Tech Talk

Recent posts

Definitely Doug 6/9/23: Hotels Fighting Trafficking: The Role of Technology
Posted: 06/09/2023

This week I want to address an important issue for the hospitality industry, albeit one that technologists have not historically had on their radar. They can potentially play a significant role in addressing the issue, which is human trafficking, and more specifically sex trafficking.

In my last column, I reviewed some key trends in autonomous mobile robotics for hotels, and dove into three categories of delivery robots in more detail – room delivery, food delivery, and heavy-lift robots. This week I will round out the topic with several other robot types and applications, as well as general guidance for evaluating, acquiring, and adopting mobile autonomous robotics. If you have not yet read part one, I recommend going back and doing so before continuing below, as some of the introductory material is important background to what follows.

Read More +

Best Practices for Hotel & Resort Operators in Pool Season 2023
Posted: 05/25/2023

With the arrival of warmer weather and summer fast approaching, hospitality operators are gearing up for another pool season. This year, technology is at the forefront of driving booking revenue and taking operational efficiency to the next level. Modern technology platforms (such as hospitality’s newest technology category – the Property Experience Management System or PXMS) are providing brand new capabilities that unlock new strategies and approaches to filling the pool with satisfied guests.

Read More +

The Growing Role Technology Plays in Hotels and Restaurants
Posted: 05/25/2023

In the past few years, hotels and restaurants have grown into hubs for entertainment, leisure, and human connection. In an effort to best serve their guests, operators have begun rethinking their technological investments and working to adapt to recent shifts in consumer preference and operations. To ensure that guests have the best on-site experience possible, brands are increasingly looking to new technologies to make their experiences more convenient and comfortable. Advanced property management systems (PMS) and point-of-sale (POS) systems can increase operational and staff efficiency, while also meeting changing customer expectations for a high-value but relatively low-touch experience.

This week I will return to a topic I have covered before, because it has, within the last 12 to 18 months, become one of the hottest-growth categories in hospitality technology. That topic is autonomous mobile robots – specifically, ones that can move around the facility as well as perform specific tasks. Many of these products were launched pre-Covid but were often seen at the time as more of a marketing gimmick than a legitimate operational solution.

Read More +

comment on this article

The Changing Face of the Business of Hotels And the Role of Technology: Part One

11/12/2013

by Dan Phillips

Hotels are a business, and as such need to make money to stay in business. Hospitality is the art of the hotel business. Once the business was all about getting heads in beds, and driving customer satisfaction and loyalty by providing the best accommodations for the price, today the business is different. Today, hospitality is all about the customer experience; it is not sufficient to merely offer the same quality of stay at a similar price.

A significant difference in the business of hotels today is that as in the rest of the world outside of this industry, marketing and technology have converged. Every company, and many individuals, has a digital presence today. To do so, marketing people must use technology to establish branding and manage their multiple forms of communication, all of which are supported by yet more technology. For hotel companies, this convergence is changing the face of business, but more specifically it is changing the roles of staff responsible for technology. From CTOs down to IT managers the skill sets must be widely broadened in order for hotels to compete for shrinking market share.

This white paper will highlight some of the new trends and thoughts from experts in various fields, all of which can be applied to the hotel industry. Though these concepts may appear disjointed at first, when combined into an overarching strategy, one of convergence and one directed at the demographics of today’s travelers, one can see the synergy. The goal is to direct management styles to be more service oriented, increasing guest satisfaction and therefore improving the bottom line.

The old sales model looked something like this:

Product Services & Amenities + Customer Service = Long term loyalty, advocacy and referrals

Notice the plus sign. In the past, a hotel could be a leader in any given area and fail in some other area and still be successful.

The new sales model equation might be better represented as this:

(Customer needs, wants and expectations) X (hotel staff) X (a culture of service excellence) X(business environment) X (product and services/amenities offerings) = exceptional experiential value

In this case the formula is multiplication, not addition. If any of those multipliers is a zero, then the final equation results in a zero. (Brett Patten, Hotel Sales Formula that Goes Against All Conventional Wisdom, http://ehotelier.com/hospitality-news/item.php?id=P26072&goback=%2Egde_110108_member_271836286#%21

In the second equation above the ultimate goal is the generation of exceptional experiential values for the hotel’s guests. Hoteliers can no longer be considered successful by simply providing a clean room with a big TV. Today’s traveler, and more importantly tomorrow’s traveler, is after an experience and not only just a good night’s sleep. This experiential factor is a driving motivator in the convergence of marketing and technology; specifically how it is tailored and deployed to facilitate experiences.

One of the key components of creating an experience begins with communication. Communication is now digital. It isn’t just voice anymore; it isn’t just email. Communication has exploded into Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, text, websites, mobile, apps, social media, and more. Hotels have been forced into the digital media age. Once the first online booking sites started, hoteliers have been in the digital footprint, many of which have been playing catch up ever since. Hotel companies need to become more mature with their digital strategies.

Digital maturity is the combination of digital intensity plus transformation management intensity. Digital maturity is the combination of a company’s investment in technology enabled initiatives plus the vision to shape a new future by developing new IT/marketing/business operations relationships to implement technology based change under governance.

From a company perspective, digital maturity can be broken into four levels of acumen:

Beginners – do very little with advanced digital capabilities
Fashionistas – experiment with sexy applications but lack the vision to gain synergies
Conservatives – favor prudence over innovation
Digirati – truly understand how to drive value with digital transformation

Hotel companies fall into the four levels as listed below. Due to online booking, every hotel company is past the beginner stage. What may be significant here is that 50 percent of our industry is simply spending money to look good while developing no real positive results.

0% Beginners
50% Fasionistas
19% Conservatives
31% Digirati

Why is it so important to become a Digirati? When compared to competitors, companies that can achieve the digirati level of digital maturity are driving 10 percent more revenue, are 26 percent more profitable, and have a 12 percent higher market value.

What is needed to bring the old way of hotel business up to the demands of hospitality today is a radical change in the role of the CTO and IT staff inside of hotel companies.

Please check back on Thursday for part two of this column and for more insight into the Changing Face of Business and how you can transform your business to the digirati level.

About The Author

Dan Phillips
Owner
Dare to Imagine

Dan Phillips is the owner of the consulting firm, Dare to Imagine (www.dare2i.com). He started behind the front desk of a Holiday Inn in 1987 and has been consulting to hotel companies since 1991. Dare to Imagine enlists hotel experts with decades of C-level experience at many of the major hotel companies in the world. He can be reached at dphillips@dare2i.com or by phone at 678-852-5913.