By C G Prasad, Hospitality Technology evangelist
The pandemic situation has spread devastation in all sectors — among them hospitality is the most affected. During the crisis, technology became the savior to revive many industries with a short turnaround time. Banking, insurance, education & training are a few to mention. Businesses where physical presence of the service provider is unavoidable could not get the same benefit that these industries utilized from adopting technology. As the vaccinations started getting widely available and the businesses are re-opening, it’s time for the industry to return with more vigor and strength.
With the available technology around us, how can the hospitality business make the loss good? The aim should be to reduce expenditure in the best possible way and create an elevated ‘Wow!’ experience for the guest. Hospitality domain involves various departments and variety of operations. Each operations department is supported by one or more different applications or software in the market. There is no single ERP existing in the domain (similar to SAP for other sectors) which can solve all the use cases. So it’s important to analyze how we can make use of the existing technology to take the industry to the next level.
Technology Department
Gone are the days when one would be having a large server room similar to a data center and a team of technical people managing the same in a hotel. With the availability of strong Internet connectivity and robust cloud application, the server room at hotel should get reduced to a hub for data cabling and connectivity to the Internet. To achieve this, the hotel can choose to host all the applications on the cloud. To ensure redundancy, one should also ensure seamless redundant internet connectivity. This strategy will help to reduce dependency on technology manpower at the hotel in a big way. Removing the data centers from the hotel will save cost on space (cost on real estate), cost on cooling, power and other infrastructure cost.
During the discussion of cloud adoption, arguments are often stuck on the point which says the cost of Opex for cloud for the period of 3-4 years will get equal to the setting up of infrastructure at the premise. So this strategy is old wine in new bottle and will not bring any benefit in long run. This theory, many a times becomes closure for the thoughts around cloud adoption. One should note that these cost benefit analysis only looks at the Opex cost paid for cloud and the Capex and Opex for the infrastructure at the premise. Most of the time, they do not take the following costs factored in the calculations. This includes : cost and effort spent on software/hardware update/upgrade, maintaining hardware/software, and manpower deployed for ensuring uptime and user experience.
Front Office
This department mainly uses Property Management System (PMS) , to manage reservation, room inventory and billing during guest stay and checkout. There are many PMS available in the market with different flavors and modes. One should plan to adopt cloud based PMS which is intuitive enough for the usage so that it will not require any training cost for adaptation. The PMS should enable facial recognition for authentication of guest automatically and utilize mobile keys for guest rooms.
The major roadblock in automating the process at reception is verification of identity proof of the guest at check in. This can get easily resolved by the usage of an application that helps in facial recognition and OCR based scanners for document scanning. Further the guest room keys can be dispensed through automatic dispensers during check-in or the keys can be sent over to the guest’s mobile device.
The other use case to be automated is the provision of internet credentials for the guest during check-in. If the hotel enables certificate level authentication (Passpoint) for the devices instead of the traditional room number and last name, a good amount of user interaction can be avoided and the guest will have elevated experience for connecting the Wi-Fi. Though the traditional way of authentication may seems simple but it becomes complicated when the staff has not used the correct last name of guest or they misspell the same.
The other area for automation is Bell Desk. The main activity at this area is to assist guest for carrying luggage during the time of check-in, check-out and guest stay. These tasks are highly manual and physical presence of staff is required to complete the activity. Adoption of Autonomous driven luggage trolleys will easily resolve this requirement and make the Bell Desk fully automated. In generation of autonomous vehicle technology advancement, this use case is just a matter of adaption and usage to make it more easily available for the industry. Adoption of the above technologies will help the Front Office department to reduce the manpower by 60-70 percent and enhance the guest experience.
Housekeeping
Housekeeping is the department which maintains the upkeep and cleanliness of the guest room and entire Hotel. To maintain the cleanliness, the property should adopt various practices on the structure. For example reducing the crevices on structure (walls that keep dust intact on surfaces, usage of anti-dust paints etc. Keeping the dust away from the structure will help in reducing the majority of activity for the housekeeping team at the hotel. Further furniture and fixtures shall be chosen in such a way that these should not allow dust to settle on it.
