3 hospitality tech predictions for the new era of travel

The future of hospitality is an
exciting one for resorts, hotels and restaurants, as connected experiences can
drive both customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Today’s travelers have exposure
to thousands of choices when it comes to selecting their experiences: hotels,
activities and entertainment and their restaurant and food options. To discover
their destinations, travelers don’t have to be physically there. They want to
be there virtually both before and after their trips. What’s more, they have a
better sense of what is available, desiring a more constant taste of it through
their smart phones, their connected TVs and laptops.

In the ever-competitive
world of travel and hospitality, companies are eager to find a new recipe for
success – one that perfectly strikes the balance between the digital and
physical worlds, empowers employees to provide extra-human service in a
high-tech environment, and deliver the total guest experience at whatever stage
a visit is in. With that said, improved connectivity, the use of cognitive
computing with AI and even emerging digital worlds inside the metaverse are shaping
the future of hospitality.

Venues will serve
up presence-free options

Over the past two years, “contactless” options were adopted by hotels and
resorts during the pandemic, including digital check-ins and ticketing, ordering
via apps and mobile and biometric payment methods, which are all here to stay.

In the future,
hospitality companies will be able to welcome guests that are not present at
their venue at all, using innovative technologies such as augmented reality
(AR), virtual reality (VR) and even virtual communities found in the metaverse
to offer presence-free experiences to guests anywhere in the world.

Guest experiences
will start well before they arrive and continue long after they leave. Getting into
a vacation well before arriving at the venue – described by Foresight Factory
as “pretailtainment” – has become a key part of the extended guest experience.

To this end, we are seeing more and more brands creating digital content to
engage and convert potential guests during the research and exploration phase. Forget
looking at photos or scanning the menu, in the future, guests will no longer do
anything without first trying out the fully interactive, immersive digital
option.

As the virtual experience becomes a non-negotiable precursor to the real event,
companies will begin to offer more creative and personalized pretailtainment
options. “Post-stay” services can also be integrated, rounding out the total
guest experience. Beyond thank-you notes or token gifts, instead, guests will
receive digital content that is tailor-made to help them relive specific
moments from their stay or visit.

Hospitality
companies will interpret and cater to how guests feel

Getting to know
your customer, and providing more individualized services, is easier than ever.
Thanks to a highly digital, expanded customer journey, as well as more advanced
loyalty programs, hospitality venues now have access to a wealth of data that
can be combined with AI technology to generate insights and create tailored
experiences.

These insights
can also help empower employees, equipping them with the information they need
to provide top-quality, personalized service and pre-empt requests. As
face-to-face interactions become fewer and farther between, giving staff what
they need to provide “extra-human” service will help brands to stand out and
make the total experience even more meaningful.

Hospitality
companies will feed insights back to guests

As
guests become both more concerned about making the right travel choices and are
more empowered to do so with technology, hospitality venues must be ready to share
data to help inform their decisions with respect to resource deployment and
adjusting aspects of their venue to best meet the expectations during the
customers stay.

Additionally, they must be prepared to offer more options that cater to the
eco-, health- and ethics-conscious, or risk losing business to more forthcoming
and considerate competitors.

Meeting these
expectations requires making sense of collected data quickly and responding
accordingly, which is why simply deploying Wi-Fi solutions for connectivity
alone is no longer enough.

Hotels, resorts
and restaurants should be outfitted with high-performing, secure, reliable and
automated networks that can facilitate both current and coming digital innovations
and deliver total guest experiences that continue to surprise and delight, meeting
the demands of today and tomorrow.

Conclusion

The future of hospitality is arriving quickly as technology evolves.

Vacationers and other guests will always expect a high level of well-designed,
personalized, and engaging interactions – no matter when, where or how they
choose to engage. Meeting these demands requires better and quicker
interpretation of collected data quickly and responding accordingly, and this
goes beyond simply moving data from one device to another.