It is safe to say that the success of a hotel and the technology it employs go hand-in-hand, and hence technology becomes vital to differentiate themselves from competitors and engage with guests. Remaining ahead of the curve not only increases profits, but also drives more exposure, solidifies loyalty and brings in more guests.

According to a Walker study, by the year 2020 customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator. Studies validate that dynamic shifts in the hotel industry are taking place in 2018 – with dominance of digital and mobile.

Today, hotels can monitor guests around their properties using installed apps tied to key cards. They can log every guest request through AI-driven concierges, which means the guest doesn’t need to come to the front desk or even call them. Devices using Internet of Things (IoT) can help the hotel know what temperature the guest likes their room to be at, when water bottles need to be replaced, and more. Armed with this information, hotels can then personalise at an individual level for each guest, making recommendations for add-ons, for instance.

Here are the top technologies that any hotel must have in order to determine if they will manage to win the hospitality race this year –

#1. Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality – With analysts predicting that AR and VR will be a $150 billion industry by 2020, it offers enormous benefits for brands savvy enough to seize the opportunity. Hotels who use VR will be able to determine guests’ tastes when they check in, monitor their movements inside the hotel, and even attempt to get them to pay for additional products. The gadgets associated with the technology, such as mounted headsets or connected glasses, are also a key part of the tourist experience, especially for the more tech-savvy, millennial generation of travellers.

For instance, Shangri-La Hotels has a website dedicated to virtual reality wherein people can explore the chain’s hotels and destinations around the world with their immersive 360-degree videos. They can take virtual tours of amazing destinations and iconic hotels – all from the comfort of home.

#2. Self-Service – According to a report by Gartner, by 2020 a customer will manage 85% of the relationship with an enterprise without interacting with a human. So, whether a hotel is a high-end boutique or a budget-friendly one, self-service technology, especially via mobiles, is increasingly impacting the hotel experience, right from check in to check out. If done correctly, the service allows hotels to operate much more efficiently, while maintaining comfort for guests.

Marriott recently rolled out its mobile check-in feature across the Asia Pacific region, that enables members who have downloaded the Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) mobile app to book their stays directly with SPG on its website or in the app.

Image source: Marriott

#3. Paperless transactions – More and more hotels are starting to realize the advantages of paperless transactions, not only for expenses, but also for the environment. From employee management to receipts, surveys, loyalty programs, and managing documents – going digital makes it more efficient for the hotels to run their business. By having a modern Property Management System designed, with additional features such as electronic signature for guests, the entire process becomes more seamless and mobile.

Silverbytes System, a specialist in hotel management software, is already helping hotels go green by enabling them to offer express check-in online or via mobile, and express check-out via iPad and other tablet devices.

#4. Internet of Things – Smart hotels are enabling hoteliers to offer better service and run the facility on their back-end more efficiently, all this thanks to IoT, the global market of which is expected to reach $7.1 trillion in the years to come. The benefits of IoT lies way beyond regular servicing of tech-savvy guests with smart room technologies; it is also helping hotels manage electricity and power consumption by controlling usage of lights, and other systems that automatically switch off when guests leave rooms.

Last year, Hilton unveiled its ‘Connected Room’, a first-of-its-kind, high-tech guest room that enables guests to personalize and control every aspect of their stay from one central point – their mobile device. Guests who stay at Connected Room-enabled properties will be able to use the Hilton Honors app to manage most things they would traditionally do manually in a room, like controlling the temperature or window coverings.

Image source: nyc.epeak.in

#5. Strong cybersecurity – With the rise of IoT, and the increased usage of online tools, cyber-attacks have become more frequent and prevalent. The hotel industry is particularly vulnerable due to the amount of personal data available with them. It will be imperative for hotels to upgrade their data protection processes, or face the risk of significant losses, both in terms of data and revenue. From investing in cybersecurity technology and having a cloud-based PMS to providing the staff with appropriate training programs, hotels will have to up the ante when it comes to protection.

A couple of days back, Rosewood Hotel Group announced an issue affecting certain Rosewood guest reservation information that was maintained on the systems of Sabre Hospitality Solutions, a service provider used by Rosewood and other major hotel brands to process guests’ hotel reservations. This further highlights the need to put the spotlight on cybersecurity.

#6. Frictionless experiences – The key to success for any hotel is removing each and every pain point for a frictionless guest experience. Mobile keyless door is one of those technologies that are already in use and are generating immense positive feedback from guests. The security, convenience, and efficiency it offers helps guests manage their stay on their mobile devices, making it easier for hotels to do away with unreliable, easily-duplicated plastic key cards.