All the sweeping and mopping activities shall be automated with the use of cleaning robots. Placements of furniture and fixtures shall be done in such way that these cleaning gadgets should be allowed to freely move to clean the area.
One can choose self-cleaning ‘Water Closets’ (WC) and ‘Wash Basin’ for guest rooms to reduce the frequency of manual cleaning. These levels of automation will ensure a faster and efficient cleaning of guest rooms and public area in the hotel. In addition, it helps in quick turnaround time for guest rooms which enables the team to make the guest room available for check-in in no time.
Food & Beverage
The major revenue contributor for a hotel is Guest Rooms and ‘Food and Beverages’ (F&B). To maintain a robust F&B department in hotel, it requires more manpower and infrastructure. These challenges has forced many hoteliers to think of not providing any F&B outlets in hotel premises. This created the concept of budget hotels. These hotels have very minimal or no F&B facilities.
Hotels can opt for various options to elevate the guest experience. By introducing QR code at the table along with intuitive menu for ordering will help the guest to choose his menu with ease. On the contrary we could see hotels adopting the QR code scanning by throwing the PDF of menu and killing the entire user experience. An intuitive menu will help the restaurant to have an elevated experience to the guest as they do in any online food delivery app.
This will give some relief of work load to the restaurant team and maintain social distancing. F&B Service performed by robotic butlers would be an ideal option for room service. It helps to save cost on manpower and ensure social distancing.
If hotels intend not to have F&B at the premises to save cost and optimize the revenue, they shall opt for cloud kitchens to deliver F&B orders from remote locations. Using automatic F&B dispensers at the premises is also a smart move to provide F&B for the guest with least overheads.
Customer Contact Center
When in need, guests always try to reach out for help. The queries range from asking for information, services, food orders etc.. AI enabled Chabot with chat/voice interface will help to address this use case in a smart way. This will ensure only complicated queries which the chabot is unable to handle are being forwarded to the staff to address. It will help to reduce the manpower in this department and increase the efficiency of the operations. Chatbot can be deployed in any department as Front Office, F&B and Housekeeping.
Video Surveillance
Increased risk in social life and environment demands a comprehensive video surveillance at the hotel premises. A 24×7 video surveillance enabled with video analytics and alerts will help in securing the premises with the least number of manpower deployed round the clock. The monitoring of the same can be done remotely and actioned only in the case of incidents triggered.
Back office
Automating the booking using online mode and insisting digital payments will reduce the stress on reconciliation and the back office accounting processes. The hotel should ensure to have the PMS, Point of Sales (POS) application and any other guest facing application having seamless integration with the accounting system so that the revenue and sales are updated correctly without any human intervention. Gone are the days where each data is manually audited and verified to ensure the accuracy of the same. A robust system deployed would reduce the overheads on back office and reduce manual errors in reconciliation.
Engineering
All systems in the engineering department should be made smart by connectivity using IoT (Internet of Things) or nBIoT (Narrow Band Internet of Things) technology. By this, the systems and plant can be monitored remotely and schedule pro-active maintenance for each with ease. This will avoid continuous on premise physical monitoring of the plant and systems. Automating the monitoring will help to predict any shut downs and ensure uninterrupted operations. Technology is widely available in the market which can convert the existing Plant equipment (Boiler, DG sets, HVAC machines etc..) into smart mode for monitoring and managing . The data mined from these systems will help in optimizing operations and save costs.
Hoteliers should realize that technology in hospitality is no longer limited to PMS and POS. One should look at technology as business enabler and a tool to elevate the guest experience. There is a good example around us that shows how the adoption of right technology by a hotel startup organization has infused series D round of funding during this pandemic time!
– The author, C G Prasad is a Hospitality Technology evangelist with over 20 years of experience in Technology, IoT, Infrastructure, Security and Business Systems in multiple domains ranging from Hospitality, Co-Working/Living, Travel and Consulting
Disclaimer : – The above article contains expressions and views of the author and it doesn’t relate in any form or other with the organization associated with him.