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Technology in the hotel industry does not change quickly. Every year, we see a few new ideas emerge. Some turn out to be fads and never get much traction. Many others get a fair amount of adoption, but only within certain niche markets. Only a few really start to take hold. Today I will assess which of the new technologies that have emerged in recent years are likely to be in this last (and most important) category, recognizing that they can still take years (often decades) to work their way through the industry.

In case you missed the memo, people no longer watch television the way that they did ten years ago. Not at home, and not at hotels. Nielsen reported that streaming services cornered 34.8% of TV screen time in July 2022, when they overtook cable for the first time. 

Property management systems (PMSs) fundamentally have changed very little since the 1980s. And many hotels still use systems that were built in the eighties, nineties, or aughts. Since then, massive technology changes have occurred: the mobile revolution, cloud computing, distributed ledgers, AI-based large language models, Web 3.0, and other innovations have fundamentally changed both the technological capabilities of software, the way it is designed and built, and expectations for user experience.

Hardly a day goes by that hotels do not express frustration about the inability to tie together key data sources and technology systems. This is not a new problem; it has been around for decades. Progress has been made on many fronts to be sure, but digitalization has created new issues much faster than solutions.

What’s on the minds of hoteliers? What’s keeping them up at night? And what makes travelers happy and eager to return? Some of the best places to have these candid discussions are at the industry’s conferences and events, and this year’s lineup has not disappointed. From AAHOACON and BITAC, to HITEC and The Hospitality Show, I’ve been traveling steadily, attending 13 events since January.



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Articles tagged as: customer

Are you demanding enough of the spaces you own and have access to? How many times have you walked into empty hotel gyms, restaurants and meeting rooms, or oversized lobbies that seem to have no purpose in life?
 
How can you optimize these areas to their full revenue potential?
 
And, even when you are able to optimize a space operationally, how can you insure that you are able to acquire the customers you need to commercialize it effectively?

These questions all have answers. However, you need to be honest about how you can do this, and the effort that you can realistically place on direct versus indirect acquisition in your overall strategy.

How Hotel Chatbots Will Change Guest Experience
Posted: 06/08/2017 by Brendon Granger

The world loves to chat. Today, more than 2.5 billion people have at least one messaging app installed, with predictions that the number will hit 3.6 billion within a couple of years. Brendon Granger talks about the future of chatbots in the hospitality industry and how they will rapidly change our guest experience.