Last year I participated in the research and illustration of the last 100 years of hotel technology in our series "The History of Hotel & Travel Technology" (read article). In many cases, we've seen hotel distribution and technology change during or after a global crisis. But is this a trend that will continue? And what could be the innovation from these crises?

Up until the early 2000s, managing the guest experience was still a very human to human experience, yet today the experience happens primarily through technology. Human interactions still hold value, but with the incredible growth of the internet, smartphones and an always-on lifestyle, people are no longer willing to wait very long for their desired outcome.

Hotels have so many touchpoints where customers interact with the property and staff, and this is what has set a hotel experience apart from a retail experience, hoteliers recognise this. They excel at delivering guest service. Yet more so than ever in today's climate, we need technology to facilitate many expectations that guests are not only used to but also expect. Today's hotel guests expect a quality experience from before, during and after their stay.

We all agree that people will want to travel again as soon as possible for holidays and business trips. Until travel resembles anything to pre-covid times we have a chance for innovation.

Looking beyond the obvious needs to support health concerns, 'contactless technology', how should we prioritize the data and innovate from what is available - what innovation will/should come from the current crisis?

Laura Calin
Laura Calin
VP, Strategy and Solutions Management at Oracle Hospitality

During the pandemic, hospitality leaders have had to make some difficult decisions in an effort to keep business running. As part of that effort, they've had to reprioritize project portfolios and strategically choose where to focus their time and investments. This has included making sure that innovations coming out of this current crisis be focused on increasing occupancy, improving efficiencies, ensuring guest and employee safety, and driving revenue or decreasing loss, all of which leads to improved guest experiences.

Having the right solutions in place makes this all possible. We've seen hotels that were already using cloud technologies or migrated to the cloud during the pandemic realize significant advantages over hotels still running operations on premise based systems. Running operations in the cloud removes IT complexities, allowing limited staff to improve efficiencies and focus on guest needs. Even staff required to work remotely get full visibility into operations from wherever they are. In addition, with the availability of Open APIs, hoteliers have been able to tap into the technology ecosystem to enable integrations needed to adapt and launch new innovations to address changing market conditions and guest needs.

Looking ahead, recovery and growth will be directly proportional to having a platform that allows hoteliers to quickly roll out new innovations to help them adapt to our new normal and meet guest expectations. Enabling technologies such as digital check-in and check-out solutions, bringing the status of room cleanliness to a guest's fingertips, delivering location-driven availability and rates, and offering upsells enabled by AI/ML technologies, a cloud-based system with an open architecture will help to accelerate innovation and recovery.

Here at Oracle Hospitality we are committed to helping the hospitality industry get back to business. To support this effort we held an event called Innovation Week last June to accelerate the industry's recovery. Due to its success, we will be hosting another event March 22-25 to continue to explore new and innovative hospitality solutions. Find out more here.

View all 19 views in this viewpoint