Hoteliers seeking technology workers
The front desk manager or housekeeper may epitomize the hotel employee, but the hospitality industry is increasingly dependent on tech workers, vacuuming data scientists, web designers and other experts into its ranks.
More than ever, guests look to their phones and computers to research, book, stay in and communicate with hotels. That translates to critical technology needs in information security, mobile development and systems integration.
Inside hotel operations, data analysis can help find new customers, make a dining room more profitable or provide information to executives making business decisions.
Kate Walsh, interim dean of the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell, says she is seeing more companies coming on campus to hire students who are specializing in areas like digital marketing and business analytics. “They want foodies who code,” she said.
Glassdoor, a company based in Mill Valley, California, that amalgamates listings from job posting sites around the internet, has noticed an increase in tech hospitality listings as well. “All companies are becoming technology companies to some degree, and this is especially true in the hospitality industry,” said Scott Dobroski, who works in corporate communications for Glassdoor.
Michael Leidinger, chief technology officer with Hilton Hotels and Resorts, said his department had added 140 positions in just the last two years. The department manages the core technology for the hotel chain, including data centers, websites around the world, mobile apps and information technology support.
While many college students majoring in science, technology, engineering and math are attracted to the household-name tech companies in Seattle and Silicon Valley, Leidinger said he tells them, “If you’re really into technology, there’s a revolution happening in hospitality,” and as part of a smaller team, “you can drive, innovate and take ownership.”
One project for Hilton tech employees is keyless entry, which allows guests to use their phones instead of plastic key cards to unlock room doors. Of Hilton’s 4,800 hotels, 750 now offer keyless entry, and the company hopes to install the service in 2,500 hotels by the end of this year.
There are also technical job openings at the hotel level, where employees at individual properties manage social media, on-site Wi-Fi and the integration of systems like retail, parking and food sales.
Mamie Peers, senior digital, social and e-commerce director at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, an independently owned and operated hotel, said she had been expanding her team and putting its members in office space in the hotel.
Technology integrates with everything, she said, so it makes sense to give the new team access to “the casino employees, chefs, all the experts in each area, so they can work together.”
The hotel had been relying heavily on an external technical consulting agency, but it is now shifting toward doing more of its own technology development. “We’re developing our own in-house talent to innovate, test new ideas and learn from them,” Peers said.
Peers said she looked for new hires who can understand technology and also explain it. Even her marketing team gets tech questions. And “they have to hustle,” she said, to keep up with the fast-paced environment.
The trend is global. The Taj hotel group, which is based in India and operates hotels on four continents, embarked a year ago on “a digital transformation journey,” according to Chinmai Sharma, its chief revenue officer. The company, which is more than 100 years old, has been hiring more digital experts and statistical analysts, he said, especially in the past nine months.
The effort has been especially critical in his home country. “Mobile use in India is going through the roof,” Sharma said. “Our population is young and we need to meet them on the platform they are using.”
Data science is another area of growth for the industry — finding, for example, where customers are online, how they make decisions and how hotel resources are used. “We need data scientists to make sense of what is going on so we can compete against online travel agents like Expedia and maximize revenues,” Sharma said. do?
We know that we have to elevate our experiences. With our digital businesses, we’ve done a lot of work over the last three to five years. We need to take that into the store. The other piece of this is we also need to transform how we do business. We need a lot more speed and agility in terms of what products to buy, how we buy them, how do we get them into the store and make them hyperlocal. And from a marketing standpoint, once we get the product there, how do we personalize the experience in terms of the message for the customer? That’s what the customer is expecting.
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