Digital Transformation in Hotels: Trends & Challenges

What if you could transform your hotel business digitally, handle the repetitive tasks, and provide personalized guest experiences? That's how running your hotel becomes smoother, and that's the power of hotel digital transformation.

In this blog, let's find out what digital transformation means for hoteliers, why it's important, and the key trends that are hitting this industry.

What is digital transformation in hotels?

The infusion of technology in different hotel operations is known as hotel digital transformation.

As the guest journey is never going to be linear, hoteliers need to create a digital strategy so they can grow their bookings and make their hotel stand out.

No matter whether they spend maximum time dealing with guests or juggling between back-end systems, technology is touching every aspect of the hotel and has now become the HEART of the hospitality business.

With the increasing use of smartphones, guest expectations have risen, and they want everything to be possible with the click of a button.

Whether it's booking online, doing late-night check-out using a mobile phone, or calling the housekeeping staff with an AI chatbot, creating a digital transformation strategy is something that hoteliers can't ignore.

Why does digital transformation matter for hotel owners?

Digital transformation has become the NEED of the hour, it’s not just a mark of elegance and luxury. Whether it’s about automating routine operations, enhancing guest experience, or cutting your labor cost, hotel digital transformation has more to offer.

A survey was conducted where IT managers of top-rated hotels in Bali and Jakarta participated and shared their insights on using a cloud-based property management system. While doing so, they improved operational efficiency by 30%.

Let’s talk about the top reasons for transforming your hotel business digitally -

1. Enhance your guest experience

One of the potential benefits of hotel digital transformation is that it transforms your guest experience. With the rise of mobile check-in apps, guests can bypass the front desk and get room access through self-service technology.

If the whole experience occurs manually where the guest arrives at your property, enters the registration details, meets your front desk, and gets the room keys. They will get tired.

Similarly, imagine if a guest enters the room and the room temperature is increased, curtains get eventually opened and they can talk to Alexa – start the music now. Wouldn’t that experience become more memorable? That’s the use case of smart technologies.

Guest expectations have grown, and they want everything possible with a few taps. A study from Oracle states that 70% of hotels have planned to offer contactless technology solutions such as check-in and ordering food.

These digital integrations not only bring happy smiles to their faces but also make them loyal to your brand.

2. Automation improves operational efficiency

Through hotel digital transformation, traditional operations can be automated such as housekeeping processes, inventory management, payment processing, etc.

Automation of repetitive tasks makes the hotel staff more efficient, giving them more time to enhance their guest experience. With automation, hoteliers can reduce their labor costs, cut down manual errors, and provide speedy responses to guests.

3. Make your hotel standout

By leveraging digital transformation, hoteliers can attract tech-driven guests who want to do everything with just a few clicks.

With the rise of handheld hospitality solutions and smart rooms gaining popularity, hoteliers realize that guests demand more of a "do it yourself approach" and are ready to serve themselves, whether it's contactless ordering or check-in.

But not every hotel adopts such a tech-forward approach, and if you do so, this becomes an important reason for guests to choose you over others.

4. Make guests feel more personalized

What if you become technologically advanced, but you don’t know what your guests crave the most when they get in their room? You don’t know their preferences and nothing about them. That’s where data and predictive analytics come in.

So, another reason for adopting digital transformation for your hotel is to get detailed insights into your guest's behavior. By knowing the guest's history and tracking their preferences, you can create customized offers and run marketing campaigns accordingly.

For instance – you observed that a peak season is going on, so it becomes an opportunity for you to adjust your room rates and increase RevPAR.

You also noticed that guest A has been your customer for over years now, and by looking at past data, you know that they love going for spa treatments.

This time, you would offer the same and do more upsells to provide a memorable experience. On the one hand, this increases your guest satisfaction and on the other it allows you to earn more additional revenue from these services.

Key trends shaping digital transformation in hotels

Here are the few trends of digital transformation in hotels which are as given below-

1. The rising dopamine of contactless technology

In the era of digital transformation, hotels understand how important it is for them to take a digital-first approach and provide comfort to guests.

More and more hoteliers are now adopting contactless technology at different stages of the guest journey, such as check-in/check-out, payments, and gaining room access without requiring keys.

One recent study state that 92% of guests prefer contactless technology, and they had similar expectations before the pandemic.

Let's say a guest arrives at your hotel and completes their registration before check-in, does contactless check-in, and gains room access without needing keys. The whole experience becomes smooth for them as they won't have to wait at the front desk.

More than that, they can access amenities and request services using just a few taps. The other benefit that comes along the way is that there will be less physical contact between guests and hotel staff.

It's not just limited to room check-in; it's transforming the dining experience. Such touch-free interactions make guests feel more secure, safe, and hygienic.

