At the recent Hotel Technology Conference in Singapore one
of the topics discussed was the wisdom of putting devices into hotel rooms. A
good question, given the fact that the average traveler tends to be accompanied
by more than just one connected device. Wouldn’t it be easier to utilise the
guest’s devices with downloadable apps and the like, rather than go to the
expense of bulk buying expensive hard ware that may be outdated within 12
months?
The instinctive answer may be ‘yes’, but whether you rely on
guests’ own devices or decide to put devices or technologies in the room for
guest use, the key for designing a successful service in both cases comes down
to how easily those technologies and services can be used and how effective
they can be managed.
Unfortunately there is not one single provider that can take
care of every technology requirement in a hotel. Within a hotel’s technology
belly there are at any given time a number of different systems, protocols and
versions trying to play with each other, which makes incorporating various new
technologies to enhance the guest experience and a unified approach to
interface and service workflow difficult.
 |
| The check-in process: still unchanged & tedious |
One of the main culprits seems to be PMS. The ideal of the
PMS as the “master mind” of a hotel that manages everything from front desk,
equipment, maintenance and guest preferences through a single piece of software
is increasingly hard to find. Many PMS’ are lagging behind the ever faster
spinning guest tech curve, which results in the dissonance in providing a
smooth and unified approach when managing these devices and services in hotels,
even in newly built properties. Case in point: the check-in process, which
remains largely unchanged – and tedious.
While you can read that the hottest PMS trends currently are
mobile optimisation for management and guest-facing systems, given that we are now
in year 6 of the iPhone and year three of the iPad – which arguably kicked off
our current smart device revolution – this seems hopelessly late.
Enter the Cloud
To overcome the barrier to creating a highly integrated
hospitality environment, convergence of all subsystems in the private or public
Cloud may be the only way forward, particularly if we are talking about fixed
or mobile guest device management.
While the debate is still ongoing in the hospitality
industry whether cloud services provide sufficient control, security and
connectivity, as an ex telco-person it is clear to me that there is no better
way of managing critical data efficiently than in the cloud (see here
a good article on the benefits of the Cloud for hospitality).
From the perspective of guest device management, the most
important benefits are a unified management interface, ease of systems updates
and lower Total Cost of Ownership.
But what the Cloud doesn’t
automatically deliver is improved hospitality services. This still depends on
the functionality of the PMS, regardless of whether it’s running from the Cloud
or not.
 |
| Kiva robots in action (image courtesy of Kiva Systems) |
A good example – albeit outside the hospitality industry -
of how a unified technology ecosystem can make a difference is the story of Kiva
Systems, a supply-chain robot-maker which was bought by Amazon last year for
$775 million. Kiva is a highly integrated system that uses robots to retrieve
and carry entire shelf-units of packages to appropriate shipping points. There
is a great article here
that explains how Kiva is an integral part of the migration into Cloud
computing by connecting the virtual world to the physical world. It’s a
great example of what true convergence should look like and I hope we will see
similar initiatives in the hospitality technology space soon.
