Technologies Every Hotelier Needs to Understand: Latest From Skift Research
Photo Credit: Hoteliers expect to see applications for robotic concierge services within hotel properties in the near-term. Unsplash / Alex Knight
Skift Take
The hotel industry needs to catch up with the times when it comes to technology, and we're not just talking about cloud offerings and software-as-a-service technologies. The smart hotelier of today is investing in next generation tech capabilities such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, voice capabilities, virtual reality, robotics, and more, but all with the guest experience in mind.
When it comes to technology, a lack of integration and the resulting data fragmentation remains the biggest challenge for hoteliers. It is true that hospitality is behind relative to other industries when it comes to cloud offerings and Software-as-a-Service technologies. However, the smart hotelier of today is trying to be wherever his or her guests are and investing heavily in the back-end as well as front-end technologies to provide seamless services.
For our latest research report, The State of the Hotel Tech Stack 2018, we interviewed 23 industry stakeholders — from tech vendors and online travel agencies to hotel brands, independent hoteliers, and hotel management companies — to understand the constraints of existing hotel tech and the possibilities when hoteliers make the right tech investments. We bucketed these interviews into two focus groups — our “Tech Vendor Focus Group,” which includes 18 tech vendors and one online travel agency (OTA), and our “Hotel Comp
