Hotel Tech-in is our regular feature that takes a closer look at emerging technology in the hospitality industry.
As one of the largest hotel companies in the world, France-based Accor has more than 5,700 hotels, and approximately 10,000 restaurants and bars.
So when Swedish company Soundtrack began talking to the hotel giant about creating soundscapes and playlists for Accor’s various venues, CEO Ola Sars knew forming a partnership would be no easy task.
“Accor is one of our most complex customers,” Sars said, adding that, despite this, he believed Soundtrack was uniquely suited to handle that complexity.
Hotel Dive sat down with Sars to discuss the new partnership, how hoteliers can use tech to create soundscapes and the importance of music to the guest experience.
Hospitality’s music needs
Stockholm-based Soundtrack originated from within Spotify, the world’s largest B2C music streaming platform. Originally called Spotify for Business, Soundtrack was founded to provide the same services through a B2B lens.
“Music is played everywhere where brands meet their consumers in physical spaces,” Sars said.
But a brand’s music choices have an impact beyond a venue’s atmosphere, he added. According to a study Soundtrack conducted with a global hamburger restaurant chain, sales rose 9.1% when customers heard “a mix of hits and lesser known songs chosen to fit the brand,” as compared to playlists with random hits.
Hospitality companies, however, have more complex music needs than other businesses, Sars said.
“Hospitality is the industry vertical that we see has the highest [sound] requirements,” he said, adding that hotels seem to “truly understand how music can change, make or break a customer experience.”
What’s more, large hotels rarely set one playlist for the entire property, he added. These properties often host several “sound zones,” as Soundtrack calls them — spaces requiring different sets of music. Even within those sound zones, he noted, the music can change.
“Seventy-two percent of guests actually notice the background music in hotels. That's a very high number relative to retail, for example. So this notion of it being ‘background music’ isn't true. It’s foreground music.”
Ola Sars
CEO of Soundtrack
“It's not only the number of sound zones or different kinds of locations,” Sars said. “It's also time of day. Lunch sounds different than breakfast, than dinner, than right after work. It’s [having] the right music at the right place at the right time.
“Solving that in the broader corporate complexity of Accor [is what] the Soundtrack platform was able to cater to,” he added.
Adapting to different spaces
All on one unified platform, Soundtrack allows hoteliers to customize music for each individual sound zone — whether it’s the lobby, spa, gym, restaurant or elsewhere. While individual Accor properties can choose whether to opt in, the platform is the preferred music provider for the company.
With Soundtrack’s technology, a hotelier can do everything from meticulously selecting every track, to pressing play on a recommended playlist for a more set-it-and-forget-it approach.
A chain of hotels in Sweden, for example, brought in guest DJs to handpick songs for its Soundtrack playlists. “They have a guest DJ who's not on premises, but she or he has actually picked the tracks and curated the experience for them,” Sars said.
Other hoteliers prefer the opposite: letting Soundtrack do the curation for them. For instance, smaller-scale, family-run hotels can go online, buy a subscription and set up Soundtrack-curated playlists themselves.
“When you're signing up, we know [where you are], and we have some more information about your brand. We recommend maybe 10 or 20 different playlists for you that you can press play on, then just fire and forget,” Sars said. “Then our algorithms update those playlists according to the profile and you never really have to touch the music.”
According to Sars, that versatility has been key to Soundtrack’s success. The CEO also believes that Soundtrack’s proliferation in hospitality spaces — the app’s other clients include Ritz-Carlton, Four Seasons, W Hotels and Hard Rock Hotels & Casinos — is having an impact on guests, too.
“Seventy-two percent of guests actually notice the background music in hotels. That's a very high number relative to retail, for example,” he said. “So this notion of it being ‘background music’ isn't true. It’s foreground music.”
And having great music can be a strategy to keep more hotel guests on-premises, Sars noted. He pointed to a Soundtrack study that found that 40% of consumers said they would stay longer in a hotel bar if they liked the music.
“And time is money at a bar, right?” Sars said.
