Technology in Hotels: Building the Hotel of the Future

In a business landscape characterized by growing commoditization, increased competition, and economic, geographic and demographic shifts, implementing latest technology in hotels helps lodging companies stay ahead and deliver customized guest experiences.

Businesses worldwide are adopting innovative technology concepts at a greater pace than ever before. New hospitality technology trends will play a key role in delivering a personalized experience and help in better managing operations, maximizing overall performance, enhancing the effectiveness of sales and marketing approaches, increasing efficiency and reducing costs.

Accenture has identified three action areas for hoteliers to shape their IT strategies: build analytics capabilities, keep up with advances in mobility and optimize existing touchpoint channels. This paper provides innovative ideas on these technology areas that can help lodging companies seize new opportunities, manage challenges and build effective strategies to build the hotel of the future.

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Leveraging innovative technology for hotels can help achieve robust growth amid the rapid changes in the global economy and technology landscape. Additionally, competitive forces are driving the need for new offerings to complement and enhance overall brand equity.

The property technology landscape in particular has been the biggest barrier to innovation for the hotel industry, specifically legacy property management solutions, varying points-of-sale systems and lack of consistent connectivity models to the central enterprise systems. Hoteliers need to rethink how they can harness information technology (IT) to innovate, and ultimately position themselves to provide new offerings and meet consumer needs.

Where should lodging companies begin?

The continuing wave of change in business and technology represents an opportunity for hoteliers to place a relentless eye toward the future and make strategic technology investments.

Using new technology in hotels enables better services and stronger operations. Lodging companies must act now by determining where to target investments in digital capabilities to make their organizations better poised for competitive differentiation in an increasingly buyer-driven market—and build the hotel of the future.

Accenture’s experience with leading industry players and companies in similar consumer-driven industries has enabled us to identify three action areas for hoteliers as they develop their new hospitality technology strategies:

• Build analytics: This provides an advanced decision-making capability to drive greater customer and market understanding, leading to innovative products, better customer targeting, improved pricing, and growth in both revenue and profits. Hoteliers must build a foundation of adaptive technology that enables better informed decision-making and refined explanations for business performance.

• Keep up with mobility: This helps in engaging with the consumers effectively. Lodging companies need to address mobility holistically to determine effective ways of integrating guest and employee demands into their enterprise and property IT architectures, and manage them across the guest life cycle.

• Optimize digital channels: This helps in delivering relevant consumer experience across all touchpoints. Hoteliers must transform the contemporary marketing function into a discipline centered on meeting guest needs.