With HITEC kicking off yesterday (find us at booth 1525!), we’ve been busy keeping up with all the hospitality tech out there. If there’s one thing we’ve noticed it’s this: there’s an overwhelming amount of information, changes and updates. Don’t worry! We’ve collected a handful of the most prominent trends we noticed, giving them a quick summary and link to a relevant article for in-depth reading.
Artificial Intelligence and Chatbots: This article provides an overview on some AI applications in the hospitality industry, like Sheraton’s Angie Hospitality service for high-tech rooms. This is a big one that’s expected by many to explode.
Mobile: It’s no longer a matter of “it’s coming” but more that it’s here and expected by consumers now. In fact, hotelspeak cites that 70% of emails are opened on mobile, an increasingly valuable channel for hotels.
Image from hotelspeak.com
Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality: Consider this the question mark of the bunch. It’s still early, and expensive for most companies to implement. Despite those barriers, companies like Airbnb are developing it as part of their booking solution.
Image from airbnb.com
The Internet of Things (IoT): The internet of things can provide a seamless customer experience according to this article. With IOT, the goal is to meet customer needs before they even think of them, with as little hassle as possible. Not buying it? Mariott created the “room of the future” to develop it’s IOT systems.
Image from hospitality.net
There you have it, quick summaries of some key hospitality tech trends. Be sure to check back with us after HITEC, as we’ll be sharing some of our takeaways from the conference.
