The internet has brought hotel operators almost too much of a good thing, as guests offer a blizzard of information about themselves when they make inquiries and reservations.

Sorting out which pieces of information are useful is the key to improving a hotel’s profits. To that end, a new report from Cornell University provides a specific mechanism for winnowing the data.

The report, "The Strategic Value of Information: A Manager’s Guide to Profiting from Information Systems," is written by Cornell Professor Gabriele Piccoli and Paolo Torchio, vice president, E-site Marketing.

It is available at no charge from The Center for Hospitality Research.

“We suggest that you begin by making an inventory of all the data that are available from your transaction-processing systems,” said Piccoli. “Then imagine what you’d like to learn from all those data, and you have a set of potential data-driven initiatives.”

The system, which was developed by Piccoli and Torchio, submits the list of potential initiatives to a triage—in which the manager can perform a cost–benefit assessment to determine which project is worth pursuing.

The potential initiatives can be put in one of the following four categories, according to the availability of data and the potential of the project:

1.       Imperatives - initiatives that have considerable upside potential and rely on readily available data.

2.       Quick wins - those that have readily available data, but do not have overwhelming upside potential.

3.       Trade-offs - initiatives with great potential but no readily available data, ” possibly worth pursuing in the future. "

4.       Losing causes - those that offer neither upside potential nor readily available information.

“Information is powerful, but you have to know how to use it,” Torchio concludes. “We believe that this straightforward approach provides a relatively quick way to determine how to profit from the flow of data flowing from the internet.”

All CHR Reports and Tools are available from the Center's web site.