Tech-driven ‘new normal’ in hotels
‘Hotels in the age of social distancing: Where are the robots?’ was the topic of discussion for the second session of TravTalk Digital Conclave, which saw industry experts discuss the changes in the post-COVID era in hospitality and the best way forward f
The digital era is here to stay! In India, it came to the masses slightly earlier, when the government announced demonetisation and most Indians had to resort to e-payments. Such is also the belief of Founder & CEO, Indian School of Hospitality (ISH), who claims that demonetisation changed the way Indians spent money, now digitised to a great extent, and now is the time for e-learning. “The trend is creating a new social habit in Indians—consuming online learning. In terms of industry perspective, there is going to be a massive shift towards mandatory branded online learning for the workforce in hotels. If there is anything the industry can do to support its people, it’s to encourage them to build upon this habit and upskill themselves. The new normal is going to be different. Technology will continue to change our world in different ways. In hotels, we were used to saying, ‘high-tech leads to high touch’, but now we are trying to imagine how high-tech would lead to low touch or no touch. I would urge hotels to encourage and invest in their people, to upskill them to meet the challenges of the new normal,” he says.
Dilip Puri,
For
President – South Asia, HVS ANAROCK,
Mandeep Singh Lamba,
this pandemic has impacted us like nothing else before. He claims that social distancing is absolutely alien to Indians, and it is now going to become the new normal. “Customer behaviour is going to change and hotels will have to adopt to the new positioning that we need to have inside our hotels. The hospitality industry is very resilient and almost cyclical. We’ve had disruptions every few
years, but this time the difference is in the way demand has plummeted. In earlier disruptions, the supply was coming, and it became very difficult for the industry to come back quickly. However, this time, I estimate that the industry would bounce back much quicker, as soon as there is a reduction in the cases and we see a treatment or vaccine available. However, there are going to be some permanent changes in the industry, both in terms of operations and design. This is perhaps not the last time that we are seeing a disruption of this kind. We all need to be better prepared next time around,” he says.
Market Vice President - North India, Bhutan and Nepal at Marriott Hotels India, on the other hand, believes that there is still not a definitive new normal. “Today, one of the biggest problems
Jatin Khanna,
for our industry is that we need to bring confidence back in our customers. Whenever demand bounces back, we need to ensure that our customers have complete confidence and faith in our hotels and brand in terms of safety. Today, it’s a work in progress for everyone. When it comes to technology, we couldn’t have been at a better stage than today and it is the only positive which is coming out of this phase of our lives. The next wave of hotels’ renovation will have too much of technology and design embedded in it. - Dilip Puri
I believe that social distancing and technology will have a huge positive impact on our industry. We are a people-first industry, and technology is going to cut down on the mundane or lowlevel jobs, which will bring more efficiency to our people and help them create better guest experiences. Future leaders of the industry should work towards creating a balance between robots and human guest interaction,” he shares.
High on technology
With technology making headway in hotels, people now would be careful in handing out credit cards at the reception of the hotel. Lamba says, “The payments will continue to happen through credit cards, but we are going to have a contactless check-in and check-out over the phone. The guest will have the bill sent on the phone and he won’t have to present the credit card to anyone on entering the hotel. There are going to be permanent disruptors and I believe that it is now the death of the front office, as it will not be required any more. One can do all these things online very safely. Guests would have all the RFID stuff on their phones, and everything can be done from smartphones. The front desk, including concierge, will get converted into perhaps a contact centre, which can work from anywhere. You can dial a number if you need assistance in something you want to do, but certainly these are some of the long-term changes at least I see will happen going forward,” he believes.
However, putting all these systems would require investment. Khanna explains, “Operational expenses would certainly go up. Depending on the facilities, anywhere between 175 and 250 touchpoints are there in the guest’s journey while staying in a hotel. To sanitise all those points and to keep the guests safe, hotels are going to invest, and there
will be a lot of other operational expenses which will be there. I am sure that with time, these expenses would probably become a part of the P&L. Hence, there is all the more need to drive efficiency and invest in the future, which will make sure that we keep on bringing down our running cost, and as