Technology

I believe there is a 2 part solution here, one that cost money and one that saves money, putting them together will overall increase margin and service effectiveness. The first one is increase wages to make the hotel industry more competitive in the labor market.

Due to the rapid travel rebound, today hotels and restaurants alike are offering sign-up bonuses (Marriott is offering $1,000!), higher wages way above $15/hour, and even cash payments to candidates just to come for an interview.

When demand for accommodation is greater than supply generally a higher rate is charged for a room. This is sustainable apparently. When the demand for skilled hospitality labour is greater than supply, higher rates of pay to attract talent in a traditionally underpaid industry is unsustainable?

I fully agree with your students. We still need 50+ applications to run a single business unit (hotel) and it's not even that complicated at least for most of it. Why are there PMSs that can't send an HTML confirmation or do an online check-in?

The idea of "one-stop-shop", a product that does everything, is a flawed one. It looks promising in theory but never works in practice, because no one can do everything well, and therefore companies specialize in specific areas, and clients eventually buy "best-in-class" from different providers.

WhatsApp and the likes are B2C apps, so to make the comparison fair hotel software should be compared with the likes of Salesforce, Workday or Hubspot, all applications that today are fairly easy to activate, but to maximize their potentials, they suggest/require some training and implementation effort.

I personally think robots is a far stretch for hotels. I do however think that automation and self service will make its move into Hotels at a faster pace than previously, for 2 reasons: First, it's what guest want. You can do anything on a phone, so why not check in to your hotel room, buy an upgrade or order room service, the guest "becomes it's own robot" so to speak, tasks done previously by hotel staff are now done by the guest.

Whether we like it or not, hospitality is fast becoming a tech industry now. Robotics, AI, mobility, IoT devices and contactless check-in tech are being adopted across the industry at a very fast clip. The digital transformation is already changing the industry and the current crisis have accelerated it by 7 years (McKinsey & Company).

Robots No!, No!, No! so no R2D2 coming soon in a hotel. But automation yes as a first step. Hospitality is ripe for RPA and many benefits can be taken from that. Maybe one day physical robots will in hotels but positioning this as a labour cost reduction option and really seeing this wrongly.

Post-crises, only those hoteliers will succeed who a) understand that we are dealing with exceedingly tech-savvy customers who are even more tech-demanding compared to just a year ago - the pandemic has accelerated digital transformation by as much as 7 years (McKinsey), and b) invest in technology to ensure contactless guest experience and improve operational efficiencies via automation, AI, IoT and robotization to lower labor costs, now consuming as much as 87% of RevPAR (CBRE).

Adding digital interaction guests should continue to come more and more to the forefront for hotels, as that is what guests want. Guest, like any other human being, like to be in control. With their phone, they can. A simple innovation is converting the offerings of an early arrival and late departures from often complimentary last-minute front desk discussions to pre-arrival digital offerings.

I am of the view that a significant technology shift is on the cusp of the broader hospitality industry. The catalyst, as Martin points out, is the customer/guest and the world that they are living in. The further we progress the overall hospitality experience, in a digital sense it will become an extension of the guests' life as compared to a step away from their existing lives.

AR is present in different areas of our life today, even on its most trivial aspects: think about the explosion of Pokémon Go, a game with over 60M active users every month. Some hotels have ridden this "gamification" wave, transforming into "Pokétel." AR is also used to offer unique experiences, as in the case of "Le Petit Chef," an application created by SkullMapping, which lets you enjoy your dinner while it is "cooked" by an animated Chef on your plate.

In the wake of new technology adoption due to COVID we are at the perfect place for adoption of Augmented reality. New guest experiences can be created and new revenue streams become available with this technology. Marketing and entertainment spring to mind as great starting points, tours and navigation as well as these have been tried and tested already and of course F&B could really leverage on this technology.

The pandemic propels the hospitality industry to innovate and offer new and exciting ways for guests' experience. As the industry seeks to upsell, enhance their guest experience and service offerings to stimulate demands, AR becomes an extremely valuable hotel technology during this recovery period.