Industry Trends
Hotel Tech 2021, A Year in Review
February 18, 2022
2021 was a year when technology played a central role in the global hotel industry. Simpler and less costly tech solutions provided ways to cope with the pandemic and staffing shortage.
We put together some key takeaways from the lodging industry in 2021
1) A New Attitude
2021 a greater recognition of the long-term benefits of investing in technology. Younger and smaller teams of executives at major brands showed a heightened sense of urgency, increasingly recognizing the need for flexible, outsourced solutions. Furthermore, Covid and staff shortages have meant that hotels have had no alternative but to put technology at the heart of their businesses and they have been thrilled with the results.
2) Revenue Management automation
Tech vendors aimed to meet the needs of an industry learning to operate with fewer employees. Automation in their revenue management systems (RMS). Atomize’s RMS, for instance, includes an Autopilot function which tells hoteliers to: “Sit back and relax”, Autopilot will automatically update your rates per room type.
3) The rise is automated upselling
In today’s environment where every dollar counts, the pandemic pushed hoteliers to be more creative in finding new sources of revenue and/or deploying attribute-based selling. Digitalization of guest interaction reduced the face-to-face opportunities for hotel staff to offer room upgrades, spa treatments, or F&B special offers, which led to a rise in the adoption of upselling software solutions.
4) The growth of The Internet of Things:
In 2021 Hotel managers took a closer look at extending IoT applications to help with repetitive manual processes. The popular rollout of online door locks was another example of how widespread IoT technology has become in the global hotel industry. The pandemic proved that hotel guests favoured digital services, standing in line to check-in was not missed! As a result, hoteliers are making electronic communications more personal and similar to the AI-driven recommendations sent out by the ecommerce giants. Some hoteliers pursued a goal of consolidating several data sources to adopt the use of a customer data platform.
5) It’s the Golden Age for hotel tech
Historically, legacy IT systems developed by the global hotel brands were closed systems that could not be easily integrated with external software. The coming-of-age of open APIs (application programming interfaces) has overcome some of these difficulties. For properties and companies not tied to legacy tech, there is a vast choice of cloud-based SaaS products to cover almost everything a hotel does. Although only 10% of the world’s hotels have moved their IT systems to the cloud, many more are expected to follow in the coming years.
February 18, 2022