ID HOTELIER - I would like to emphasize on the idea to have a new culture of becoming " Smart Hotelier". Because, we are facing a lot of challenges on how we are going to build our business in the future. The changes are inevitable and therefore, we all need to understand the notion of technology from the perspectives of objects, knowledge, activities, process, and system .
The industry should take a stand to really pay attention on the presence of new technologies which will enable us to be closer to our client. The function of technology presence in the industry could be seen as a value creation where top management should pay attention and understand the urgency of having the most updated technology on how to engage with their customer. Furthermore, we have seen that the client now is more becoming digital consumer and having the new technology will enable us to build guest engagement which is now should be considered as one of main factor to win the competition.
Building or having the support of technology could also be done thru some others media such as ; Social Media and other media on a digital based and it should be synchronized among all system and platform that we used to ensure our presence in real time to all our customer.
Information Technology has penetrated into all three stages of the travel process :
Before the trip ( pre-consumption stage )
During the trip and
After the trip
As more and more guest are becoming a digital consumer, we should really understand the need of having two way communication technology which need to be adopted by a hotel whether it is with an apps or other platform that the hotel built or using other digital medias where communication could be done in a two ways communication and in a real time as we need to see this technology as a tool for a value creation.
Therefore, the presence of a technology (or digital platform) is very crucial where customer will be able to communicate not only with the hotel but also to all their friend thru digital media where hotel create their own technology or using other digital media ( paid and earned media).
Digital media such as Facebook, Tripadvisor or google maps navigation system is more and more are used by hospitality industry to communicate to their client on this digital revolution era where a lot of people going to a digital platform where a message is created and channeled to consumer in the online environment in real time and therefore, actually
the tourism industry is very technology intensive industry where the technology mean to support and deliver the service, to measure performance and to evaluate and tracking advertising in order to enhance customer experience.
This industry offers opportunities to leverage new technologies, evolve guest services and offerings, and enter emerging markets. And competition for guests continues to heat up.
Success in the field of hospitality requires a solid back up of roles of technology.
So having a new technology which enable us building a two ways communication with our client is an important topic that I think is very interesting associated with hospitality is this notion of innovation and trends. One of the trends that I see, a very salient set of issues is regarding the complexity and how we can be responsive and agile to the complexity, both competitively and, certainly, operationally. So it's an interesting process when we try to look at what our future needs are and trying to map out some of the operational related issues to address those needs.
Besides that, as a management we need to understand our strategy which we frequently talk about creating a dual-competitive advantage where we create unique points of differentiation and simultaneously reduce costs. And that can sometimes be in conflict. So what I think we're seeing now is a lot of interesting innovative products that are trying to be more select service or specific kinds of services while we are working on the back end cost reduction by having new technology.
And what I see unique about innovation in our industry is its pace. Think about the speed with which technology is delivering new applications in the marketplace, the evolution of the mobile device, which allows the consumer to connect easily. Moreover, it allows intermediaries and suppliers alike to help that individual, that guest, through the entire experience.
And the pace. It's happening very fast.
What we have seen lately is a huge innovation is to facilitate a self-service. To allowing guests to serve themselves very easily, and that being defined as really high level of service.
Value is created by hotels by using a new technology which should be user friendly to our guest. Than this new technology will be functioned as differentiation from our competitors to their guest.
Differentiation requires a tremendous amount of attention to building uniqueness and providing the kind of service and expectation that a particular customer will value. And to accomplish this we then might consider to build a new technology.
As a closing on this article, I would like to emphasize on the factors that influencing technology adoption which has mentioned by Rogers in his theory of the diffusion of innovation which say there are few things that make a technology likely to be adopted which can be summarized as follows:
Relative advantage.
Compatibility
Complexity
Trialability and
Observability
Therefore, the adoption of a new technology should be able to answer the need of people which are looking for more immersive experiences; are we having a tools to communicate digitally; and that consumers are increasingly more impatient and more mobile. Each of these trends has an impact on how hotels need to communicate in the future, and exemplify the change that people are undergoing as technology intersects with human behavior.
Consumers are setting the bar higher for communications and hotels needs to pay attention on this issue and some hotels has placing more and more of their digital marketing budget.
last but not least, our mindset must change and hotel management has to recognize that the customer is now in control.
That means that a synergy on our way to communicate to our guest to be carefully thought such as; how do we create messages that customer want to watch or listen to? The approach taken needs to match consumer behavior. Messages need to be engaging and useful so that people want to listen and share.
Experienced Hotelier since 1992 and now active on Digital Marketing
Certified Master Trainer by Google Gapura Digital
Mentor & Expert of Tourism Recovery Program by Enpact in 5 countries