Technology

For me, the key is self-serve via automation. Staff turnover will remain high so starters/leavers/movers processes need to be totally automated. Restaurant menu changes and price changes need to be linked end to end to inventory systems.

What are the REALISTIC technology solutions with the greatest impact in 2022? STR just released some troubling data, clearly showing that IT spending in U.S. hospitality during the pandemic shrank significantly compared to 2019, dropping to as low as 50% in 2020 and rebounding slightly to 70% in 2021 of the pre-pandemic level.

While Customer Relationship Manaagement technology has existed in the hotel space for a few decades, today's tools are no longer sufficient in centralizing, de-duping, normalizing and serving the data up in real time to all the necessary systems that need it.

Whilst I completely agree with the description of the problem, I take issue with the solutions offered by the author as being both simplistic and incomplete. TigerTMS (I feel I may refer to my company as the author has referenced several others) has been developing interface software for over 40 years - thousands of hotel properties worldwide use our software because it provides the middleware between disparate applications.

I think they will help accelerate the industry forward on the short term, solving the issues of legacy providers. As hoteliers upgrade their technology stack to more modern solutions that have well built integration layers, the hubs might loose some of their importance.

There are over 5,000 hotel tech vendors around the world working around the clock to develop new and innovative solutions to common problems or applications to elevate service delivery in hotel operations, guest communications, revenue management, marketing, etc.

The most obvious ones are Pricing and Forecasting - and hopefully most of the vendors out there already have some or a lot of that built in. One that hasn't been solved yet and which is most "on-brand" for a hotel is guest personalization.

AI in Hospitality is not some futuristic, Spielberg-esque technology or a nice PR opportunity to make your hotel company look cool, but a real-life, much needed technology that can help your hotel a) solve concrete issues plaguing the hospitality industry such as labor shortages and out-of-control labor costs, b) improve efficiencies and productivity, c) automate pricing and business decision making, and d) respond to the exceedingly high expectations of your exceedingly tech-savvy guestsSome of the temporary measures to tackle the current pressing issues employed by hoteliers include changes in the business model, outsourcing or hiring more gig workers to do the job and streamlining operations.

AI does and will have a place in hospitality. For far too long we have relied on old fashioned manual processes and adore spending hours in Excel sheets and copy paste information. We know that system integration issues have been behind this but with the modern open API platforms removing this barrier there is no reason why AI should not have a more prominent place in our industry.

Innovation and transformation are taking place at a rapid pace all around us. Technology allowing for a true digital revolution, environmental and social being the middle point of attention and the covid pandemic making us all aware of what quality time and life are all about.How does our industry respond to these new demands, especially as so many are just trying to stay afloat given the financial impact of 18 months of economic downturn?

Start-ups ignite transformation. Any industry that is either embryonic or in dire need of change has to deconstruct and regenerate in a more coherent, dynamic form. This is what happened to the food industry in many countries and to the many industries pre the advent of technology.

It's all about beliefs, culture, and behavior. Companies must have a purpose—and that purpose must be authentic, inspiring, actionable, and consistently shared across the entire organization. It's important to understand (and celebrate!) the power of diversity versus the challenges of sameness.

Let's begin with arguing that the word "contactless". When a guest us using their mobile phone or a self service check in our out, there is still contact, there is still service that can be provided, and if the hotel does it well their is still staff member around to assist if needed.

The contactless guest journey is here to stay. The hospitality industry will not be going back to the old times of 100% human-assisted guest journey. Why? To begin with, the current labor shortage is not going away anytime soon.

Personally, I don't associate the contactless tech experience with COVID. I associate it with the rise of mobile technology in general and the intersection of customers of any industry wanting more control and the commercial opportunity of giving them control, thus offloading processes and effort.

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.