Digital disruptions in Hospitality Industry.

Digital transformation is manifesting itself in multiple areas, but some of the important ones for hospitality include mobile, social, analytics and IoT.  The rise of mobile and the growing importance of social media, the hospitality sector is facing huge digital disruption. I have rounded up the latest digital news, trends and insight to help your business stay ahead of the curve.

Mobile:

Previously, it too 1 to 2 days to purchase a bond, a process that required people to apply for Bond CDS Account, submit the form to Central Bank of Kenya then deposit funds with a broker. However, with New M-Akiba, the process is now instant. Using mobile phone the government now aim at raising billions of cash by just dialing *889# we have come that far indeed! But what about our industry?

The growth of mobile is making new demands on hotel companies, especially in the case of their information technology assets. The adoption of the 3^rd platform especially the growth of mobile usage in general increases the expectation that hotels will engage with their guests via this channel. Most guests also want applications that are engaging, intuitive and designed to take advantage of new mobile platform capabilities. Given the frequent updates and introduction of new mobile technologies and capabilities, hospitality companies have no choice but to keep their mobile apps refreshed and continually enhanced. In terms of opportunities to leverage mobile, there are apps that offer mobile bookings, room service ordering and the fulfillment of guest requests. In the future, we are likely to see enhancements that take advantage of guest data and geolocation capabilities to help deliver targeted marketing and offers aimed at adding more revenue to the bottom line. The information officers through DevOpps approach – that is development and operation team talking to each other for continuous innovations.

Social:

The growth of social media channels that are assisting the proliferation of user-generated content is pushing many hotel companies to rethink how to engage with their customers, many of whom use social media as a preferred medium to engage with customer service. Most organization with service cultura at the forefront have appointed an individual to oversee their organizations’ social business initiatives. Customer service is a given, and hotel companies typically need strategies for dealing with their guests who choose to interact via social media. Companies may have an opportunity to truly use social media to drive business. Social media typically falls within the realm of a marketing lead – and can be used for PR – but, it can span so much more and digital tools can drive branding, e-commerce, CRM, media and public relations.

Analytics:

The hospitality industry is blessed in that it has access to a large amount of guest data. Many hotels know about their guests even before they have arrived on property. It is important to be able to take these insights and convert them into meaningful results. Analytics can be used to harness the awareness of customers. The application of Big Data helps hotels to create precisely targeted marketing campaigns, deliver them, measure success and learn from the outcomes. Next-best-course-of-action engines can analyze guests’ clickstream, location, social interaction platform, customer profile, transactions and voice-of-the-customer data to enhance and optimize their journeys and interactions at various touch points. These collectively enable hospitality companies to empower employees with insights they can use to deliver compelling experiences across touch points using customer profiles and preferences, social listening, location and contextual awareness and predictive analytics. Further, interactions across digital channels are able to be transformed as a result of these insights. There are wonderful tools for free that can assist in social listening and report any mention of your organization in the public domain.

IoT:

Internet of Things is becoming a reality with the advent of connected devices, embedded intelligence and the ability to help deliver meaningful information to the embedded sensors that can be used to transform interactions. As hospitality companies consider how to employ IoT, it may behoove them to consider that the most compelling use cases will very likely require cross-organizational collaboration. Also, the desire to play with the next shiny object will likely be strong – therefore it is important to avoid distractions from exciting new technologies by starting with concrete business outcomes in mind. Usability is another important consideration, even if the solution is automated. Given the need to connect sensors, it is important to bear the bandwidth demands in mind. Lastly, standards for IoT will continue to evolve, but it is important to not wait – rather, hospitality companies should help shape standards.

 Receiving CIO100 East Africa Award for best in hospitality category 2015.

What Next for the Hospitality Industry?

Digital disruption by ever changing technology is giving many hospitality companies the abilities to transform their business models, guest engagement and employee enablement and create opportunities to deliver rich and compelling experiences. Taking advantage of these typically requires investments not only in security and privacy to help maintain sanctity of sensitive personal information and personally identifiable information, but also to factor in the additional bandwidth needs. A judicious weighing of potential business benefits against investment requirements should occur prior to taking advantage of capabilities.

These trends will not only impact the hospitality and travel industry but also a wide range of other industries where customer service and experience is an important aspect. 

Now we know.