What is Hospitality Technology?
Hospitality technology encompasses a wide range of information technology, e-commerce, and similar technology solutions used in the hospitality industry. The use of this technology is typically intended to either make life easier for a business’s employees, or to improve the overall experience for hospitality customers.
This can be achieved in several different ways. For example, hospitality tech may help to increase automation and ease the workload for staff. Likewise, it could make processes faster, potentially saving money and time. Alternatively, it could help customers at numerous points along the customer journey.
Why is Hospitality Technology Essential for Companies Operating in the Hospitality Industry?
The hospitality sector is extremely competitive, making it essential to keep up with the latest hospitality technology trends. Technology can help businesses streamline their processes, reduce costs, lower staff workloads, increase revenue generation potential, and improve customer experience delivery.
Using the latest technology may improve the accuracy of work to a level that would be difficult for human staff to achieve on their own. Technology solutions can also make work more manageable and may make it easier to live up to the increasingly high expectations that today’s customers have.
Reasons to Stay Up to Date with the Latest Hospitality Technology Trends?
Perhaps the single biggest reason why it is crucial to keep up with the latest hospitality technology trends is that many other businesses will. Failing to keep up could provide rival companies with a significant competitive advantage, especially if they adopt technology that appeals to customers, while you continue as normal.
As new trends emerge and technology becomes widely used, the customers within that industry will start to expect to see certain things. This makes hospitality tech essential for living up to customer expectations. Meanwhile, you can also gain a competitive edge over rivals who have not adopted the new tech.
Adopting the latest trends also makes this progress a continuous feature. If you fall behind current trends, upgrading technology later on may become more difficult because training requirements may be more extensive.
What Developments Are Responsible for the Latest Travel Tech Trends?
A trend can be described as a generalized change, development, and shift in behavior, or prevailing tendency that can be observed within a particular field. Many developments have been responsible for changes in consumer behavior, subsequently leading to the emergence of new hospitality tech trends.
Technological advances have played a significant role, especially in the widespread adoption of voice search, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things. Contactless payments have become more popular in retail, while mobile check-ins have emerged in hotels, restaurants, and airports. Many of these technologies have grown because they help to reduce friction and cut waiting times.
It is also important to note that the coronavirus pandemic has accelerated some behaviors, especially concerning hygiene. This has had a particularly strong impact on contactless payment technology, mobile check-ins, and cleaning technology, such as cleaning robots, as these all minimize direct human-to-human contact.
Discover the Latest Technology Trends in the Hospitality Industry
Below, you will find general technology trends in hospitality and tech trends that serve as a solution to the coronavirus pandemic and associated shifts in consumer behavior.
1. Voice Search & Voice Control
Voice search is a growing technology trend within hospitality because many guests or customers are turning to voice search to find hotels, restaurants, and cafes. It is worth taking the time to properly capitalize on this. To do so, you must ensure your website and booking engine are structured so the voice search can be used properly.
In some settings, the demand for voice control is also growing. This could include everything from using smart speakers in hotel rooms, allowing for control of the various in-room devices, to automated order-taking in restaurants and cafes, meaning customers will no longer need to wait for waiting staff to take their orders.
2. Contactless Payments
Contactless payments offer several advantages for hotels, resorts, restaurants, bars, and cafes, which is why this has been among the main technology trends in the hospitality industry. Aside from speeding up payments and improving customer satisfaction, contactless tech is also easily compatible with loyalty programs.
Mobile contactless payments are possible even if customers do not have their wallets or their credit card has been misplaced. Additionally, with COVID firmly in the minds of hotel guests and other hospitality customers, contactless payments can also offer an excellent way to reduce human-to-human contact.
3. Robots in Hotels & Restaurants
One of the most exciting technology trends the hospitality industry is getting to grips with is the rise of robotics and the use of robots to carry out tasks traditionally performed by humans. For instance, robots can occupy a concierge role within hotels, welcoming guests and providing them with important customer information.
Similarly, some hotels have started using robots for cleanings, such as vacuum cleaning floors and even germ-killing. This practice can be replicated across the rest of the hospitality industry, including in restaurants. Using robots can also help make the environment more COVID secure.
4. Chatbots
Chatbots have been an emerging hospitality technology trend for several years. Still, the importance of this option is only growing, especially as customers now demand swift answers to questions at all times of the day. Hotels and restaurants will often attract queries from people in different time zones, so having staff available is difficult.
A good chatbot will answer the most common questions without requiring human involvement. In more advanced cases, the chatbot can obtain information from the customer and then pass the query on to a human staff member at the earliest opportunity while providing them access to what the customer has said.
5. Virtual Reality
Virtual reality is another of the major technology trends in the hospitality industry that you need to be aware of. In particular, this can make the difference when customers are ready to make a booking, because it will give potential customers a much clearer sense of what they can expect when they visit.
