From the days of holidex, Fidelio v6 and Micros 2700 we have for the last 30 years been adding technology upon technology in hospitality. In my last classes with my students (online), one reoccurring question was always, "why is there not one solution that can do everything". Once we discussed this more (language requirements, local fiscal reporting, support, etc…), the students got the complexity of using software and systems to run businesses. But moving forward, future managers are going to want their hospitality software to behave more like WhatsApp, Instagram or Snapchat. Download, install and work. No training or massive configuration to be done. So, where does this leave the hospitality industry? Do we keep on going with our "Lego" approach or do we need to say hold on, that's enough? Let's restart from scratch and what would that look like and how could we conceivably even do that.

Floor Bleeker
Floor Bleeker
Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Accor

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? Should that not be part of the standard package? And worse why is it still so hard to have the different systems talk to each other?

There are two ways out of this: a single platform that meets most of the needs of our hotels similar to a core banking system or a CRM for retail, or micro services based mini apps that talk to each other via open and standard APIs.  

I believe the last one is where we should go. It will give us the benefits of a single system as well as the opportunity to innovate and customize based on the needs of a hotel or brand.

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