The Digital hotel has Arrived
The forces of digital disruption are rapidly transforming all industries and the hospitality industry is not behind. According to a Meltwater report, Asia's hospitality sector boasts a growth of 4% to 5% per annum. As customers, employees, and partners increasingly expect services and processes to be available on demand and fully connected, the hospitality industry is rapidly adapting services to be more responsive, flexible, and efficient to deliver prolific guest experience and long-term business profits. Hoteliers that fail to transform digitally will be at a significant disadvantage in terms of both functional efficiencies and meeting the customer expectations.
The hospitality industry is not immune from the march of technology. Just like the smartphone which transformed so many other industries, such as the food industry or taxi services, and made the society far more tech-savvy than before, the typical guest carries and depends on numerous apps in their phones and expects various service providers and their environment to be tech savvy as well. While many hotels scramble to define their specific goals of digital transformation, the enabler that accomplishes it is always connecting just about everything. The unexpected protagonist in this industry's story of transformation appears to be the guest-room phone. The new generation of telephony has a tremendous role to play in the emerging hospitality industry.
The Digital Guest Room
Just like every other industry, hotels are under pressure to reduce costs and improve customer experience in order to stay competitive. In the past, technology upgrades were largely independent of each other such as tube televisions, incandescent bulbs that were modernized mostly through independent initiatives. However, digital technologies are changing the game today and connecting these and other components into a more extensive, integrated system. Hotels are therefore adopting digital technologies to enhance the guest experience and make it more inviting and efficient, however, without breaking familiarity. New systems must complement, not replace, familiar interfaces.
