“Digital transformation” refers to the rapid adoption of modern technologies like AI and data analytics by businesses to help streamline workflows, save resources, and improve services. In recent years, this has been a big trend in the travel and hospitality industries. Hotels that have yet to digitally transform risk falling behind as their competitors will have greater resources to put into marketing, cutting their prices, and delivering for customers.
Here are some of the ways hotels can get started.
Front Desk Automation
First impressions count, and if the first impression guests get of your hotel is a long queue to check in, then they are probably not going to have a good one. Long wait times are frustrating, especially when people may have just travelled far or uncomfortably. Of course, if lots of guests arrive at the same time, there is little you can do to avoid this with limited staff. That is, unless you look into some technological solutions.
One technology that is now widely found in chain hotel lobbies is the self-service kiosk. These allow guests to check themselves in by locating and verifying their booking details and identity, which means that long queues at the front desk and waiting around while a member of staff manually looks up the booking can be avoided. These can also typically handle payments and assign rooms for walk-in guests too. The efficiency these provide often results in more satisfied customers.
Housekeeping and Maintenance Scheduling
The room not being ready can also be frustrating for arriving guests, and being allowed access before the agreed check-in time is a great way to please them. To ensure that rooms are made ready in the most efficient way possible, it is worth looking into dynamic scheduling software. This is a type of digital schedule that is integrated with the booking system and automatically figures out the best order in which to clean the rooms.
These schedules can also instantly update when guests arrive and check-in, or if they make any special requests. The schedule will be changed to accommodate them if possible, and the housekeeping staff will be notified. When it comes to checking out, some hotels use sensors to detect guests leaving and update the cleaning schedule. This means they can get the room ready faster, which gives them more chance of pleasing the next guest staying in it.
Procurement and Inventory Management
A steady supply of food, drinks, toiletries, cleaning supplies, and linens is necessary for any successful hotel business. Disruptions can create big problems and a lot of unhappy guests, and they can easily be caused by poor inventory management, under- or overstocking, and unreliable suppliers. Handling procurement and inventory management manually is also typically slow and prone to error. Luckily, there are much better solutions available, such as cloud-based systems.
These systems, developed by vendors such as Futurelog, track inventory in real time and can automatically generate and send purchase orders when they are needed. They can also instantly match invoices with purchase orders and seek approval or release the payment. Although growing in popularity, these systems are quite new and are not yet available in every country. The ‘Contact Us’ page on Futurelog’s site or other vendors’ sites usually shows if they operate in your country.
Customer and Room Service
Checking in and out are not the only situations where time is of the essence if you want to keep your guests happy. It is also important to respond promptly when they request room service, amenities, or maintenance. With limited staff on the front desk who may already be occupied, this is not always possible. That is why many hotels now opt for digital solutions, such as online platforms where guests can submit their requests via their phone or laptop.
The requests can then instantly be passed onto the right people to deliver them, and because everything is tracked electronically, the hotel will be able to see whether guests’ requests are being delivered within their target timeframe. Some apps also offer guests an AI chatbot for when they have simple queries, like what time they need to check out or what time food stops being served.
Energy and Facilities Management
Most of the above strategies help hotels save money in some way. For example, using automated inventory management to forecast demand for food products can help cut down on waste. However, one of any hotel’s biggest costs is its energy bill. This is often the case because guests leave things like their air conditioning and lights on when they leave, and it can be some time before a member of staff goes to the room to turn them off.
There are a few different solutions to this issue which can all result in significant savings for hotels. One is now ubiquitous, and that is the use of key cards to turn the electricity on in a room. Another is the use of sensors which can detect when the room is empty and turn everything off automatically. There are also systems that help hotels detect when elevators, air conditioning, and other important pieces of equipment need servicing.
Dynamic Pricing
Hotels have always been known to vary their prices in response to demand, seasonal trends, events taking place, and their competitors’ rates. But doing this manually is time-consuming, and it is easy to end up with suboptimal pricing that either does not appeal to customers or does not generate as much revenue as it could. AI revenue-management systems are popular solutions for this, as they can crunch data from various sources to calculate your optimal room rates.
They then automatically update the rates across your different booking platforms, saving a lot of time and effort. This is another example of how data analytics is shaking up the hospitality industry.
Conclusion
When they can save hotels energy, time, and money while putting a smile on guests’ faces, there is really no excuse for not embracing at least some of the digital solutions described above. They can bring about a significant transformation of hotels, turning them into efficient and highly profitable businesses which deliver even better customer service than before.