Better tech and decision-making are hotel trends to watch for in 2022

Since the start of the pandemic, the challenges facing the hospitality sector have been far reaching.

Hoteliers have been forced to adapt to constantly shifting occupancy, staffing challenges and stringent cleaning requirements. Hotels have had to fundamentally review their operations strategies in order to adapt to this new working environment.

Here are two of the big shifts these changes have catalyzed within the hospitality sector and are likely to have an impact on how hotels run in 2022.

Operations technology becoming more simplified

Hospitality has shed a lot of talent in the last couple of years as the sector has been effectively shut down multiple times resulting in staff being forced to find alternative employment.

Employee turnover has also increased as the competition for staff is fierce, which has led in turn to a knowledge drain due to tenured employees leaving and being replaced by new talent.

This dynamic is one of the key factors that has required a change in the way hotels operate. Hoteliers have had to find the most efficient way to run leaner and sometimes less knowledgeable teams, as well as using smart ways to onboard and train up newcomers.

The key to success in this new environment lies in having the right technology infrastructure in place to support staff and make better use of time, particularly in the key departments such as housekeeping.

Automation, AI, better communications tools and smarter route mapping can all play a key part in enabling teams to do more with less. But only if that technology is simple to use and quick to train teams up on.

As the pandemic continues, we expect that many hotels will be forced to re-examine their tech stack and could end up directing a large proportion of their focus and investment towards adjusting and simplifying their hotel operations technology over the next year.

Another consequence of pandemic cost cutting has been reducing in-house tech teams so in this environment, where there is minimal tech support and a great deal of newcomers to the industry, operations technology has to be intuitive to use, fast to roll out and it must add value quickly upon installation.

Time spent finding the right technology solutions to support growth as the industry rebounds with unexpected peaks and troughs will not be time wasted for hoteliers.

More group level decision‐making and management

In the current environment, individual hotels are "in the here and now" and there is often little excess capacity to devote towards making strategic business decisions.

This is always a challenge for the busy hotelier even in the best of times, but those that are fortunate enough to be part of a group of hotels may find value in drawing on that structure more in these challenging times.

In today’s world, it is a fact that the more data points that can be gathered and analyzed across various sources, the more insights the hotel has to work to set the right strategy and make the best decisions possible at that time.

Gathering data from multiple properties and analyzing it centrally will inevitably deliver deeper strategic insights and better decision making than basing strategies on the patterns of one hotel in isolation.

Hoteliers need to be able to make the best decisions for their operations and guests which are based on real-time insights and data. When it comes to groups and multiple property hotels, hoteliers want to ensure consistency of brand across departments and properties, something that guests are expecting more than ever during COVID-19.

To be able to adapt to these demands, hoteliers need to be able to make big decisions that can be rolled out at scale and speed across their properties with the assurances that there won’t be inconsistencies or reduced guest experiences.

Another important factor across groups is attracting and retaining staff, particularly as hotels are faced with labor shortages. There can be lessons learned and examples taken from properties who celebrate employee and team wins, and these practices can be rolled out across multiple properties.

Housekeeping teams and those working in hotel operations have faced one of the most challenging times in their industry and have adapted at incredible speed, so it is important to take note of this and celebrate your team. That way hotels can help create a new generation of loyal and motivated hotel staff.

The road to recovery

It is incredible to see how our sector has adapted and risen to the challenge of living with COVID in our midst, and after the shock of 2020, 2021 revealed the grit and ingenuity within our sector to pick itself up and evolve.

2022 has the potential to be a great year for the hotel industry as we continue to take the pandemic in our stride.

What will separate the most successful hotels from the rest will be their ability to take advantage of the remarkable tools there are out there to properly look after and support their teams, and ultimately provide the best service possible for the guests they serve.