Technology Integration in the hotel industry
Why is it difficult to set industry standards in the hotel industry?
The reach of travel technology that exists today is the technology that would help hotels manage consumer needs with ease and smoothness. Despite hotels having the latest of Property Management Systems (PMS), Central Reservation Systems (CRS), and booking engines, hotels are not able to track the activities of their customers in the hotel space with ease whether it is booking a spa treatment, or availing products from the minibar or using the sports centers for extra hours. This leads to a lot of confusion and unnecessary paperwork during the billing process, which reduces the value of the experience of the customer.
Without an interoperable and integrated technology infrastructure within the hotel, entries would have to be manual and cross-verified to make sure the record is accurate. That increases the unnecessary workload on hotel staff and complicate communication systems within hotels. The clear path forward for these hotels to integrate all their existing technology to track the movement of customers and help create a relaxing experience for the customer and easier method to track and calculate the final bills of the customers. The customer starts to experience the hotel’s service and competency while planning their trip and going through the internet to find hotels with good prices and good reviews. An advanced booking engine would provide a great booking experience for the customer as it would be integrated into the data systems and hotel technology that would track the inventory. It is therefore important that the hotel data is integrated properly in their website and third party websites so that the appropriate room rates and availability of rooms are tracked and displayed in real-time for customers to evaluate.
Hotel must have a system which can easily track and transfer customer information. When customer activity is tracked within the hotel, it makes billing processes easier for the hotel management and easier for customers to understand their activities and billing. The hotel staff are going to find it easier in handling integrated technology and the easy accessibility of information for the customer makes them happy and attribute a positive experience. Integrated technology that makes the life of staff and customers easier improves worker productivity and customer experience.
Despite technology integration being a clear solution to many of the problems, it is not an easy process to integrate many of them. There are a lot of issues when it comes to technology integration. Many organizations would work with technology that cannot be integrated because they have closed interface systems meaning that other software and data points would be incompatible and inflexible codes which make it impossible to integrate. With the rise of cloud computing, interoperability was a complicated problem and those who tried to work on it recognized there are heavy financial cost and complicated technology infrastructure which would make it difficult for hotel staff to use with efficiency. For technology to be integrated with one other to function, technology needs to have API (Application Programming Interface). API is an open interface that can allow communication between different software. One of the many advantages of API is the ability to create bespoke development.
It is pivotal that international regulatory agencies create and enforce standards for technology integration for hotels with good brand backing and with considerable resources. Customer experience in today’s world is not only limited to their experience in the hotel but it includes their pre and post-stay experience, and organizations that evaluate the quality of hotels must evaluate the quality of experience a hotel provides in its pre and post-stay and the technologies used that provides value to customer experience.
It is possible to have integrated travel technology that provides a more accessible user interface for customers. Technology can be created to meet certain standards of quality but can also be built on the foundation of providing a hyper-personalized experience for customers. At TechWorks.Travel, the technology team have designed travel technology that can help hotels integrate their existing technologies using API interfaces and bespoke web development to create an internet infrastructure that would provide a more personalized experience for customers. It would enable hotels to gather customer intelligence to help hotels provide personalized service and track customer activities within the hotel to create customer loyalty programs to retain customer business. With TechWorks.Travel, hotels have an opportunity to evolve their infrastructure and move to create an easy and unique user experience.
