Can we hardwire happiness into hospitality tech?

Technology for the hospitality industry should be all about “hardwiring happiness,” according to a senior industry figure.

While the current experience often includes long queues, paperwork, poor Wi-Fi and other areas of friction, true hospitality should be about empowering employees to delight guests.

Lennert de Jong, president for hospitality at Planet , says that the industry needs “up to the millisecond technological innovation” that can adapt and respond to rising consumer expectations and decreasing attention spans.

De Jong, who was speaking at ITB Berlin earlier this month, believes providing hospitality is becoming increasingly complex but that technology is available to address the friction.

“Hospitality is supposed to bring joy, but it brings frustration and it can feel like frustration, not happiness, is hardwired into hospitality systems. So against the background of rising expectations and lives peppered with wow moments, we run into this hotel guest experience still today of tedious queues for check-in, paperwork you have to fill out, bad biros and receipts you have to keep in your wallet, if you have a wallet. If you don’t, you lose."

He adds terrible Wi-Fi to the mix as well as televisions that don’t work and disconnected booking and payments systems all leading to disappointment for customers despite the millions invested by hotels in the experience.

Beyond hospitality

De Jong, who spent six years with SynXis prior to joining CitizenM , says some travel companies are managing to create great experiences for customers, citing Delta’s initiative to alert customers that are likely to miss a flight and instantly rebooking them, and bluetooth technology from KLM helping passengers get to their gates on time.

“In the world beyond hospitality amazing things are happening. Real human problems are solved in a way that creates moments of relief, freedom and happiness.”

He also points to examples outside travel such as Amazon Go, which he believes will change bricks and mortar retail for good, and asks: “Why is hospitality lagging behind? The industry has access to the same technology as any other. It recruits and trains great people, so why are there still so many frustrating, irritating guest experiences? And why are there excellent people trapped behind desks when they could be delivering great customer experiences? Why is an industry that is devoted to ease, comfort and happiness responsible for so much discomfort and unhappiness?”

De Jong says a lot of the problem comes down to slow adoption of digital technologies, adding that farmers use more digital technology than hoteliers.

He also says the triangle of hotel brand, property owner and manager with a hotelier in the middle being bounced between “three different stakeholders” is also part of the problem with guests suffering as a result.

His answer does not lie in inventing new things but joining the dots of what is already available. De Jong says that to solve problems for people, hoteliers need to think in terms of goals rather than tasks.

Changing mindset

The good news perhaps is that the hospitality industry seems to be more ready to embrace new technology.

During a separate session at ITB, investors agreed that there is more to be solved with back-end technology in hotels.

During Phocuswright’s Investor View , Lucile Cornet, a partner in Eight Roads which has invested in OTA Insight and Amenitiz, says the company sees more opportunity for startups that are addressing the hospitality tech stack.

“I feel like the environment is much more positive now. It’s great to see the sector back flourishing, it feels much more positive in terms of seeing innovation now than in the past year.”

Chris Hemmeter, managing director of Thayer Ventures, adds: “We’re investors in Mews, which is killing it worldwide in the hospitality stack. Canary is doing some really interesting work in hospitality. DealEngine is another example of these very creative companies that are figuring out how to deliver high-value services through zero integration APIs, which I think is quite logical and transformative in an industry where the notion of ripping and replacing the existing tech stack is just absurd, it’s not going to happen. If you look up and down the value chain, you look globally, there’s so much creative work to be done, and the core of travel, the suppliers of the travel experience, whether the bed you sleep in or the plane you fly in, are finally engaged in that process of understanding, wanting to transform the ways things are done.”

Other hospitality technology providers also see change.

Duetto , which unveiled its Advance solution that provides hotels with market demand and event intelligence in real time, says there has been a significant move to cloud-based technology.

Chief revenue officer Chris Crowley says: “Staffing pressures and market variability meant that hotels needed to implement systems that could harness and process extraordinary amounts of data without having to hire large teams of specialists.”

Echoing De Jong’s sentiment, Crowley adds: “The guest is also driving this move toward greater tech adoption. The short-term booking window remains, and this will continue to challenge hotel teams, both operationally and from a revenue perspective. However, a short-term booking window represents an opportunity to connect with a more mobile, more astute and engaged traveler, switching seamlessly between business and leisure profiles.

“Hotels are learning to integrate customer data and loyalty profiles across the entire spend onsite to curate personalized offers for a more discerning guest," Crowley says. "Technology has advanced. The customer has advanced. And hotel businesses that don’t keep up with this change will slip behind at a rapid pace.”