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.

Stanislav  Ivanov
Stanislav Ivanov
Founder and Editor-in-chief of ROBONOMICS: The Journal of the Automated Economy

I personally think that the “Lego” approach would continue to exist although most of the functions that the current numerous hospitality software solutions perform would probably be well integrated into the PMS. If a company needs to develop a hotel software that covers all the needs of the hoteliers, that would require a lot of time, expertise and would be a costly solution. Furthermore, if hoteliers use software from one supplier only, they will find themselves in a vendor lock-in situation – it would be very difficult to switch to another software supplier. The “Lego” approach provides greater flexibility.

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