Are there any quick-fix IT solutions for hotels in the post-COVID new normal?
12 experts shared their view
Most hoteliers agree that, at least for the foreseeable future, hotel stays will be different. Guests will be more conscious about hygiene, social distancing and expecting a contactless guest-journey. At the same time, most hotels DO NOT HAVE the means right now to make big investments in cutting-edge new tech.
So we ask ourselves, what are the inexpensive, easy, and quick to implement solutions that hotels could be implementing today to support changed guest-expectations?
It cost money to make money. Doing nothing is the last thing hotels will want to do. While it may seem hard and strange to invest in new technology during this uncertain time, I believe it is really important to actually make changes now. Today's hotel technology is all available as SaaS so you only pay a monthly fee and have mostly little or no initial cost to get it going. Move your stack to the cloud NOW, is I think a first step hotels should take. Likely hotels will open up with low occupancy and less staff, so a perfect time to introduce new technologies and processes. A second step is to ensure the hotel has clear technologies in place to facilitate social distance and contactless check-in and out, and this should include technologies that can help with offering room upgrades. Now is the time to enable the choice of service! Guests still will want to come to the front desk, but you should enable guests who prefer to limit contact, to do it all by themselves, on their phone, or on a self-service check-in/out station. Offering room upgrades digitally is another affordable and simple to activate solution, that will help bring in some high margin revenue.
If hotels think SaaS, a new tech stack, does not have to be that costly!