Hilton’s guests in the UK, for instance, are now able to use their phone as a key to enter their rooms, as part of an international roll out of the technology by the hotel. Its competitors such as Marriott, Hyatt and InterContinental Hotels Group are also experimenting with similar systems.

Image source: ExtremeTech

All these technologies combined will help hotels react smarter and faster, fixing an issue before it escalates into a complaint, mastering guest communications and services, and finally, pushing up the all-important review scores. This will give the hotel of the future an edge in customer satisfaction and also drive increased revenues from altogether new streams.

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Taj Hotels Palaces Resorts Safaris have recently launched their new mobile application in order to offer a seamless booking experience, rich content and new features to their guests. The group has partnered with Silicon Valley-based tech startup Proxce to leverage the real world identity management solution in different places throughout the guest journey.

IoT is termed as a defining force in travel and IoT solutions like that of Proxce offer interesting set of possibilities for hotels by offering better data about the guests. From enabling front desk to serve customers quickly to skipping it altogether, the solution allows hoteliers to add the technologies as extensions to their existing app.

“Data accessibility and mobile usage is growing exponentially across the world, especially in growing travel markets like India. Nearly 50% of our guests are now using a mobile device to explore our hotels and destinations somewhere in their purchase path. Online and mobile are our fastest growing channels and we will continue to invest in this area with the goal of creating a consistent guest experience across all platforms. We are grateful to Proxce who have partnered with us to successfully develop a destination-led and customer-centric app,” said Chinmai Sharma, Chief Revenue Officer, Taj Hotels Palaces Resorts Safaris.

Late last year, the first phase of the app, offering guests a seamless booking experience, was released as a teaser for things to come. The second phase planned for this year will include a simplified booking engine, frictionless mobile check-in, prompt service chat, improved loyalty system, and keyless access to guest rooms among other things.

“We’re excited to work with an iconic brand like Taj. Instead of building a mobile app merely for the sake of having one, Taj always wanted an app that would be an extension of themselves. With Proxce’s advanced identity management system behind Taj’s new mobile app, guests can now expect a smarter technology to give them an exceptional world-class experience, one that Taj is known for,” said Madhu Madhusudhanan, CEO and Founder, Proxce Inc.

On one hand, the hotel industry faces pressure from the alternative accommodation space while on the other, hoteliers have forever been trying to push their direct channels above OTAs. Leveraging technology to boost user experience allows them to further add differentiators for the tech savvy travellers while adding another incentive for the guests to use the app. Jumeriah More details about Proxce can be found in our interview with founder Madhu Madhusudhanan.

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The buzzword on IoT is a hard reality that seems to be finding itself more tangible in the airline industry. SITA published a report that highlighted the IT trends in the airline industry, how they are picking up, what is the future of IoT, and how the airlines would plan to employ them. A number of projects are being invested upon by the airlines such as queue lengths and time to gate, to passengers via mobile apps, and further down the line smartwatches. Roughly about 60% of airlines imagine the cyber security concern to be bigger and be taken as a business risk. Innovative projects are starting to take a larger slice with a particular focus on the mobile market making the apps a go-to technology for self-service, information or customer service.

The survey focused on realising that the cyber security is progressing amongst the airline industry with over 200 airlines adopting technologies in coming years to manage cyber risks that have doubled by the last year. Amongst other IoT investments, there has been a growing focus on the maintenance, development and innovation.

This year would see a gradual inclination towards the growing fondness of IoT. The initiative of fuel/ engine monitoring has seen the dawn. IoT connectivity is being deployed with a number of airlines showing interest in IoT gateway technologies like beacons and sensors to provide passenger information has grown sharply. Smart baggage tagging, single travel token and fuel engine monitoring respectively would be evaluated over the next three years.

On the wearable technology front, airlines are still catching up but slowly. Smartwatches and glasses seem to have more potential in the next five years than the present times. Similarly, single biometric travel token is expected to become a viable alternative to current passenger identity processes.

Cyber security has taken the lead in the list of major concerns for CIOs in the present times. More than 70% of airlines have beefed up education and training around cyber security and would be seen as a norm across all airlines in the next three years. Other initiatives that see adoption in the next three years would circle around cyber security’s software development, incident response, and intelligence analytics.

Connected aircraft has also seen a rise in demand as they are configured with advanced communication capabilities. The main benefit would be derived majorly from service improvement rather than passengers. Wi-Fi would replace IFE technology and enable connectivity on passenger’s own device.

Mobile has been defined as the solution to the conundrum. There has been observed a steady growth of mobile check-in and information services have seen enhancing mobile apps. More airlines are planning location-based smartphone and tablet services.

