Innovative technologies in hospitality. Boutique hotels & AI, VR, IoT, digitalisation, robotics

Artificial Intelligence AI, Virtual Reality VR, Internet of Things IoT, robotics, digitisation, digital transformation, Business Intelligence.

These are frequently used terms when talking about innovative technologies in hospitality industry.

Big chain hotels seem to set new standards while boutique hotels are left behind. But is it really so?

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Video Transcript:

Hello everyone. Welcome to Remarkable Boutique Hotels where we talk about outstanding experiences and everything that leads to them.

It’s the fourth industrial revolution going on, with all the emerging technologies. You hear about things such as artificial intelligence, robotics, virtual reality, augmented reality, the internet of things and so on. So, in this video, I’ll talk about those and how they are applied in hotels specifically. Let’s dive in.

Stories about new technologies transforming hospitality sector can sound overwhelming and complicated. And you know what, it is, for example when you buy piece of software it’s a black box for you that you hope will help you with whatever the reason you bought it for. And stop right here. It doesn’t apply in hospitality.

The first crucial thing in this video: you don’t need to know programming, be an engineer or even be like, early adopter of technologies but you do need to know all the details behind the reason you are implementing it in your hospitality business. Meaning, you need to understand what you want to achieve, what problem you are solving, how it’s going to help your business run better. But in your own words not how someone else sold you on their product. It’s your responsibility to know why you are making certain decision and it’s your responsibility how the outcome turns out. Again, this is like especially relevant for hospitality, because human touch is still highly valued there. So, it’s you who decides on success metrics, like how will you know if it was worth investing and if you’ll continue to utilize it. Therefore, set time frame, including testing period and follow results that are relevant to your business, the ones you can track back to the root problem, not the ones listed as benefits from that software company. Obviously, technology costs you so make sure you know how it pays off both to you and and your guests.

One more thing here. You need to be honest with yourself and your business. If you are too resistant to anything new, you may never want to see benefits of digitalization when there are plenty. So, you’ll refuse to change and evolve your business turning it into big hustle for everyone in it, because you will be left behind by changing society and human behaviors, no matter how romantic old fashion ways of doing things seem.

But, on the other side, if you are early adapter, that’s great, but be realistic not overexcited, maybe your business doesn’t need that innovation right now at least until you settle other things that come before it, like improving quality of service or implementing training standards for example. These are two opposites but same applies, be open to change but realistic, don’t expect some external product to solve everything if your business doesn’t have good base already.

Okay, so, hopefully I made my point about you taking ownership of the results when implementing technology. Now, I’ll unwrap that package with expressions like digitization, internet of things IoT, big data and emerging technologies in general.

So, hotel digitization has been going on for a while now, and it’s about moving hotel business to digital realm, for example turning traditional operating systems into digital like paper to electronic version. It is first step towards digital transformation. And digital transformation is the use and integration of the different digital technologies in areas like operations, procedures, processes and people to improve efficiency and guest satisfaction.

And this is actually where unfortunately OTAs win since they transformed quickly to meet the level of customization that the market demands decreasing direct bookings for hotels. These are also two main reasons to start thinking about digitization right now but not in a way you might have in mind, this is important topic so I’ll cover it more in depth in next video, make sure to watch it.

To continue, big data is about collecting huge volumes of data used by large hotel chains with Customer Relationship Management systems or Property Management Systems for example, so that artificial intelligence, AI, can use that big data to search for specific patterns and draw conclusions.

So AI analyses big data and finds trends that could be useful for business. Chatbots are an example of AI that can analyze guest interactions with the hotel, food preferences, purchase history, spa, and amenity usage, etc. in order to help hotel provide a more personalized experience next time.

Going further down the rabbit hole, you’ll hear about machine learning which is type of artificial intelligence which can learn from analyzed patterns and make predictions for future, for example what happens if people suddenly change their reservation behaviors.

Eventually, you may have heard of business intelligence which links all the previous ones. It is the way to turn all that data and insights into usable information, manageable information. This helps for example revenue managers predict the pick-up, number of rooms sold and then make better decisions without having to conclude solely on historical data.

So, do you need any of these? Maybe. You need to understand what is going on in the market and depending on where you are at your business you might benefit from these. But also, you may not need any of these. However, if you are already using some software, which you probably do, you should see what data you already have or could start gathering and why. Because just implementing the technology isn’t enough. It needs to be tied to metrics, key performance indicators on both guest insights and business process effectiveness.

It's also worth noticing, this is all about strategic vision. Meaning, it helps you observe what is happening so that you can understand it better and then predict how the future will look like considering outcomes such as revenue growth, lifetime guest value, productivity improvement, scale, cost impact, etc. Then you can make better decisions.

At the very end, I’ll briefly describe internet of things. IoT is what happens in the backend when we talk about smart buildings, and here we talk about smart hotels. So IoT connects devices in a hotel in order to create a better guest experience but also greater efficiency, cost savings and easier management like improved maintenance. So, for example this means controlling and automating settings for lights, thermostats, door locks, curtains, also digitized room service menus. All these can be saved as guest preferences for future visits for example. Beside these there is also automated check in, asset tracing for real time monitoring of equipment, occupancy sensors which automatically make energy-efficient adjustments when they detect vacant room and many many other examples.

We even see some hotels adopting service robots which emit UV light to disinfect or using virtual reality for digital walkthrough with a 360-degree view, but that doesn’t mean you need to do any of this. Maybe you don’t want to, simple because some of these can significantly reduce human touch and in-person experience, but not all. For example, there’s a high chance you’re using some hotel management software that keeps housekeeping and the front desk information synchronized and that’s also part of IoT. The question is are you fully utilizing its potentials for guest experience customization?

So to wrap up, think what really fits your concept, what services would be seen as premium features by your guests. Don’t adopt things your guests don’t want, know what your guests appreciate, satisfy their needs. That being said, never adopt similar technology to your competitions just because you think that’s how you can gain an edge. That’s never the case. Introducing new technologies while clearly knowing what your hotel is all about will always ensure you stand out. For example, if your concept is something about art, you could have smart walls for drawing or performance stage in VR environment.

Obviously, going more and more in future some technology will become standard but hospitality will never be uniformed and fully automated even such hotel will still need to create their unique selling point and with such offer on the market, boutique hotels will need to come up with stronger ways to differentiate and creative but relevant value for guests.

Okay, so, that’s it for today. Until next occasion, have a beautiful experiences my friends.

Thank you for listening. Here at Remarkable Boutique Hotels, we want your hotel to be worth every penny and every second of your guests. Schedule a discovery call to find more about our remarkable methodology which is unique in the whole hospitality industry. I would love to hear your hotel story. See you there.