Customer-Related Digitization of the Horeca Industry

This thesis aims to find out, analyse and highlight the most appropriate solutions for the expectations and needs of customers in the Horeca industry in a digitization point of view. It starts with the introduction of entrepreneurship environment, tells briefly about start-ups and provides some information about investments on different sectors to understand the current situation and realize the opportunities for implementations related to entrepreneurship. The introduction part continues with highlighting the travel and tourism sector, its size and related industries, and ends with the introduction of digitization, customer expectations and Horeca industry. In the second part, the study focuses deeply on the Horeca industry. At the beginning, it describes the industry in detail including its characteristics, industry elements concerning hotels, restaurants and bars and catering services with profoundly defining and qualifying each of them. Second part continues with the information of Horeca resources such as raw materials and products, technology, equipment and machines, decorative items, lands and buildings and human resources. It is followed by the research on different markets and industry-related statistics to give numbers and various data based on the findings to bring out a more specified view about the industry potential and customer demands. These statistics are divided into two sub-topics which give information about “travel and tourism”, and “hotels, restaurants and catering” separately. Second part is ended with the definition and analyzing the current trends of Horeca, which are given as smartphone usage, mobile and digital payments, user experience design, responsible travelling, digital marketing and social media activities, and streaming. The third part focuses on understanding the expectations of existing customers which were determined as in the following: discovery and ease of reaching to quality, personalized local experience, reliability and engagement, flexibility and easy-to-understand services, sustainability and reduction of waste and experience sharing. This part also delivers a detailed definition, information from various researches and the reasons why these expectations have arisen in the industry. In the fourth part, digitization in the Horeca industry represents the focus and the effect of digitization to meet customer expectations has been investigated. It is based on giving examples of current start-ups and companies that provide customers of this industry products and services which include digital implementations and innovations. This part purposes to achieve effective solutions for customer expectations and needs by making use of the data and information mentioned in the previous sections. In detail, analysis of the selected company structures and solutions is done at this part of the thesis work, aiming to understand the best services given by those companies by making comparisons concerning their level of customer-focus and their success to meet the expectations. The fifth part gives information about the future of digitization and evolution of services related to the operations of Horeca enterprises. In particular, the purpose is to determine the direction of change in the use of technology and associated developments. The thesis study ends with the conclusion part in which the final implications of all the previously mentioned data and researches are explained, the study is summarised