Also, China has come up as a potential market and the industry trends that engulf the entire nation seem to be scaling with time.

However major challenges that could be faced whilst airlines build momentum for IoT implementation are cost factor with over 53% of airlines cited it as a major concern. For passenger related projects, perceived invasion of passenger privacy was an IoT challenge to some degree.

As IoT has become a daily fair in our lives, airlines definitely don’t plan on being left behind. Find crunching numbers in the full report here.

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With the increase in number of connected devices, IoT or Internet of Things is being seen as the next big thing in travel industry. From indoor navigation to keyless entry systems, we are being enveloped in an ecosystem of connected devices. Connected cars and transportation network will also play a significant role in transforming ground transportation, making it safer and more efficient. While the idea that all your devices and appliances can communicate with each other to simplify things for you is very intriguing, it is hard for an average user to understand what kind of data their new toys are throwing around.

This industry segment has seen more attention in media and major brands have been placing their bets on innovators in this space. This certainly had a multiplying effect and catalysed the growth in this sector over the past few years. In some cases, the investors see huge potential and in others, it is the fear of missing out. It could be either but, a research by ABI Research says that we will have around 41 billion connected devices by 2020. However, multiple security companies have highlighted the issues that this wave of IoT will bring along.

The challenges?

The prime challenges arise because of ubiquitous data collection and hardware challenges. You don’t know how smart is the smart pet monitor you are using while travelling. At this point, users barely know what data is being shared between these smart devices but this has to change. Companies, big or small, need to have a stronger focus on securing the customer data. They also have to be more transparent about data use so that customers know what information about them is hovering around. Copious amounts of data is being generated and potential leaks can give away a lot.

The second challenge is a quite obvious one. A large number of connected devices are being made including some ridiculously low cost ones by barely known companies. Some of them even being disposable devices. Encryption and decryption is resource intensive and isn’t possible for tiny low power IoT sensor. Can we expect the low cost hardware to use encryption? Or can we expect the manufacturer to offer updates and fixes if vulnerabilities are discovered at a later stage? We have our doubts. With brands like Intel and Qualcomm in the playground, we can assume that they will help minimise the security concerns. But along with that, the un-named, low cost luggage tracker has to go away. Maybe we have to take a step back before we can jump forward.

The hardware challenge isn’t limited to just some of the unsecure bits of hardware like sensors and actuators. The number is high and as more devices are connected, there are more vectors. The massive network that we are building will make security complex to manage with the high number of variables involved. Security management will have to be automated like in some enterprise networks but that is just a small part of what is about to come in future.

With most of the technological innovations, the rush is towards bringing the product to the market and security is often an afterthought. Disruptive technologies and products often tear through the boundaries defined by existing laws and regulations. Initially product design and ease of access takes priority over security, which means just the basics of security are taken care of. It is only after the product takes a significant scale that the regulators and bigger tech companies try to add security into the equation. Remember how booking a flight online used to be a one step process in early days of internet banking in India? Nobody likes waiting for an OTP or remembering another password to make payments but it was important, even if it meant toning down the customer experience a bit. There were no regulations for Uber in the early days. Neither was Airbnb bound by any laws. We may see this as a tapering the path for technology but it is important. It is time the same is followed for IoT. We don’t want to see these issues pose a bigger challenge when we are heading for a trip in our driverless car, do we?

The solution?

As mentioned earlier, the tiny chips following outdated architectures pose the biggest threat. Low power consumption and low cost are the obvious advantages of using outdated hardware. To address that, the bigger players are offering tools to developers to create real products that have security taken care of right from the design level. Google Weave, a communication platform between devices and cloud services and Brillo OS for IoT devices is a good start point. Microsoft also announced BitLocker encryption and Secure Boot for Windows 10 IoT last year. This will allow for security standards to be adopted by a good number of developers and help with industry wide adoption.

The next logical step would be to design devices that store only the information they require. The key fob of my car shouldn’t save my entire driving history because it isn’t required to unlock the car or the car WiFi shouldn’t have access to locks. Along with this, there should be more transparency about what data is being stored on and shared between devices.

Loopholes, as they are discovered, will have to be fixed. That is why it is also important that there is a sound plan manufacturers have in place to add security updates to their devices in future.

Last year, various leading tech companies joined hands to start Internet of Things Security Foundation, a body that will try to put light on previously ignored security challenges and encourage manufacturers to consider IoT security right from the drawing board.

For now, it may appear that the push for security will put all those crazy Indiegogo projects on a standstill but in the long run, it is going to benefit IoT industry. With that, we might see even more applications in travel industry and better use of customer data by connected devices.

How big of a challenge do you think IoT security is? We would love to hear your thoughts.

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