The hospitality sector is undergoing a unique transformation where new innovations are emerging on a daily basis. From text-to-guest providers to new mobile concierge applications, the choices are limitless for hotel IT staff.
This has caused many hotel brands to compete in an arms race when it comes to developing and implementing new guest-oriented innovations. Each new guest offering warrants press coverage, and hoteliers need to move quickly to win the innovation awareness war.
However, is this causing innovation overload for hoteliers?
The nature of doing business this way can cause IT staff to continually operate in a reactionary tactical mode, where it is difficult to operate in a strategic fashion.
To even effectively manage and implement these solutions, hotel IT staff operate in a patch work-like quilt, which includes multiple vendors, contracts, timelines and priorities.
We believe that hoteliers require a unified solution that operates in a dashboard-like manner for managing the development and deployment of all innovations. This unified approach will also allow hoteliers to operate in a more proactive mode.
Along these same lines, hoteliers often grapple with determining which technology developments should be provided by outside partners. By outsourcing technology needs to a trusted partner, hoteliers can keep up with the latest innovations to enable them to be competitive in today’s market.
As we have highlighted before, external partners bring innovation, flexibility, agility and fresh perspective and no competing agendas. In addition, new open platforms provide many of the functions brands are seeking to implement, as well as allows brands to retain control of certain aspects of a solution — while not having to build out the infrastructure internally.
Thankfully it is possible to manage the “innovation overload,” which is very common these days with the explosion of technologies available to hoteliers. By seeking the right partner, who can provide a comprehensive solution, it is possible to stay one-step-ahead of the competition.