Initially, hotel staff used to receive pen and paper orders, which was time-consuming, but contactless ordering changed the game. Guests can now browse the menu by scanning QR codes, and staff can better focus on building good relationships with guests.

2. AI in hotel operations

By implementing AI in your routine hotel operations, you can speed up your processes and transform your business digitally. Once key application of AI in hospitality is guest communication.

Once guests land on the hotel’s website, chatbots interact with guests, ease their booking journey, answer their questions, and provide round-the-clock support.

Integrating AI chatbots can be a game changer for hoteliers as they can be used for sending personalized offers, cross-selling sales, and upselling products. This way, hotels can generate more revenue.

During their post-stay, automated feedback forms are sent to guests asking them how they feel and what their overall experience was regarding food and property.

This way, if they notice that a guest feels dissatisfied with a service, AI can track guest preferences, and hotels can thus improve their services.

Beyond guest communication, AI also has its use cases in managing the hotel’s revenue. Revenue management software uses AI/ML algorithms to adjust room prices by considering competitor prices, historical data, and market trends. But that’s just one instance of it.

3. Smart room technology

Another digital transformation trend in hotels is the use of smart room technology.

As customer preferences are changing, they want everything to be controlled using voice commands. They can adjust their room temperature, request services, change the room colors or lighting depending on their mood simply by calling Alexa or Siri.

With the growing adoption of voice technology and streaming services, guests want in-room amenities. Even the findings of the hotel internet survey state that 68% of the guests surveyed showed their preference for voice control technology to control in-room amenities.

Imagine if guests enter their room and there’s a smart mirror in the bathroom that displays the weather updates and shares the current news, don’t you think their stay experience would become more comforting than ever?

But smart room technologies don’t symbolize luxury, they’ve become a necessity.

Eccleston Square Hotel in London is a popular example of a smart hotel that takes luxury to the next level. It added smart room amenities such as electronic curtains, smart glass for lighting, adjustable mattresses, etc.

4. Augmented and virtual reality

Not every photo of a hotel can sing and tell a story, that’s why Augmented and virtual reality are there to turn those boring images into interactive experiences. Guests can immerse themselves and take a virtual tour of the property using a mobile device.

Through virtual hotel tours, guests can view the hotel rooms and their amenities from a 360-degree perspective in the comfort of their homes. They can interact with the property and make trip planning hassle-free.

While augmented reality can be used for overlaying digital information on top of physical surroundings. Guests can use their smartphone camera and get historical insights about the hotel, an interactive tourism guide, and learn a lot about local attractions.

For hotels like Mariott and Hyatt, using such emerging technologies is a game changer as it not only enhances guest experiences but also drives more bookings for property thus leading to more profitability.

5. Increasing demand for robotics

Many hoteliers fear the concept of robotization and automation because they don’t know how to implement such technology and avoid investing because of the cost involved in it.

In the hospitality industry, labor costs generally consume 1/3 of the hotel revenue and robotics is a great way to reduce your labor costs.

A study by hospitality.net states that robots can clean rooms 20 times faster than housekeeping staff.

Such speed difference implies that guests are now ready to accept this technology if a robot staff can do more faster than a human.

Robots can perform an insane number of tasks for guests ranging from delivering food and in-room amenities to guiding guests towards their room and performing housekeeping chores. Plus, they don’t need breaks and can continue to take care of guests.

Is there any challenge in implementing hotel digital transformation?

Here are the few challenges that hoteliers face while adopting digital transformation-

1. Hoteliers resist integrating new technologies as they operate on old legacy systems. They don’t know how new cloud-based systems like hotel management software operate.
2. Adopting new technologies requires training your hotel staff and investing more resources. Of course, they want to adopt a technology-focused approach, but limited budget prevents them from transforming their business digitally.
3. The hospitality industry is a customer-facing domain where you deal with chunks of customer data to ease your workload and enhance guest experience. At the same time, too much reliance on digital tools can pose threats to sensitive guest information.

How can BOTSHOT help you transform your hotel business digitally?

Digital transformation isn’t about adopting new technologies and systems, rather it’s about changing the way your hotels operate and serve your guests.

It’s never an ONE and DONE process, it’s a continuous process. It’s about revamping your strategies, processes, and systems that make your hotel digitally innovative, automate your routine processes, and potentially help you earn more revenue.

At BOTSHOT, we help hotels of all sizes with our all-in-one hotel management software to digitize your guest journey from pre-stay to post-stay. The hotel in the box is there to -

• Automate your hotel operations
• Get more direct bookings
• Streamlines the check-in/check-out process
• Manage your reservations for multiple properties
• Increase your revenue

Want to grow your hospitality bizz? Sign up for a 14-day free trial and let’s grow your hotel now.