During the COVID pandemic, those working in hospitality marketing have a particularly good opportunity to capitalize on virtual reality technology and gain an edge over rivals because it allows customers to experience elements of a hotel or to see the layout of a restaurant before booking.
Most modern virtual reality tour videos can be viewed within a web browser, making them easily accessible. A greater level of immersion can also be achieved if users have access to a VR headset.
6. Mobile Check-In
Mobile check-in hospitality tech is another important area to consider because it can help to improve the customer experience at the point of their initial arrival. This is especially beneficial because first impressions can greatly affect how customers ultimately feel about their visit or stay.
Crucially, mobile check-ins swerve the need for face-to-face customer interactions, meaning customers can potentially have greater flexibility regarding when they check in. This ties in with wider contactless technology trends within the hospitality industry, and can be especially welcome for those nervous about COVID.
7. Recognition Technology
Recognition technology is one of the most important emerging tech trends, but its potential uses in the hospitality industry are especially interesting. In particular, biometrics is used to usher in a new age of seamless authentications, which could benefit hotel processes and customer purchases.
For example, imagine if a fingerprint or facial recognition technology could be used in your hotel to unlock rooms. Now consider the uses of the same technology for check-in and check-out purposes. In the future, this technology is also likely to allow for completely seamless purchases, with payments being authenticated by touch.
8. Artificial Intelligence
In the modern age, customers expect to be able to interact with hospitality companies across a variety of digital channels and receive rapid responses. Of course, having staff monitoring all of those channels and delivering swift responses can be difficult, if not impossible, which is where chatbots and artificial intelligence (AI) come in.
Chatbots can understand simple questions and provide answers almost instantaneously, taking the burden away from customer service staff and improving customer experience. Meanwhile, AI’s uses extend into other important hotel areas, including data analysis. In short: definitely, a tech trend to watch out for.
9. Internet of Things (IoT)
Another technological trend within hospitality management is the ‘Internet of Things’, or IoT, which involves extending internet connectivity to everyday objects, devices, and appliances. These devices can then collect data and communicate or interact over the internet, turning previously unintelligent devices into ‘smart’ devices, which are often semi- or fully autonomous.
An example of this already being used in the hospitality sector is internet-enabled thermostats, which automatically adjust room temperatures at check-in and check-out times in response to temperature swings caused by the sun or windows being opened. The same concept is also being deployed for lighting, improving energy efficiency by, for instance, reducing light intensity during daylight hours.
10. Augmented Reality
Finally, augmented reality has exploded as a tech trend similar to VR technology but is even more accessible, typically requiring little more than access to a smartphone and the internet. Unlike VR, which places users in a digital environment, augmented reality enhances the real-world environment through information overlays.
Again, this offers limitless potential. Imagine if your hotel provided AR-compatible wall maps, where customers can point their phones at the map and find out information about specific locations. Alternatively, how about an app, which allows users to see customer reviews of local restaurants by looking at the building through their phone?
11. Cybersecurity
Finally, the increased need for cybersecurity is among the most vital technology trends in the hospitality industry. Today, hotels and restaurants are more reliant on data than ever before, and use IT systems more than ever before. However, this potentially leaves them in a much more vulnerable position.
Some of the biggest threats include ransom ware attacks, phishing attacks, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, and human error within the company. For this reason, hotels need to invest adequately in cybersecurity awareness training, protect their IT systems, keep customer data secure and ensure data is backed up and recoverable.
12. Big Data
Data collection has grown rapidly across almost all industries, but can be used to great effect by hospitality businesses to provide more personalized experiences. As an example, it could be used by travel agents to make intelligent destination recommendations based on age, gender, budget, previous locations visited, and so on.
Within the hotel industry, big data allows businesses to identify trends, which can be used for revenue management purposes. This allows for more data-driven approaches to pricing strategies and enables business leaders to better understand current business performance and the outside influences that impact upon it.
13. WiFi 6
Of all the technology trends hospitality industry businesses should be aware of, WiFi 6 is among the most important for improving the guest experience and the experience of hospitality staff. WiFi 6 is the next generation of WiFi technology and is more than 30 percent faster while also boasting significantly improved throughput.
Such improvements to WiFi technology are especially important in an age where businesses are using a greater number of smart or IoT devices, while customers are also increasingly connecting phones, laptops, tablets, and other devices to WiFi. Faster and more reliable Wi-Fi can help hospitality companies to stand out from rivals.
14. NFT Marketing in Hospitality Industry
NFT technology is still an emerging concept but shows great promise in marketing. Within hospitality, it is most commonly used to boost brand awareness through special offers, or partnerships with local artists or business partners. NFTs are also increasingly being used for transactions taking place within the Meta verse.
Some hospitality businesses have experimented with using NFT technology for membership cards or customer loyalty schemes. The uniqueness of each NFT makes the technology well-suited to these purposes and means this is one of the technology trends hospitality industry marketers need to keep track of in the years to come.
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