Guests today actually would prefer to stay in hotels that can offer more than the usual amenities. Even wired internet access, traditional voice services, and cable televisions are not enough. The technology could be the answer with automation and IoT. Using the best-of-the breed technologies, today’s hotel room entertainment systems consist of the top digital amenities, latest products, and services engineered explicitly for use in hotels.
Similarly, like most items in a hotel, technology doesn’t last forever. It needs periodic refresh at regular intervals to keep a hotel competitive. The lifetime of technology investments varies widely, for example, three to four years for PCs and guest room TVs, seven to ten years for front-of-house systems, and 20 years or more for infrastructure and building controls. In this case, planned technology replacement is a smart business. Correctly done, it can reduce costs and risk and raise revenues. Done poorly or not at all, it will sooner or later impact guest satisfaction, operating costs, and the ability to generate new business.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, now may actually be an excellent time to review your hotel’s technology profile and consider a refresh. During times of low occupancy, staff can better provide the needed focus and time for successful implementations, and any guest impact is easier to manage.
Hotel vendors are hungrier for your business now and are more flexible than ever. Third-party financing remains available to minimize the cash-flow impact as well. If your hotel has not refreshed key technology elements recently such as room entertainment systems, then it’s likely that rival hotels have created gaps that you will need to fill if you want to retain competitiveness. Technology advances have made opportunities that didn’t exist five or ten years ago – opportunities to increase revenues, reduce operating costs, and reduce risk.
Some Of These Trends In Hotel Technology Include The Following:
Intelligent environmental controls (heat, air conditioning, lighting), working in conjunction with a centralized computer system, can reduce guest room energy consumption by up to 40%, often with paybacks as short as 12-24 months.
Advances in yield management science make it easier than ever to squeeze out extra revenue with little or no cost, even in times of low occupancy.
New CRM and mobile marketing tools can help to cement relationships with repeat customers. They can improve sales of ancillary services such as room service, spa, and resort activities.
New mobile technologies allow more effective utilization of staff, reducing labor costs without impacting the guest experience.
Modern network designs allow the network to be shared across many or even hotel applications and guest room devices. They can significantly reduce the acquisition and maintenance costs of those applications and devices. Improvements in data security in core systems such as PMS and POS help minimize exposure to financial risk resulting from security breaches.
Centralized operation of systems, serving multiple hotels, is frequently now more reliable than onsite operations, and can reduce costs dramatically. Many vendors now offer hosted versions of essential software packages.
Some Of The Top Needed Upgrades To Systems Affect The Following Core Systems:
Next-Generation Central Reservation Systems
Getting a next-gen CRS is now a trend for many hotels. The system is built to handle chains and independents and grants you the tools to manage rates and inventory efficiently. Moreover, numerous internal systems can be streamlined in hotel reservation systems such as payroll, CRM, and PMS.
How Next-Gen CRS Helps You To Achieve Your Goals
- Robust rate and availability control feature to generate hotel revenue.
- Hurdle rates and rate tiers to enable full revenue management capabilities.
- Multiple stays control to optimize occupancy by channel.
- International functionality, including seven different language options.
The automated hotel data (HOD) tool enables updates and real-time data to all GDSs and third-party sites. Data security standards certification by the Payment Card Industry (PCI).
Image archive enables automatic file renaming, resizing, and hospitality distribution.
Integrated extranet management tools and competitive rate reports.
Groups Management Module enables hotels to manage group block allotments.
The best technology has to be user-friendly, innovative, and advanced technology, flexible, user-friendly, and requires minimal hardware and software on the hotel’s side.
PABX Interface Systems
The Calling Billing Software System, providing a typically decoded feature of PABX, can support all available interpreted data Phone Connection systems. PABX ensures calling will be billed accurately and adequately. The PABX is an application program that is billed contacting much more than Calling Billing System via PABX. For instance, we can configure the Rating Table from Daily timing or Rating Table from outgoing call number or destination phone dial.
This is also applicable to Hotel Service and Tax Calculation. Besides, the telephone call is accurately generated and billed to hotel guest folio automatically, and so, it is not necessary to post again to PMS (Property Management System)
The PABX also provides all accounting reports which allow management to properly audit and oversee, such as a receipt, guest folio posting, office extension usage, outgoing call statistics, and so on.
Every hotel should have a refresh plan for critical technologies, just as it does for soft goods and other vital services. Review the age of your current essential systems and get good advice on the proper refresh interval for each.
Chances are, some of your systems are past their useful lives, and you’re leaving profit on the table that could be yours with a refresh. Prioritize and sequence the investments you need to make to remain competitive.
Point Of Sale Systems
Restaurants, bars, and gift shops are very profitable departments in almost every hotel. An efficient point of sale system is an absolute must for those outlets. The next-gen POS module should be fully integrated with centralized hotel management systems. The system should consist of easy to learn, user-friendly software, and recommended hardware components so that staff can understand it easily.
While we have talked about the fundamental technological trends in the hotel industry above, there are a lot more systems that you should know about before upgrading or thinking about getting your tech installed, and some of those include these below and remember that you always want these integrated into a centralized system.
- IT hotel management systems
- Internet systems.
- Energy and back-up power systems.
- Telecommunication connections – a selection of operators, connection parameters for a specific object.
- Lighting systems and light design.
- Hotel information systems
- Advertising systems
- Facility monitoring systems
- Radio distribution systems: WI-FI, Bluetooth, GSM.
- Audio-Video Systems – Conference
- Building audio and video systems
- Internal communication systems
- Access systems – electronic locks, mechanical locks, evacuation systems.
- Fire protection systems, notification, evacuation lighting.
- Anti-burglary systems, traffic monitoring on the site.
- Hotel TV systems – equipment, licenses, suppliers – connections to the hotel system
- Facility server room – hardware, software, extinguishing and monitoring systems, HVAC
- Motion control systems: barriers, gates, beacons.
- Entertainment systems
- Systems for arcade games -consoles and large structures such as bowling alleys, electronic golf, simulators, etc.
- Technical premises on the site and their equipment
- Systems for monitoring the design parameters of a hotel facility.
- Control and notification systems for technical events and alarms on the site.
- Hotel management system with interfaces for external systems
- Power cabling and associated structural cabling (telecommunications, computer, Television, CCTV, and automation)
- HVAC systems – heating, cooling, ventilation, and joint control.
- RFID asset protection systems
Conclusion
In today’s Covid -19 world, these technology solutions can help your hotel operations; however, they may not be readily available as the tourism and hotel industry, like many others, tries to recover.
You may have to partner with a technology firm that will provide the equipment you need via financing or lease. They will help you maintain the cutting edge technologies and offer any software upgrades while you concentrate on the core parts of hotel operation. Some of these tech products are now affordably and competitively priced and are available through flexible payment terms making it even easier for you to replace your existing systems or start with the very best technology available in the market today.