By forecasting demand trends, HORECA businesses can anticipate changes in customer preferences and adjust their supply accordingly.

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How does Polaroo analyse data to make your business profitable?

At Polaroo, we digitize and process the data of hundreds of bills for multiple supplies, consolidating it into a platform where it is possible to demonstrate the evolution of expenses, identify consumption patterns, accurately calculate the costs associated with the provision of the basic services of a real estate asset and simplify their management.

In addition, it integrates Artificial Intelligence, so that not only can you know the monthly attributable cost of each service and for each property, but you can also understand the invoices, the calculations, etc.

With this information, our expert team is supported, to identify incidents, understand the behaviour of each customer and decide on the basis of whether it is necessary to change suppliers or improve service conditions (increasing or decreasing contracted power, for example).

For example, since Teikit became our customer, they have achieved:

Cut 560 hours of work. A saving of 34,000 euros and an 85% increase in efficiency in administrative and operational management.

In the words of Jordi, the CEO of the business:

“It takes the bull by the horns, it helps you understand the management opportunity you have and on top of that it provides you with an entire technological platform with information to know what you are spending in each place and that is what you need because you never really know what you are spending.”‍

Polaroo boosts the profitability and operational efficiency of your business, eliminating management friction with electricity, gas, water, internet or telephone suppliers. Centralize the management of services, suppliers, contracts and invoices in a single place. In addition, it connects to your ERP system to save hours of manual work.

Save up to 40% on the costs associated with supplies from your hotel, restaurant or cafeteria.