Providing a personal touch, in the form of human-to-human interaction, is one of the core tenets of providing the best guest services possible in hospitality.
Though, over the past several years, we have seen hospitality sector embrace new ways for managing guest services, which often involves new and unique mobile strategies, geo-location services, and tablet computers in hotel lobbies.
All of these new innovations are certainly changing the landscape by which hoteliers interact with guests. In return, guests are more connected with the hospitality provider, they receive better services and it can help enhance overall brand loyalty for a hotelier.
These are all wonderful things, and when done correctly, guests are happy and will return again and again. Though, with the advancing adoption of the most innovative consumer technologies, are we missing the human element? Or, will we eventually move away from human interaction completely and have interactive kiosks and robots managing guest?
While nobody has a crystal ball to determine if this level of technology integration will happen, it would be best for hospitality providers to use technology to augment their interpersonal relationships with guests.
By nature, people are social creatures that need direct human contact at all times. Texting, Twitter and Facebook have all become ways for people to enhance their communications efforts with friends and family – much like email emerged as a new business communications tool in the 1990s.
None of these technologies have completely replaced human-to-human interaction. As such, when developing the right hospitality innovations, we always encourage hoteliers to keep the human element in mind … because people will always need direct human contact.